Information Technology Education

We just finished creating our first hummingbird robot with servo, motor, voice, lights and all. The video below and the link to our story HERE in pictures, words and motion tell it all!

I recently received a grant from APS to get my students started with hummingbird robotics. Here is a summary of the grant proposal from the APS site: Explorer Middle School, Phoenix Students Impacted: 97 Project Title: Middle School Makers Grant: $1,950 Description: "Middle School Makers" will involve programming and creating robotics, kinetic sculptures and animatronics using Hummingbird kit materials.   I envisioned it as a way to have them make, create, and program.  Using an Arduino device and a variety of LEDs and sensors partnered with the CREATE Lab Visual Program, my students are off and running already on day one! There are a series of video tutorials that make it easy for anyone to wire and program.  They created a variety of sounds with the text-to-speech feature and are well on their way to creating animatronics.  The CREATE Lab makes it simple to create expressions and then sequence them.  We will work on exploring loops and getting our creatures...

I got to thinking the other day about the myriad of STEM competitions and challenges that are out there any how many emails I receive on a regular basis about them...app inventing challenges, science fairs, math competitions, essay contests...the list goes on.  They are such valuable learning opportunities for students and add what Volkwagen calls the 'fun' theory to life.  Bring a challenge into the classroom and it adds a whole different level of motivation and engagement. Fun Theory As a teacher, while I always saw the value in challenges and competitions, they were also a bit stressful due to deadlines and coordinating school schedules and worktime.  This year, though, I tried to integrate them with the standards that I am teaching anyway and bring them into my classroom.  It's been great!  The powerful thing about these STEM challenges is that they are open-ended and that there is no limit to how high or far you can go.  The limit is the students' imag...

These words were spoken by Barbara Beskind, who at 90 years old, is working at IDEO and giving feedback in the design of new products in the Silicon Valley.  I just love everything she had to say on npr here .  Wow.  Talk about inspiring.  We all change and our situations all change, but the important thing is to problem solve and design for this change. Here is a video about IDEO "in a word…" As I begin a new semester with a new group of students, I try to emphasize from the beginning the engineering-design process and how we can use it to solve problems.  I have them go online and study the myriad of engineering-design process images on Google images and then have them compare them, looking at similarities, differences, unique and outstanding characteristics.  They then work in pairs to create their own version of the engineering-design process.  Through this, I hope they learn that there are multiple perspectives and pathways to design and create w...

Where else can you celebrate CS week, ring in the holiday season, and incorporate bubble sort into a dance performance?  Watch this video to find out... Code and dance? No problem!

One big thing I've been working on this year is to try to get more middle school girls interested in STEM.  The representation of women in STEM fields and, in the field of computer science in particular, have been well publicized. Even locally here in the state of Arizona at our large public state university, Arizona State University, less than 20% percent of the engineering majors are female. Organizations such as NCWIT and Girls who Code are working to increase the 12% representation of women in the field of computer programming.  Here in my district, I have had my middle school girls working with high school and college girls via telepresence to create apps using App Inventor and to learn some basics of html and Python.  It has been an empowering experience for them and they have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of creating using code.  Perhaps just as important as the app inventing and coding my students have learned, if not more important, is the invaluable e...

Look anywhere in the news lately, and you'll see that Mars is making a comeback.  There's the MRO and the recent Comet Siding Spring that made a close flyby of the red planet.  The India Space Research Organization has also recently launched their very own Mars orbiter.  So when I found out about the Mars Student Imaging Program out of Arizona State University, I thought to myself that this would be a great opportunity for my students to pursue their passion for exploring and researching space.   Completely student-driven inquiry tied in with authentic research and feedback from a planetary geologist - what could be better than this?  Plus, all culminating in two days at ASU on the campus working with the geologist and collecting their very own image from the THEMIS camera.  But, before the two-day culmination on campus, we had a big learning curve.  We had to first learn about Martian geology and learn about the features on this planet.  We also...