Let the Games Begin!

The cardboard arcade has become a yearly fixture in the STEM lab calendar for 3rd grade. I place this in the third grading cycle because it usually has an extra week and few interruptions to the schedule.

We start with a brief overview of what exactly is an arcade. I always include both definitions (covered passageway lined with shops AND place to play games for a fee), because I see myself as a teacher of all subjects. Then we watch and discuss the Nirvan Mullick film Caine's Arcade which is the original inspiration for the whole cardboard arcade phenomenon. The movie documents the arcade built by a 10 year old boy who was spending the summer hanging around in his father's auto parts store.

Next students get together in teams, or elect to work independently, and brainstorm ideas. I place as few limitations on them as I am able. The games must be table top size and must be playable by first and second graders. I encourage the students be be as creative and not just make a replica of an arcade game they saw at Dave and Buster's. Once an idea is selected, students begin planning in their journals. These plan include a list of materials, steps for completion, and direction for how to play the game. I insist on a detailed plan because I find that it cuts down on the amount of materials that are wasted. During the planning phase I meet with each group to offer feedback on their design. Depending on what they are trying to make, I ask questions to get them thinking about the details that will need to be included. That may be "how will you build the ball return?", "how will you stop the ball from flying across the room?", or "how will player know they have won?".

The construction and testing phase lasts several days. While I do help with some of the tougher cutting tasks, I make the students do as much of the hard work as possible. Last year I banned the use of tape in construction because it is wasteful and fails to hold the game together anyway. I spend a lot of the building class periods teaching students to use white glue and structural elements like L-braces and flanges to attach pieces of cardboard to one another. There is much gnashing of teeth in the beginning when I refuse to produce a roll of tape for them to mummify their project with. However, once a few students get the hang of the glue techniques, they are eager to share their skills with others.

The final phase of the project is always the presentation. I invite a class from a lower grade to come and play the games. I never know who will be available from which grade level, so I prepare the 3rd graders for the fact that they may end up entertaining anyone from Kindergarten through 2nd grade. They are always so excited to show off what they have made and the only disappointment ever voiced is that I did not invite their former teacher or the class with their sibling to participate.

There have been some really great projects so far in this unit including a 3 story escape room game, a pinball machine, and a nicely done soccer/hockey mash-up game.

Digital Dioramas and Skype-a-Scientist

This rotation in the STEM lab has the second grade taking their first steps into combining physical elements with digital ones to create projects. In my almost entirely self-designed curriculum, this kind of fusion is the ultimate goal for the students I work with. 

The students began by selecting an animal to research using the National Geographic Kids page about different species of animals. I let them explore an bit before choosing and starting to take notes in their journals. They also selected partners for this project. I provided the students with a list of facts that they needed to read for and record in their notes, but also encouraged them to include any information that they found especially interesting. Required information included what their animal eats, where it is found, and what threats it faces. We discussed how threats may be natural (predators) or human-caused (habitat loss/ poaching). Finally, they drew a picture of their chosen animal and its habitat in their journals.

Next, the teams worked together to create detailed drawings of their subject animal, its food, and its habitats. They cut out their pictures and practiced animating how they would move around in a Scratch Jr. project. Students used the camera function to photograph the pictures they drew of the habitats as backgrounds. They also added photos of their animal drawings as well as drawings of what it eats and the threats it faces.

Finally, the students programmed their hand-drawn characters to move around and to share facts they gathered through their research. This process was a great opportunity for me to teach the students about a number of different computer science concepts. They are already familiar with the primary event block in the Scratch Jr language, the Green Flag. This event is a general purpose "go" to all of the characters students have added to their programs. However, most of the teams discovered that the Green Flag event has its limitations because it makes everything move at once. When they wanted different characters to move and speak at different times I showed them the messaging events. When they wanted a prey animal to disappear after being eaten, I was able to show them the uses of the "when characters touch" event which is the beginning of understanding conditionals. 

We finished the unit by having each student team share their work on the SMART Board so they could practice providing each other feedback.

Another element of this unit that I personally find super exciting is our video chat with a scientist. This is facilitated by Skype-a-Scientist, a program that matches classrooms with scientists working in a variety of fields. Skype-a-Scientist connects teachers and scientists and they coordinate the scheduling of a video call. This program lets students see and engage with "actual living scientists" who were once sitting in a classroom as they are now. Each class gets to speak to a different scientist with a different area of study, so each conversation is unique. The first group spoke with a conservation biologist in Seattle, and the second group will be speaking with a geologist from the UK. Skype-a-Scientist is a non-profit run by Dr. Sarah McAnulty. I am proud to support this program with a monthly donation, and I would encourage our Sinclair Elementary families, and anyone else who cares about supporting science education to do the same at patreon.com. 

Morning at the Mini-Museum

This rotation in the STEM Lab has 4th grade working on a project that combines digital and physical elements to make an interactive display. I adapted this activity from one done by a teacher I know in Virginia. (Link to her project guide is below.) I was overly ambitious in my additions for the first group, so some adjustments and refinements were necessary after the first class completed their projects.

On the first day of the unit, students went on a virtual field trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The "wandered" around the museum recording observations in their journals regarding the things they saw, how the objects were displayed, and anything else that they found interesting. We followed up with a discussion about what the purpose of a museum is. The students gave several great responses including: "so people can learn and discover things", "so people can see things they have never seen", and "so people can learn about life in the past". That day finished with students brainstorming a list of things they would include if they could design a room in a museum.

The next day, I explained the project to the class. They were to plan a museum room that included 3 objects of their choosing. Each person would build a model of their imagined room using the STEM Lab staples of cardboard, glue, and construction paper. Students would work with a partner to use Scratch to program and digital version of each partner's room that used by key press events to switch between rooms. The rooms are narrated giving at least 2 facts about each object included. Finally, the model museum rooms would be linked via the Makey Makey to the team Scratch project so that when the door to each room is opened, it causes that part of the program to run.

I gave the students a fair bit of leeway in what they added to their museums. This was so that they could include objects representing personal interests and passions. The only requirement was that they be able to give two facts about each object in their rooms. It has been interesting to see what objects the students have included. Some rooms are full of fancy cars or sharks, while others have favorite foods and athletes. The attention to detail that several students added to their physical models. As always, I have been really impressed by how the students helped each other to complete the elements of the project on time. For some, the coding comes more naturally and for others it is the building. I love how they all work together to ensure that everyone's project is finished on time.

I try to mix it up each year in the lab and to not repeat projects too often, but I am loving this one so far and can it it becoming a regular part of the lab curriculum.

The guide by Kathleen Fugle is here: Tiny Museum on Instructables.

The gallery of our projects is here (more added soon): Mini-Museum rooms.

Animated Artworks

It has become my habit in the STEM Lab to experiment, so to speak, on the 5th graders. When I devise a new project or new activity or practice, I find it useful to try it out on the group of students who will have gone on to middle school next year. That way, the necessary tweaks and alterations can be made for the following year. This unit is not entirely mine as much is adapted from a number of different activities I have seen done by my various Twitter friends.

Having said that, this is very much an experimental unit in which the 5th grade has been working. It is no secret that I do all that I can to bring concepts and skills from other subject areas into my lab projects. I have wanted to implement a unit with a fine arts focus for a while, and I felt like the 5th graders finally had the requisite physical computing skills to be successful. The project involves students creating their own interpretations of a famous artist's work, both digitally and physically.

Students started by doing some research into the life and work of a particular artist. The first two rotation groups got Vincent Van Gogh (because the first group was shorted 3 days due to various interruptions) and the third group is at work on Claude Monet. (I have not settled on an artist for the last group, yet.) These were chosen because they have a wide range of works to choose from. Students selected a work and sketched it into their notes. This gave me the chance to teach some basic drawing techniques which was a novel experience.

Next, students used Scratch to create an animated version of the painting they selected that also shared information about their artist. First they had to download an image of the painting. We used Wikimedia Commons for this because the images are free to use with attribution (which is another thing I have been working to get students in the habit of, citing their sources). They then uploaded that image into Scratch as a background. All of that is something they have learned previously. The next bit, however, took a little practice. They uploaded the image of the painting again, this time as a sprite and used the paint editor tools to erase most of the painting, leaving only the piece they intended to make move with code. In Van Gogh's "Starry Night" this may have been the moon or the clouds, in Monet's "Tulip Field" it was the flowers or the windmill blades. That sprite was then placed exactly over its corresponding place on the background so that it would only appear as a separate element when then triggering event key was pressed. Students repeated this process until they had at least 3 different animated elements in their chosen work. They also added a sprite that told about the life and work of their artist.

Here are a few example projects:
Van Gogh, Irises
Van Gogh, Starry Night
Monet, Boat on the Epte

The second part of the unit moved us into the realm of physical computing with the Raspberry Pi. First I introduced students to the Explorer HAT add on board. It is a self contained set of inputs and outputs capable of running both LEDs and motors. It has a small breadboard (which students learned to use last year) on top for building the circuits. Students are able to program the lights and motors using Scratch, albeit an older version which takes a bit of getting used to for them. Armed with their upgraded skills, students worked in teams to use the Scratch paint editor to create a digital interpretation of their chosen painting. This too takes some practice, but it also allows them to get creative with how they accomplish the drawing. Some use the shape drawing tools and fill them with color, while others use the line drawing tools. Meanwhile, the other partner is drawing the same painting on paper with colored pencils and markers. Both drawings done, the physical and the digital, teams added 2 LEDs to different places on their drawing, wired them to the Raspberry Pi, and programmed them to light up on different key presses. They also drew and cut out a detail from their painting, attached it to the the axle on a motor, and added the motor to the drawing as well. This was programmed to spin on a key press. The lights and motors matched elements in their digital drawing that they had animated on screen, similar to what they did during week 1. They also added a sprite to talk about the artist and the painting.

At this point the rotations are about half over and I am generally pleased with how it has gone so far. I think for the future I will create a gallery of paintings and artists for the students to choose from. Hopefully that will lead to a greater diversity of projects in the gallery.

Giving 5th Grade a Hand

This STEM lab rotation find the 5th grade faced with an engineering design challenge. We do a lot of work with the design process in the lab, and even when it is not the focus, it is at the heart of every unit. 

The first part of the process is to understand the task. That includes making observations and gathering information through research. I did not tell the groups what the challenge would be at the start of the unit. However, I did tell them that we would be building several models of mechanisms that move. I also let them know that these activities were meant to provide them with information and ideas they could use for the challenge.

The first make was a two fingered pincher similar to one people use to reach objects on the ground without having to bend over. The two fingers are attached to a piece in the center that the user pulls back bringing the fingers together. Conversely, pushing the center piece forward forces the fingers open. Next, students used card stock paper and brass fasteners to make a scissor mechanism. This is an excellent device for extending the reach of something. Several students had seen the scissor lifts frequently used to reach light fixtures in rooms with high ceilings. Finally, the students made a model of their own hands with independently controlled fingers. Short lengths of straw were attached between each of the joints of the fingers as a stand in for the bones. A string was threaded through each straw and attached to the tip of each finger to mimic the actions of muscles and tendons contracting to pull the fingers closed. Each build was accompanied by a descriptive journal entry of their observations on the device's function and possible uses.

At the start of week two, I introduced the building challenge: design and build a device that can individually pick up a tennis ball, golf ball, cotton ball, and plastic cup and drop it into a bucket. The device must be operated from a distance of at least 24 inches from the objects being picked up. Groups were limited to using a meter stick, cardboard, string, tape, and a few toothpicks or bamboo skewers to make their device work. They started by brainstorming solutions and planning in their journals. Once that was done, they were allowed to start building and testing. Throughout the unit, many groups attempted to make a scaled up version of one of the previous week's models, and some succeeded in doing so. However, the most successful devices were those that adapted the designs in some way. Not every groups was successful, but in the STEM lab that is OK so long as students can articulate why they failed and how they might improve their design given more time. 

I had not done this unit for a couple of years, but I love it because of the variety of designs students create that all complete the same task. It is so important for students to see and to experience that for many questions or problems there are many correct solutions.

It's Time to Light the Lights

For their second turn in the lab, fourth grade is taking their knowledge of circuits to the next level using the Raspberry Pi computer. During their classroom science lessons on electricity and circuits, students learned to create complete pathways for electricity using regular light bulbs and D-cell batteries. In this unit, they used the kinds of electromechanical components employed by digital makers, LEDs, breadboards, resistors, and tactile buttons.

We started by spending a couple of days getting acquainted with these new components. Students built simple circuits using a battery pack and an LED. Then they added a button that could be used to turn the light on when it is pressed and off again when it is released. They had a good deal of time to experiment and tinker adding more LEDs. An interesting discovery many students made is that the LEDs require slightly different voltages so depending on how the circuit was set up, some lights would not light together. My favorite part of this segment of the unit is, after getting all 4 of their LEDs glowing, the teams start clamoring for more lights.

After learning to control their circuits mechanically (with moving parts like a button), students moved to the Raspberry Pi stations to learn how to take control digitally (with computer code). They started by using an add on board called Traffic HAT. Traffic because it is a set of 3 LEDs in red, yellow, and green resembling a stop light, and HAT for Hardware Attached on Top. This saves them from the distraction of learning a new way of wiring the LEDs while also learning the programming constructs that are used to control the circuits. The versions of Scratch that are embedded in the Raspberry Pi operating system have extensions that allow for physical computing (using a computer to control or gather information from physical components like LEDs, motors, buttons, and sensors). This is my favorite part of the entire unit solely because of the excitement that sweeps the room as LEDs begin to blink. What inevitably follows is students tinker with their code creating new effects, then call out to their neighbors to show what they have done.

Next, after becoming comfortable with the coding and still using the Traffic HAT, students use a breadboard and wires to add a button that they can use to control their LEDs. They also learn that the button can be used to make things happen on the computer screen. It can make characters talk or move, backgrounds can be changed, and just about anything else they can imagine. After that, I remove the Traffic HAT and provide students with a box of components like those they used at the beginning of the unit so that they have to build all of their circuits from scratch. Their final task for the unit is to create a game of some kind that uses at at least two LEDs and one button. I provide them with a guide for making a multiplication facts game, but they have the freedom to make any kind of game they want. Some make the math game, while others make quizzes about dinosaurs, Texas history, or Pokemon.

As always, I have been genuinely impressed by all of the creative ways the students have applied their new physical computing skills to the creation of projects that represent their interests and personalities.

It's Cardboard Arcade Season in the STEM Lab

One of my favorite STEM Lab projects, and one of the most over all successful, is the cardboard arcade. It is one of the few units that I have run every year since founding the lab and I have yet to get tired of it. That's because after hundreds of cardboard arcade games passing under my gaze, I am continually surprised by what the students come up with. I have settled on doing this project with 3rd grade for no better reason than it helps students learn the construction techniques that I want them to employ going forward. It demonstrates in a very real way that masking tape is not the best material to hold to large pieces of cardboard together with when people are going to be throwing balls at it for an hour.

For anyone who is not familiar with this unit, it is one of many offshoots from the original Caine's Arcade seen in the movie at the link. In short, a 9 year old boy in Los Angeles named Caine spent the summer at his father's auto parts store and entertained himself by making replica arcade games with the left over boxes around the shop. Filmmaker Nirvan Mulick discovered Caine's Arcade when he stopped in to by a door handle for his car and made a movie about it. Since the film debuted the cardboard arcade has become a staple of the maker movement in schools. 

One of the best parts of this unit is inviting other classes, usually first grade or kindergarten to the lab to try out the games. I have found that when students know they will have an audience from beyond their class and me, they become more deeply engaged and personally invested in their work. They are more apt to take creative chances that result in project far more wonderful than anything I could assign.

Use The Forces!

This rotation of STEM Lab finds the second graders exploring forces and motion by building mazes and marble runs. This is one of those experimental units that I implement from time to time. As a result, each group's experiences and projects were a little different as I tweaked and adjusted based on how well various activities went in previous interactions.

The unit began with students recording some simple observations in their journals how a marble rolls around in a paper box lid with some straws taped to it. I gave them some starter questions, 'how does the marble move when the box is flat? When you tilt the box?' and so on. We discussed their observations and then did some research into force and motion with Brain Pop Jr. Students took notes in their journals about words like motion, position, and force. We discussed how these terms related to their observations.

The first build of the unit was a marble maze using Lego bricks. A Lego plate is, of course, covered with bumps which effects how the marble rolls. This gave us the opportunity to talk about friction and how a rough surface is not as good for rolling objects. What I have ended up loving most about this part of the unit is how creative the students were with their mazes. I saw mazes not just with dead ends, but traps that it was impossible to escape. There were tunnels and bridges. Some mazes had checkpoints that had to be reached in a certain order. Several had the kind of elaborate back stories that second graders specialize in telling. Sure, they learned about the pull of gravity and how the walls push back on the marble to stop it or change its direction, but the creative expression was the biggest win.

The second build brought us back to cardboard box lids and straws as we shifted to making marble runs instead of mazes. The first time through this part I learned the distinction between a "maze" and a "run" was not clear to a number of students. This became evident as the first batch of attempts had dead ends that prevented the marble from reaching the bottom of the box. A bit of explanation and the added constraint that their runs could not have straws that the marble does not touch, and the results improved dramatically. Students were challenged to make runs that used a certain number of straws and that took certain amounts of time to complete the course. I have been really impressed by how the students problem solved for the different design requirements.

There are definitely some things I would adjust about this unit, like additional building materials, surfaces, and marble sizes in order to more deeply examine the effects they have on the outcomes observed. Overall though I am fairly pleased with how this went and I look forwards to its next iteration.