A Trip to the Redwoods

[ click to play QuickTime movie - music by R. E. M. ]
Took the eighth graders on a trip to Prairie Creek. My earlier, snarky post about the trip has been removed, with continued apologies to the innocent.

Maker Faire - Boy Meets Robot

click for slide show

Went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo this weekend with my brother and my nephew. The event was exactly as organized as you would expect from a bunch of beatniks and nerds - it was horrible. But now that I know the deal, I think I can prepare for next year and make a better run thru.

Bringing a 5-year old boy has its plusses and minuses. We waited nearly 40 minutes and held some primo seats to the RoboGames event. We saw one fantastic battle between a battle-bot with a big spinning device and a really fast flipper-bot (the flipper bot won after taking some serious punishment!). The boy, however, was scared to death and could not handle a second bout. Then, once we got home, he couldn't stop talking about the robot battle; everything became a robot battle (playing with matchbox cars, playing with stuffed animals, playing with food, etc). Oh well. Next year, we load him up on robot YouTube videos and get some foam ear plugs, and maybe he'll make it thru a few more matches. That was cool!

We tried to get on some of the funky rides, but by the time we got out "liability waiver bracelets", some strange stage show was underway, and all the rides appeared to be closed. What's that about?

Then we watched some model rocket launches. My nephew was interested enough that we tried to go make our own rocket so we could launch, but they had just run out of kits, and we could only watch. Note that we had gotten there about mid-day, and they had run out of kits already. Rats.

The event was really big, but still really crowded. The big hall was crammed full of smaller stalls, and that may have been the most fun, especially since my nephew seemed to find enough to do there. He liked the homemade robot displays, the musical devices were also really fun. There were a few commercial booths (like Radio Shack), but most of it seemed to be in that homebrew spirit that we had hoped to see. And, of course, we got to meet Russell the Giraffe.

A Robotics Course - Finally

Was finally able to get a robotics class going. Sorry - it's been too long since my last post, but its been so busy.

click here to play

My computer class has been having a blast (I think) building Google Sketchup models. Here's a little bit of that too - the Mac Lab on the HIller Campus:



Compare to:

Tribute to MLK

I was asked to put together an presentation for MLK Day in January and thought it might be a great chance to use the new iMovie 08. But, I was given little time to complete the project, since the administration wanted to review the product before the December Break. I tried using iMovie 08, I really did, but the new UI just frustrated me. I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out how to import still images as slides and assemble them with pans and transisitons, then bailed and went back to the old iMovie HD.

Here's a beta "rough cut". It's part of the "mountaintop speech" that MLK gave the day before he was killed in 1968. In it, he talks about an incident from 1958, in which a "deranged woman" stabs him during a Harlem book signing and nearly kills him. In the hospital, he is recuperating and reading letters from well wishers:



Let me know what you think!

PC Autopsy the Movie

The three Autopsy Teams (Proton, Neutron, Electrons) disassembled their computers, calatoged the parts, and the re-assembled the computers, hoping that the machines would survive the process and reboot:



Music by Fatboy Slim.

Computer Autopsy Day 1

So the kids in class have started to take apart their "cadaver PCs". It was a good day -- very noisy and active, but lots of good questions. They are documenting the dis-assembly with digital cameras and in their blogs; they are also identifying each part in a PC Parts Catalog database. All their data is being uploaded to a class space in Moodle.

I've really enjoyed using Moodle. It's as linear and structured as any courseware I've used, which can make it difficult to set-up and teach to the kids. But there are enough options that you can make the kinds of spaces and tools that you need; and it's free. The Forums and blogs do not seem to handle EMBED tags quite right, which is really frustrating a couple of the kids who want to play with Flash and QuickTime. I guess if you're a 12-year old kid who wants to learn how to embed media objects in HTML, you really don't have a big problem -- if you know what I mean.

Anway I'll see if I can Google-up a solution to that problem.

[ click images for larger view ]

Bob the Egg - Lives!

Today, after the Convocation at Bentley's Lafayette Campus, the Middle School did a little engineering exercise of sorts. Each Advisory got an egg. The egg was to be dropped and we needed to protect it with a given "kit of parts". I made a little movie of the event:



[ click to view the slide show ]

The Lab in Action

Here is an "action shot" from the new Computer Lab on August 31st:

Getting the New Lab Ready

Wow. It's been a busy summer, but I got a lot done. First, I moved to California. Then I set about making a new Computer Lab and designing a new Computer Studio course which I hope will start to test some of the ideas I've been blogging.



The couse will move kids from a hardware overview (autopsy), to some basic media work, some HTML, and some blogging of their own. Once they have a handle on how to report on their work, we'll start on a few projects. As I've said, this course will approach computers with an artist's curiousity: what are they? how do they work? what can I make with them?

First we'll try podcasting and video work -- really an extension of the media work that they started with, but adding some XML and RSS to the mix. Then I want them to try making a non-linear experience within a web browser, maybe like a museum of science interactive that explains something. They'll incorporate audio and video media, as well as other programming skills.

Next I want them to try their hand with Google Earth, wikis, and media. We'll see if they might also be able to do something with Google SketchUp.

Then we'll dig into some "starter" IDE's like Scratch. And finish with Lego Mindstorms.

Also, all the tools I'm using are free, and almost all are cross-platform -- so the kids can download and use them at home:

- Audacity
- Firefox
- Google Earth
- Google SketchUp
- LEGO Digital Designer
- Scratch
- TextWrangler

Rivers Campus in Full 3D

A couple of Rivers Seniors have built Rivers in 3D. Try as I might, I could not get my copy of Google SketchUp to render a proper .kmz file for Google Earth, but this is a big, detailed model:





They added all kinds of landscaping details (signs, benches, garbage cans, etc) and could not add colors and textures without slowing the animations to a crawl. But this was a tremendously fun thing to watch happen.

Google SketchUp Model Update

I finally did the promised update. This was done with the new version of SketchUp, and I lost the edge lines in the model -- for the life of me I could not figure out how to get them back. Maybe cause I added all these colors and textures to the model (?). Note that the base of the flagpole has a nice aqua patina (you gotta look really close!).



The revised SketchUp .kmz file for the Rivers Site is here.

PlayStation Portable Is History

Well, of course, I knew this was coming. I'm rather surprised it hasn't happened earlier. A school in Birmingham, UK, is rolling out a pilot project with PSPs -- they are going to use them to teach history:


School that will teach history on a PlayStation

"Pupils are being handed gaming consoles to help with their studies.

Teachers believe the Sony PlayStations will motivate youngsters studying French, history and geography.

The hand-held devices can carry educational video and audio clips as well as notes and pictures."

It sounds like the PSP is going to be used as a media device and a browser. Obviously they can author and hear podcasts, Flash video clips, and other Web 2.0 consumables. Something I'll try to watch closely.

Other links:
Monsters and Critics
BBC News
Gamer Squad
Next Generation

Rivers Updated in Google Earth

This had to have happened in just the last couple of weeks -- Google has updated the satellite maps for the The Rivers School campus, and it now includes the Athletics Center:



We're pretty sure this is a Saturday in Spring 2005 since the baseball field is not yet been moved beind behind Maintenance. It looks like the site has shifted a bit under my model (see the roof edges sticking out from under the walls?), so I'll have to try to snap-shot and export the model again, see if I can get it to line up better.

It's interesting that there was about two years from the time of the satellite photo to its incorporation into Google Earth.

Half Life Falling Water

A Half Life player named Kasperg (an architectural student from Spain) has bult a hi-res model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, linked here:


Digital Urban

This absolutely shows how 3D models can be brought into these FPS gaming engines (sans gun barrel) to render an accurate, immersive experience. The model (with sound effects!) is amazing, and there is a .wmv file you can download.

Build Your Campus in 3D

Google has launched a competition called:


"Build Your Campus in 3D"

And they've released Google SketchUp 6. It lloks like you can now use photos as texture maps -- cool!

iRobot Create

From the folks that brought you the Roomba vaccum, comes "iRobot Create":



I been follwing the Roomba cause on a bunch of the maker and hacker sites, this has been the target of some investigation -- and iRobot thought enough to add a programming port to the Rooba at some point. Now they've removed the vacuum part and just given the maker-hacker community "base robot" that folks can play with. Great idea. Here are some projects:


iRobot Create Projects

Read more at Make Magazine and this review at ROBOT.

XNA Available Next Week

Microsoft announced that the XNA Game Development Studio will be available for download starting next Monday (Dec. 18th). From an ARS artcile by Jeremy Reimer:

The XNA Game Development Studio for Xbox 360 and PC

"Of course, the sheer sophistication of modern games makes it difficult to imagine a return to the days when an individual could compete on his own with the big boys. However, the popularity of simpler games such as Lumines on modern platforms has shown that you don't necessarily have to make a sprawling epic adventure in order to be a success. With the XNA Game Studio lowering the bar for developers to create content, we can expect more unique and interesting titles to come out of the woodwork. Not all of them will be gems, of course, but the next killer game may well come from someone the world has never heard of."

So another challange to the Tech Club here at Rivers is possible: make a 3-D model of the campus, and let's race around -- according to the article, the XNA Racer Starter Kit will be available, too!

Mindstorms NXT Test Run

After the AISNE Tech Directors' meeting, the folks at Belmont Hill threw down a challenge to see if we would like to "lego-a-lego" with a little friendly competition. Not one to back down, or miss a chance to expense some new Lego products, I got the new NXT kit. First, the retail package *finally* has Mac-compatible software; and it appears to be the same software sold in the educational markets. In any case -- what you're seeing here is the retail version:



The software is very different, but the concept of object oriented programming with tiles is the same. The crazy wires and threads from the old Mindstorms are pretty much gone, replaced by something called a "sequence beam". Big sigh of relief, tho you still need wires for more advanced functions; was so frustrating to see the old wires folded behind tiles and never know where the command strings were broken. The icons are not as strait-forward, however (or maybe I'm just used to the old ones), and you have to pay attention to the tiny-tiny radio buttons and sliders in the control pane. I also wish you could zoom in and out of the program view; big programs become very hard to see. There is a "Map" tab, which makes navigation easier, but it provides a limited view.

You can also import the old Mindstorms tiles (IMHO, still confusingly referred to as "blocks") from the web site's update page:

NXT Software Updates

The assembly tutorials, however, are a big step forward -- you can see those famous Lego "graphic instructions" in a viewer pane called "Robo Center". I used to do this with MacBrick CAD, and there was really no way to dimensionally imagine or walk the kids thru custom assemblies. Boy, I wish there was a way to add my own assemblies into the Robo Center (it's written in Flash, so it might be possible to import .swf files). There's also a little "Portal" tab where you can link and get more resource files and projects.

Inside the box, the whole package is separated into those little perforated baggies, as you would expect -- but there is a special box that says "Start Here!". It contains the first set of instructions and all the parts to make the basic "tribot" used in the tutorials. It's so easy to get started -- that plus the programming tutorial is so basic, it's easy to see that kids can get going real fast.



The NXT has Bluetooth -- if you ever used the old IR comm-tower you'll know how amazing this improvement is! The old IR signal was so weak, that you often has to cover the tower and the RCX brick with a shoe box in order to get a good download.



However, the basic tribot does virtually nothing, so you want to get right to the big claw pieces. This is not a challenging build as far as Lego construction goes. I don't like the big crazy fat cables. You have to keep the cables from interfering with the wheels and sensors, etc. The new cables are not easy to keep "tucked". Wire management was always an issue with the old system, too, tho at least Lego provided bricks cut with slots to snap-in the old, thinner cables. But the new motor units are tremendous; they are much easier to package around the NXT brick. Using the Technic beams and pins as opposed to regular Lego bricks makes the mechanical engineering much more strait forward.



Here is the completed "tribot" with claw arms. The basic instruction here is: go to ball, stop, when user claps hands, arms grasp ball, robot turns, and brings ball back to "Start" point:




I do miss the regular bricks, however -- there is not one regular Lego brick in the kit! Not even a minifig. So ...



Ah. That's better.

Rivers School on Google Earth

Some of the kids at school asked about Google Sketchup -- so I finally made the time to build a quickie model and export it to Google Earth to see what it's look like.

First, I took a site plan and scanned it into a JPEG file. It's clean enough to see the building footprints. I had to guestimate the scale by drawing a line and scaling the line to a known measurement -- but not too tough:


Next, I found the Rivers School on Google Earth and exported a snapshot of that to Sketchup -- this is just a simple button click in Sketchup. It pulls in both a snapshot and the "terrain" (topography). It's kinda cool the way the shadows line up on the Google Earth image:


I could then match up the scanned site plan to the Google Earth snapshot quite easily -- boy things look so good when they're in Google Earth:


The model is very "blocky"; I guessed on all the vertical dimensions. This is more of a proof of concept. The Sketchup .kmz file for the Rivers Site is here.

Scientists say video games can reshape education

Oh, it's from "scientists", so this must be true! Great discussion points and examples in the report (linked blow) ...


FAS Summit on Educational Games
[ link to the full report, PDF ]

"The Federation of American Scientists -- which typically weighs in on matters of nuclear weaponry and government secrecy -- declared Tuesday that video games can redefine education.

Capping a year of study, the group called for federal research into how the addictive pizazz of video games can be converted into serious learning tools for schools.

The theory is that games teach skills that employers want: analytical thinking, team building, multitasking and problem-solving under duress.

Unlike humans, the games never lose patience. And they are second nature to many kids."


AP article on CNN.com