Robotics Students Program a Submergable Device

20Time in the Middle School

“My goals for this project are for students to take the research and development skills learned in academia, apply them to a personal passion, and use them to connect with an authentic, real-world audience and create something that positively benefits their community,” reports David Baroody, Middle School History and English teacher. The 20time Project  “is about student engagement, honoring student interests and voice, getting students to speak with authority on a topic for which they have a passion, and connecting the work we do in school with its impact on the greater world outside school.”  What exactly is 20time?  It is a construct borrowed from Google, Apple, and other creative corporate giants that extend 20% of a work week as unstructured creative time to employees meant to foster ideas and innovations that contribute to a more productive and successful work culture.  Increasingly 20time is being used in education to inspire and engage students.  

At GA, student projects cover a wide range of topics, including the creation of a healthy sports drink, a screenplay, a do-it-yourself crafting website, sports braces for athletes with orthodontia, and a coding curricular video game and/or research project on the “gamification” of education.  Students are using blogs to document their evolving ideas, have participated in pitch sessions and have been guided through an Impact Mapping Exercise, taken from the Design Thinking model of process planning.  They have also reached out to community mentors and experts to test their ideas, and are gathering feedback on how to grow their project.

To read more about 20time at GA, click here.

To read about "Why 20Time is Good for Schools" click here.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-percent-time-a-j-juliani

Design Day in the Lower School: A Design Thinking Experience

On April 25 lower school students and teachers spent the day embarking on a Design Thinking challenge where students found solutions to designing their school day. Using the prototyping cycle process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test, students collaborated with with their peers to visualize their solutions. To see more images form the day long event click  here.

Guest Blogger Nichelle Hall on the Sea Perch Engineering Team

As the second semester began, the robotics team had been left with four participants:  Abay Tadesse, Justin Wong, Greg Callahan, and myself.  As we decided on choosing the Sea Perch project - a competition that focused on aquatic remote operated vehicles - we collaborated on each part of the endeavor; crafting a business around our robot called Catalyst Inc.  As we rounded the corner of the project, hastilly finalizing our robot at the 11th hour, we had embraced our motto:  We get things moving.    Within the nine hours we had spent at school, we had finished our robot, finalized a presentation, and beta tested in the pool.  As we spent time together, we had become collaborative in action, and delved into each facet of engineering and explored our relationship as a team.  Though we placed third in both of our heats, we were able to asses our failures, our successes, and our goals for the future.  As we plan for next year, we only hope to find enjoyment within our curiosity and examine our interests more deeply.  

The rules of the Sea Perch competition outlined that each team participating had to create a business around the idea that their robot was a product they were aiming to sell to the United States Navy.  As we decided on a company name, we chose Catalyst Inc.  As students interested in science, it was a perfect fit because it had a noticeable reference to the sciences as well as allude to energy, potential, and efficiency. 

Artwork by Morgan Itterly