plockton part 1

Wednesday the 31st, I ran my first workshop of the year in Plockton High School. Jamie Kean is the head teacher of technology/technological studies there, and it was his classroom and his space that I used for the workshop. I met Jamie when he came to MIT last September with one of the winning teams from the ICT Youth Challenge. I only had two hours to run the workshop, much like the workshops back in May, and this wasn't quite enough time for the kids to finish. But there were some good ideas and some good thoughts that went into things. I guess I'll go into more detail now.

Group !
This was a group of four girls age 12. As they didn't think they were really good at drawing, they ended up just writing a few words down and then starting to build. This group wanted to make a bird whose wings flapped to begin with, but after they tried to make a bird out of wire, they decided that the bird looked more like bumble bees. As a result, they changed their original idea, and went with multiple bees. They thought that if they put the bees on a spiral, then the bees would look like they were constantly flying up.


Group @'s preliminary design
Group @
This was a group of three boyx age 12. One of them played the guitar. They tossed around a few ideas at first, but because they were working in a group, they decided that a band would best work. They wanted the drummer's head to bob up and down (the motor was hooked up to the head via a wire/straw that you can see here. In the end, it sort of worked, but things weren't all held down in their places.

Group #'s preliminary design
Group #
This was a group of three girls age 12. They wanted to make a ladybug that flapped its wings. They thought of this because they liked ladybugs. While I was asking them how they thought they could get the wings to flap, and asking them if they'd seen anything like it around, one of them said that they had a wooden duck whose wings flapped at home (similar to the butterfly I made in Costa Rica, actually). So they went about trying to make it. They made a stand for the motor out of straws and wire and plastic strips and were going to put the ladybug on top. The cotton balls were to make the ladybug's body... they were going to wrap yarn around the balls to make the right shape.

Group $'s preliminary design
Group $
This was a group of three girls age 12. As you can see in their preliminary brainstorm, they went through several ideas before settling on this one: a man who has a hoop in his hand to blow bubbles. They managed to get his arm moving, but didn't have time to attach everything to the base.

Group %'s preliminary design
Group %
This was a group of three boys age 12. They wanted to make a football player kicking a football (i.e. soccer, for us Americans). They got the leg moving, but didn't manage to make the thing stable enough to stand.

Ok. Now for some more in-depth thinking on my part after just getting past what it was that the kids did. Coming soon (i.e. after dinner... maybe in two hours or three)...