Thursday, November 29, 2012
blog.robodyssey: Heading to FUBAR Labs Meetup in Highland Park, NJ....
blog.robodyssey: Heading to FUBAR Labs Meetup in Highland Park, NJ....: Heading to FUBAR Labs Meetup in Highland Park, NJ. with Sparkfun Pro Micro , Arduino Pro Mini and PIC 16F877A on Robodyssey RAMB II s. ...
Monday, November 12, 2012
Just giving kids a
really cool black box is not the same thing as teaching them how to apply it to
a problem. Working with 10, 11 and
12 year-olds is a pleasure. They are
more easily convinced than my college kids that they don’t actually know
everything and they are genuinely excited when their code causes their circuit
to behave as planned. I invoked the
‘Magic Smoke’ legend and none of my students had heard it. For my readers who are not familiar with this
principle, “All electronic devices have ‘Magic Smoke’ that makes them work and
if you connect these devices incorrectly, they will lose their ‘Magic Smoke’ –
you will smell it and you may even see it.
Once you have let out the ‘Magic Smoke’, you can never put it
back…” I am always amazed when kids
imagine that there are dozens of ways to connect wires to devices, you just
have to try them all. Kids, if allowed
to do so, will just start connecting wires randomly to see what happens. I always start off the class by advising that
plugging these strange new objects into
receptacles that may accept them may be fun for a very short time but will not
yield much useful information and could very well be dangerous or deadly, not
to mention wasteful. I am an empiricist so my methods generally endorse
this kind of behavior but without understanding, there are limits.
Any instructional
approach needs to present material in a contextual way so that students develop
understanding. Someone recently re-tweeted
the old adage, ‘Knowing all of the facts is not the same as understanding the
principles…’ which illustrates the importance of relevant, contextual
assessment to insure understanding. Having
a context for the concepts encourages the effort required to learn the
necessary material. Knowing which
information to present to arrive at an educational goal, setting those goals
and assessing students’ progress with some sort of authentic (relevant)
instrument are essential to assure that, going forward, students will have the
necessary intellectual tools to develop understanding. Finally, what might be a
teachers’ most important task is to inspire and to give their learners the means
of finding the tools to discover more. I
am encouraged by the suggestions here in this video http://bit.ly/VCvBmr online at Ericson.com but the actual
implementation will be another matter.
There are so many
great programs that are addressing
this problem that it is difficult to decide which ones to work with. I recently visited one of these Hackerspaces
known as FUBAR Labs (http://fubarlabs.org/ )
– (Fair Use
Building and Research) at their Rutgers University ,
Livingston campus location. Rick Anderson has
been bringing together technologies, like a 3-D printer, with engineering
students who want to get their hands on these technologies. I will return there soon to learn more about
their program and to possibly help out. Many
engineering majors have never actually built a circuit on a bread board or
designed, etched, drilled, stuffed and soldered a PC board. I will continue to introduce students to
these hands-on methods where ever I can. I would appreciate your comments and
suggestions for helping technology seekers and for other program worth working
with.
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