VT Tech Jam

On Friday, October 23rd I took a group of six students along with our school librarian, Ellen Arapakos, to Vermont Tech Jam as part of the VT Agency of Education's STEM Showcase http://www.techjamvt.com/vermont-tech-jam/schedule/.  Although they were a bit nervous to present their projects to a large audience, the students did a fantastic job sharing their work and representing Williston Central School.  

Shop Curtain

We ordered a custom shop curtain over the summer and it finally arrived a couple weeks ago.  The students had a long weekend so our awesome maintenance crew was able to install the curtain last week.  We now have our woodshop sectioned off to prevent dust from getting into the "high tech" area of the classroom!

Success!

Today was awesome.  The Scratch/Makey Makey project we have been working on has been a perfect MAKER project.  As students finished up projects today we had all of this happening at once:

• soldering
• programming
• vinyl cutting
• sewing on the sewing machine
• sewing by hand
• building with playdough
• constructing with cardboard and paper
• hot gluing
• painting
• connecting circuits with alligator clips and wires

AND lots of problem solving, designing, redoing, collaborating.  What a great morning!

AND I was running around and didn't have a chance to take any pictures...

Lego makey makey controller

Yes, he is pretty amazing!

Dance Game!

Making Games!

Breakthroughs!

It was an exciting day in Design & Technology today!  the students started working in small groups to create games in Scratch and controllers with Makey Makeys.  Here are some of the things they created:

• One 8th grade girl successfully made a mouse with playdough using the back of the Makey Makey board
• one 7th grader made a "joystick" type controller out of Legos...it has playdough underneath to sense direction.
• One group is making a dance game to Watch Me (whip/ nae nae)

 

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