make the day all that it is to be...
October brings the first school milestone; the end of the First Marking Period.
There are 2 Foundry Makerspace supported projects at both of the high school campuses I am assigned. I am continuing to bring along a few others, but mainly planning out projects to start in the spring. As the Technology Senior Fellow, I've been working with other Fellows to see how a project based learning is weaved through K-12. This is a new evolution within the Foundry and I am pulling together Robotics / Technology use between the projects to build competency. Moving from Novice / Advanced Beginner / Competent building knowledge, skills and abilities so that expertise is developed long after graduation.
October also brought the movie release of George Tillman Jr.'s The Hate U Give (author Angie Thomas' 2017 novel, screenplay by Audrey Wells - The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Under the Tuscan Sun, Guinevere). If you haven't seen it yet, please do yourself and your friends/family a favor and watch it before it leaves the theater. My October was very busy to coordinate a family outing so I could see it with my wife and daughters. I thought that it was extremely important. I saw the movie twice and both times I was impacted by the characters and deep layers. In my opinion I think that many adults (especially white folks) might overlook the movie because of the Young Adult focus and being based off of Angie Thomas' novel. I think that is the perfect setup for the movie as the viewer is invited in through a somewhat innocent state of Starr's teenage life, and steadily grows (knowledge and compassion) through tension, learning of the complexities of the movie's premise. All this while Starr tries to push into the adult world around her, calling out injustice at all levels. It is truly inspiring and meaningful. Some great resources for further discussion can be found from Alissa Wilkinson at Vox.com, David Folkenflik at WBUR.org, and Owen Gleiberman at Variety.com. Since I saw this film late in the month, I have yet to really dive into a discussion with the other Fellows, my family and my neighbors for more insight looking at trauma at many levels. This is something I am following in Neil Gershenfeld
Sadly, October was also marked with violence and hate at a state and national level - several pipe bomb mailings and a horrific shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Baldwin, PA. This is our current reality, and the anecdote is love. Genesis' 1986 song (I was 13 when this song was release) Land of Confusion had it right:
"There's too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can't you see
This is a land of confusion."
STEAM Making @ John Harris Campus High School
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATHEMATICS:
STEM Lab (Mr. Gigac)
For the first half of this school year, the students in Mr. Gigag’s class have done some introductory work through the CLS Learning Launcher Projects. This includes Adobe Elements / Premiere video editing, LEGO EV3 Robotics, Fishertechnik, and Snap Circuits.
Mr. Gigac has started to focus on manufacturing having the students work in TinkerCAD and Easel. Both of these look at both the subtractive and additive process of digital fabrication/manufacturing. Each of the students are working to make a 6”x6” tile on the Carvey. This helps students learn about raster/vector files and how to see manufacturing at multiple levels - designing a product (design/engineering - higher level knowledge - all aspects of what it takes to make a product). setup/running the machine (technician/fabrication - mid/high level knowledge), maintaining the machine (cleanup after carving - lower level knowledge for care of the machine.) The Carvey is a great entry level product to help students understand the basic concepts of computer controlled fabrication (CCF). In ordering supplies for the SmartLab, Mr. Gigac picked up PCB material (Printed Circuit Board - plastic board with double sided copper foil) that we could use to make our own circuit boards. I had the idea to create a large version of a circuit to do a mashup with Snap Circuits.
As we enter into November, Mr. Gigac will have the students work on the tutorials within TinkerCAD and they will learn how to download an STL model file and 3D print them on the SmartLab’s Dremel 3D40. It has been a challenge with the Dremel’s proprietary file type via the Dremel DigiLab 3D Slicer. Any STL files need to be brought into the Dremel software and most of the time a brim or raft needs to be added. This is written within the gcode so that the machine can read the data. Next month, I’ll have photos of what the students have downloaded. Students who master the basics have the opportunity to create and print their own designs on TinkerCAD.
ARTS:
A/V Studio Lab (Mr. Williams & Mr. Burns)
The AV Studio has been finding its new position. Mr. Burns and Mr. Williams are helping students develop the base skills for starting up an ongoing broadcast next month. They are still considering a News Magazine type format. We are hoping to link in SciTech students with regards to content - video, photos, story creation.
On October 8th & 9th, Scott Tucker, a Creative Learning Systems Trainer, visited the school to help train a group on the inner workings of the Newtek Tricaster. I sat in on the training to pick up some extras knowledge as well as provide some larger cross school knowledge from my first training at Camp Curtin Academy back in Fall 2016.
Mr. Burns has been working with his Public Speaking / Communications Classes to build outline and script proficiency. Students have been using the studio to practice being in front of camera and being comfortable with reading from the Qscript teleprompter software. Teachers have also found some free software/web based teleprompters - Easy Prompter and Cue Prompter.
Mr. Williams has worked to build a small music production workstation with a midi keyboard, Mac Minis and a fixed Digidesign 003. Thanks to Shawn Olivera and Kris Wingert (HSD IT/AV) the Digidesign 003 was brought back to life from physical damage a couple of years ago. Mr. Williams sees this workstation as a way to build audio production skills to complement any video broadcasting that is done at John Harris.
STEAM Making @ SciTech Campus High School
TECHNOLOGY:
SciBots (Mrs. Worful, Mr. Group, Mr. Green)
During October the students have been working in 3 groups building 3 different robots. It has been a bit of a rough start because the club doesn’t have strong consistency. We’ve been looking at this year as a transition year after Bob Step’s retired in June. Mr. Worful and the students did a wonderful job reworking the workflow on the 4th Floor, which allowed for specific workrooms and computer labs.
It is understandable that students have many outside activities, but there is no base knowledge in Programming or Robotics from middle school. Hoang is the club leader and has been doing a great job helping everyone to stay on focus. I recognize the difficulty of this year’s Rover Ruckus. As we progress into November, the amount of time that students put into the effort will show if they are ready for the 11/17 Oxford Open Scrimmage. A few of the students have been focused on creating a team website, which was first mentioned back in 2017 - https://neeljahleel.wixsite.com/scitech-scibots There is progress and the right balance of time, instruction, and interest to be successful.
ARTS Podcasting (Mr. Elo)
The students in Mr. Elo’s class have been studying The Fourth Estate and journalism. A lot of discussions have connected to ethics and truth in this era of fake news. Entering into November, they hope to produce a podcast of the Foundry Makerspace, with me being the interviewee. My role in helping the class move along in both audio broadcasting to video broadcasting is the larger hope to draw connections/opportunities with John Harris. I was amused the other day when students informed me that they had dug up a lot of information about me in their own research for the future interview. I was not surprised and stated that this was a given (right / wrong can be discussed) of our information age.
I told students a story about my time in Boston back in 1998, where I was able to surprise a fellow coworker by printing out where he lived. This was not a stalker moment, but one of how naive we can be about what we consider public and private information. It also led into a good discussion about what gets posted to our social networks and how it might be used against us. While this process of "prescreening" isn't illegal (protected characteristics are an issue of legality in interviews) - U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - EEOC - issues of discrimination) going through this process is risky. HR staff should know the legalities.
With all that said, to assume that your information is never used to understand who you are, is extremely naive. Social networks have given individual voices to a global platform. Sadly, this is the state of technology and an example of technology jumping past social constructs. Mr. Elo also explained that this was true about the college application process. (NOTE: See these two links for more information - Society for Human Resource & Management (SHRM) and Monster.com. This small discussion, pressed back into connecting to journalism, interviewing and current topics at a national level. I look forward to see how this process develops into a “production workflow.” It can be the start of student storytelling that builds interest outside a single class. A great workflow was outlined by Justin Kicks, Laura Winnick and Michael Gonchar in the 4/19/2018 New York Times article called Project Audio: Teaching Students Ho to Produce Their Own Podcasts. It is highly recommended.
Additional support in SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY:
One of the benefits of a Fellowship is that we work as a mobile team. It is especially important during this year with the addition of Senior Fellows. I am the Technology Senior Fellow and I help to support all the other fellows in their Technology Projects. Being that I've been with the Foundry since 2016, I also have an added benefit of a knowledge base for most of our projects. This extremely helpful in October when the XYZ Da Vinci 1.0 3D Printer stopped working at Marshall Math & Science Academy. We were able to deploy our second DeltaPrintr Go 3D Printer.
The replacement process didn't go smoothly because of some incorrect printing material (ABS) and bad modeling within Sketchup (non watertight models. It is all in developing a workflow that has quality control checks in place to make sure that the model is correct. This is why in the manufacturing process, Quality Management Systems are put into place. Popular names such as Six Sigma, Lean, Total Quality Management, and ISO9000 are a few that are used depending on the industry/sector.
We really haven't discussed these within the Foundry, but I got me thinking about the issues for this blog. It is also that I've been thinking a great deal about in terms of Digital Fabrication. See below for some additional thoughts about Process and Eddie Obeng's TEDGlobal 2012 Talk.
The other area of support has been within the Trout in the Classroom Project. In October some of the Fellows (Meg, Heather, Nashon) and I have setup (3) 55 gallon fish tanks. While the basics of the tanks are fairly simple, there is some tweaks that needed to happen because they were placed in new locations in (2) classrooms at Scott Elementary School.
It takes about 1.5-2.5 hours to setup a tank. It is always good to have a second pair of hands to move things around. One also forgets how long it takes to fill up a 55 gallon tank with a 5 gallon bucket. Especially in a Science Lab sink. We were successful in getting the tanks running and they will be ready for the 11/6 Fish Shipping and 11/7 Fish Arrival at SciTech High School. Please feel free to refer to the other Fellows for more information about the tank setup - Meg @ Downey Elementary School, Nashon @ Scott Elementary School 3rd & 4th Grade.
In my years working at the Foundry Makerspace, and 3.5 years prior working at the Neighborhood Center, this quote hits me very hard. It is something that is dear to my heart. Seeing changes from my job change in 2008, 10 years have passed and It is hard to explain the changes that have happened - locally, statewide, nationally and globally. One thing that helps frame the human condition is a revisiting of previous decades through CNN's series: The Nineties, The Eighties, The Seventies, The Sixties. I cannot speak highly enough about these series. Typically at 8 episodes each, they show actual footage with informative commentary. The important take away are the embedded historical cycles that happen in each decade. It is as if the actors and stages change, but the script is still the same. I have to keep asking why. I have to ask, "haven't we learned?"
"Shaping social systems to align around Lass' Law (Sherry Lassiter) will be one of the defining challenges for society and, hence, the social sciences in the third digital revolution. Doing so in a way that attends to the threshold challenges of fab access, fab literacy, enabling ecosystems, and risk mitigation will be the measure of success." Unfortunately, the track record for the social sciences taking such a proactive role is note great." (Gershenfeld 119)
Sherry Lassiter noted in 2016 that there were over 1,000 FabLab around the globe, which had been doubling every two years. This is similar, but extremely different than Moore's Law. That law stated that integrated circuits would double every year. I remember this when I got my first PC in 1995 ($2000 Micron P90MHtz, I can't remember the amount of ram, but I think the hard drive was around 120mb. I still have the old motherboard / CPU and front of the PC case). I couldn't wait to upgrade this machine as technology advanced and prices for components reduced. I remember going to computer swap meets in Camp Hill, Long Island, and Boston. I continued following PC advancement until early 2002. I had to focus on becoming a father in November 2002, and nobody was really following computer advancement by the mid 2000's. Funny how that is over the years. What shifted was the amount of storage, memory, and video display capability. That is still pretty much the focus, except computer standards for memory is about 8gb or 16gb. Desktop sales (and laptop sales) have dropped since the early '10s. This was due to the focus on tablets such as the iPad and the Microsoft Surface. The first iPad was released on 4/3/2010 and I still have my original one that I purchased. The first Surface was released on 10/26/2012. There is nobody going into the field of computer repair. I still know how to fix my own hardware / software. I realize that it is a dying craft. I accept that one day, I won't be working on computers. The irony is that when I was in college I dreaded helping my family and friends because the burden of fixing things was on me. To be honest looking back I know I resented them for not taking the time to learn how to operate their machines. I think this is the sentiment of many people I know in IT. It is the whole premise of the British SitCom The IT Crowd. I can see in 5 years, deep learning impacting the helping people with their technology.
Just to put into perspective the leap of technology from 1995 to 2008, I will look at Moore's Law and highlight my first Micron PC in 1995 and my current 2008 Mac Pro. The transistor count went from 5,000,000 to 750,000,000. Essentially, in 13 years the ability for a computer to switch from a 1 or a 0 (what is the purpose of a transistor in a microprocessor, increased 14900%. Unfortunately in those 13 years, the social systems as described in Designing Reality didn't change much. We did become more hardened within national tragedies such as 9/11 in 2001. This is the importance of the CNN series, to help frame the context of vast changes.
"Today, the founding scholars and socially aware writers who documented the impacts of technology on society are correctly honored as pioneers - defining new fields of study and bodies of literature. Yet their approach to the technology of the industrial revolution was centered on observing and addressing its impacts after the fact. Child labor laws and early experiments with labor-management cooperation that emerged could have been far more effective and could have alleviated much more suffering if they had been given full consideration fifty or a hundred years earlier, as the technologies were emerging." (Gershenfeld 122)
So where does all this discussion leave us? The insight of Gershenfeld is in a mashup (my words) of technology & social science, as he discusses Path Observation. This is different than the Path Dependency within social science.
"Path Observation, of course, is necessary, but not sufficient if the social sciences are to take a leadership role in helping to shape the world of accelerating technologies." (Gershenfeld 123)
Positive Approach:
Positive social science focuses on explaining what has happened.
Normative Approach:
Normative approach includes views on what should happen.
We have much work to do in bridging these ideas. There is so much more to glean from this book and within my journey of understanding FabLabs. I hope to draw together both of these topics (the movie The Hate U Give and FabLabs) over the next month. I'll try and bring some more insight into the process of making.
EPILOGUE
Dr. Eddie Obeng's 2012 TEDGlobal presentation was brought to my attention earlier this year when Mr. Elo spoke of the quote in reference to how much things have changed. I was reminded of this quote while working on this blog post, because of the opportunity students have as "sitting at the headquarters of a global corporation." That is a VERY powerful concept.
When Mr. Elo discussed the quote, which I hadn't heard, it hit me because of the decoupling of company size and stature. These thoughts seem to connect to Thomas Friedman’s 2005 book The World is Flat. It also connects to the book New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--and How to Make It Work for You. I know that I’ve talked about this book in a previous September Blog Post. Because of the Internet, anyone has the opportunity to engage the global realm with some weight. I remember thinking this back when I started MIT in August 1997. I was aware of video conferencing with a couple of classes a couple of years before in my undergraduate studies at NYIT. When I got to MIT, everything was multiplied exponentially.
In researching Dr. Obeng, I dug up a concept that I need to follow in my November Blog Post. Dr. Obeng developed a typology in the 1994/5 book The Project Leader's Secret Handbook. This is a fascinating project management model and has some connections to our work within the Foundry. Dr. Obeng's Fog Diagram has connections to Goldratt's critical chain project management. As I looked at the diagram, it helped me understand the issue of self-efficacy within youth. This is one's ability to gauge "one's capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to achieve given results." (1997 Bandura A). This is incredibly important in making in and out of school.
If in apprenticeship model, we work to help make the unclear clear (Design Thinking / Ambiguity / Multiple Layers & Paths) this is the realm of the 4Cs. Helping students identify tasks in these 4 areas (Paint by Numbers, Making a Movie, Going on Quest, or Lost in the Fog prepare them for unknowns and move them towards expertise.
There are innumerable unknowns growing exponentially.
How we deal with the unknown (not succumbing to fear) is how history will judge our success(es).
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NOTE: In going through this diagram and seeing connections to critical chain project management and Critical Reality Tree to analyze many systems, I was reminded of my work in architecture & urban design with the Critical Path Method / Critical Path Analysis. This is used by many construction companies to schedule and track multiple activities.