HS 7: Paper Models and Music

This week we will continue to work on the paper models started last week. This has been a challenge for a variety of reasons including having never done this before, junky instructions, and patience in reading thoroughly the junky instructions!

All of this is in preparation for the moving family portrait. Just as a reminder, each student will construct a piece of kinetic art whose theme will be "family," which does not mean blood relatives, although it may be that family.

This weeks blog assignment is to make the normal weekly blog, combine the two "Mechanisms" pages, and then create a new one that will contain this information:

1. A list of five songs that represent your chosen "family"
2. A brief but thorough description of why you chose that song
3. A link to an audio or video file that lives on the line
4. This "Parental Advisory" label by any music that is not school appropriate.

As you combine your mechanisms page consider how the mechanisms move and what they accomplish in the world. Does this have any relevance to the movements in your machine? Can  you even see the movements in your machine? Start to consider what you want to happen in your piece. For example, in "The Pier" I wanted my "mother" to catch fish, so I had to figure out how get the fishing pole to move. What action is going to take place in your piece. You don't have to be too specific, but you certainly can be!

MS 4: Cup Sequencing and Cooperation

We are still practicing programming without a computer. This week we will use specifically marked cups, and work as a group to get each cup to get each cup to its spot. Each child will be designated A through E, and the students will work as a group to get each cup to its proper place.

Some of the problems of computing that we will explore with this exercise is the idea of routing and deadlock. In today's day we have parallel computing and great means of creating networks, but efficiency and data flow are still important concerns.

On the second day of the exercise, the students will be introduced to more complicated problems based on the same exercise, which stretches their problem solving skills, ability to work in a group, and their concepts of sequencing and work-flow. For example they will have to solve the same problem without speaking and the configurations by which they will pass cups will change.

Next week we will begin to program using Scratch, which is "a visual programming language. It can be accessed as a free desktop and online multimedia authoring tool that can be used by students, scholars, teachers, and parents to easily create games and provide a stepping stone to the more advanced world of computer programming." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_(programming_language)]

MS 3: Limited Languages--Programming!

With our exercise in programming for cup stacking we learned that when programming we had to be very specific in our instructions because if someone with no experience programming our instructions had to rely only on what we wrote!

Computers are usually programmed using a “language,” which is a limited vocabulary of instructions that can be obeyed. One of the most frustrating things about programming is that computers always obey the instructions to the letter, even if they produce a crazy result. In this activity you will get some experience with this aspect of programming.

What we will do: A child be given an image. The child describes the picture for the class to reproduce. The children can ask questions to clarify the instructions. The object is to see how quickly and accurately the exercise can be completed. Then this is repeated, but no questions can be asked. Then this is repeated with a more complicated image, and the child turns her back! But it might be one of the teachers who does the telling!

HS 6: Paper That Moves!

This week we will start to build our mechanical marvels in paper. You will choose from several different mechanisms, with the idea that you will make a moving "family portrait."

We will also go back to the SketchBook software to practice our drawing in there. To help I will show you how to use the Intuos drawing tablets, which you are free to use at any time you are drawing or working on your computer.

REMEMBER! You must make a blog post every Friday that is a reflection of what you did during the week. I read those Saturday morning. Any addition work, like creating your "Mechanisms" page is different.

This week you will add another page. Again, it will be a collection of three mechanisms, any that you want. One of my favorite resources for mechanisms is here: http://507movements.com/ . Some are animated, and some are not. When I'm going through there I'm sometimes just looking at whether they are aesthetically pleasing to me--pretty!

You will choose three mechanisms and write at least a paragraph on what your chosen mechanisms do in the world. If you can find no information then you have to make up a paragraph's worth of information. Or even if you can find enough and just want to make up the information you may do so. You must have three images to back up your text.

You can name the page anything you want, but remember that we are building up to making a family portrait. This is due  August 21, 2015.

HS 5: New Blog Page, "Mechanisms"

You are to create a new page for your blog site that contains at least three mechanisms from the web site of paper engineer, Rob Ives, linked by this image.

You are to choose from the mechanisms found on the page linked here:

You are to select three of these and put them on your new page. You are to have images of the real world applications, as well as information about your choices. You must use sources in addition to this page. Remember to cite your work. This may be a web site, but use the system that you do in English class, MLA, Chicago, etc.

This project is due by August 14, 2015.

MS 2: Coding Without a Computer

In preparation for coding on the computer we've started coding without one. We used a specific set of instructions to move cups around into different configurations.

We've had one good day of working on this project, and the kids are making great progress. Some of the kids who have coding experience are creating their own language.

Above, we have an arrow symbol that somewhat resembles the rest of our vocab-
ulary, but we’ve also included a way to “pass” information about how many times
we want to apply the forward and backward arrows. In the computer science

world, that extra passed information is called a parameter. Parameters can further
customize an already helpful function.

HS 4: Paper Shapes!

Today we started to make shapes out of paper. We started with a simple cube, which turned out to be not so simple.

Glue edges! Remember those glue edges.

Then we moved onto a seven sided shape, and there were a few successes. We will continue to make shapes in preparation for some more sophisticated paper constructions involving mechanisms and movements.

HS 3: Make a Blog Site and Post

Using your CBA Gmail account, log into Blogspot and make a blog site.

Remember that this will be a school related site. You must use school appropriate language, although you certainly may write in the vernacular. Your post must have some text and a picture.

If you choose to do vlogs, you must still use Blogspot as your platform.

Your blogs will be due 6pm on Friday, regardless of whether we meet that day or not. The posts should relate to what you did in our class that week.

If you get stuck check out the information linked here: