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Showing posts from 2020

Google Drawings to Laser cutting

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 I created this tutorial for students at my middle school. Technology Education students right now are in person, but due to COVID restrictions, they aren’t able to use as many traditional tools.  I am helping my Tech Ed teacher, Mr Waldschmidt, to find options that students can program, create, and model using tools on Chromebooks. Here is the short version. Machines like Glowforge and Cricut use Scaleable Vector Graphics files (SVG) to program the machine to cut and scribe designs. Google Drawings is a application, part of the Google Suite, that allows you to create Vector drawings. This file can be downloaded and re-uploaded into applications for the Glowforge and Cricut. I like it when students try to think of problems that they can solve for themselves. Think of an authentic problem that they can solve. My example shows how to create a phone holder that I could laser cut from some plastic.  Here is the example I created in my presentation. Here is my long video, with bonus foota

Waupaca Tech Camp 2020

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 Hi all! One of the ideas I helped launch in Waupaca is the Waupaca Tech Camp. It is a time for teachers to give a little summer time for learning about technology supports for their classroom. Normally, it was a face to face occasion, and on my home turf at the Middle School. But this year... much different. This year we held it at Waupaca High School... which was different. Classrooms were spread around the building, instead of in one hallway. Acceptable changes. We also added in a Virtual option, where teachers could join in our lessons via Google Meet. Presenting information while masked up was different, and sometimes harder for the participant to hear... but livable. Here, I would like to post some of the sessions I presented this year. Asynchronous Learning   Above are the slides I presented... Synchronous Learning   Relay Classroom As changes came quick and fast this year, it is amazing that Tech Camp got off the ground this year. I hope I was able to meet some of the needs

Professional Development from MakeyMakey

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With the coronavirus, I wanted something I could learn about while having some fun and down time, without staring at my Netflix account too much. I recently found an opportunity to take an online PD from MakeyMakey, presented by Tom Heck . This course, called 'Beyond the Banana" explores electric circuitry that can be created and adapted to the MakeyMakey , a circut board that connects to a computer via USB. The MakeyMakey acts as a keyboard for the computer to add inputs from the real world. As the MakeyMakey works as a keyboard, you can program with websites like Scratch, Tynker, or just play a piano. I created an Indiana Jones drawing, that played the song as well. The Makey Makey was plugged into all of its' front ports, and a few letters via wire plugs on the back. It interacted with this website piano. My final project was to create a Instructable that goes through the design of an invention. My invention was more of an adaptation of an idea, to create a

Starting to work from home...

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So today I decided to start working from home during the #covid_19 emergency. I’m working on building professional development for teachers, responding to emails, and planning student tutorials. It’s new, but not scary. Looking forward to seeing how far my school grows with new skills!

DonkeyCar: Raspberry Pi Controlled Robot Car

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Last summer, I worked with students at Waupaca Middle School to create robotic cars. We started building from instructions from donkeycar.com , to build cars powered by Raspberry Pi computers. This process was technical, but my students did much of the heavy lifting. I created the disk images for the students, and my 3d printer was printing some of the largest parts ahead of time for our two week course. We were successful in creating drivable cars, within a week!  Here is a list of what the students did: Disassemble necessary parts of the car Assembly. Mounting battery. Finding the codes for calibrating the cars. 3d printing parts. programing in their codes,  launching the driving website. designing a road course for the cars. connecting a tablet to drive their car. driving the cars. and learning to fix the cars... when they didn't work so well. Here is the process that we followed. Want a copy? We have more work to do... but the platfo