Master becomes the Student: Preventing Cabin Fever with Arduino

Living in the Northwest is a unique experience when it comes to weather. We are one of the few places in the US that actually has 4 seasons (summer, fall, winter, spring). The nice thing about this is that for the most part our weather tends to be pretty mild compared to other parts of the country. However when we do get extremes in weather it sometimes throws us for a loop. Take this past week for example. We started out with some fun winter weather that either closed or delayed school for pretty much the entire week. Then when things were getting back to normal we got

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Field-with-snow-champ-enneige.jpg

and we got tons of it, anywhere from 2" to 15"+ with more expected on the way. For me just 1 to 2 days stranded at the house drives me nuts looking for things to do and not go crazy. I do the traditional parental things like play in the snow, shovel the driveway, cook, let wife work, etc. I know as a good teacher I could grade papers, plan lessons, read all those PD books I bought for days like this, or get caught up on the all the email I get. But after one does all that what is there to do? Well I decided that I would take on the role of a student and do some good old fashioned book learning (or get back to learning). 

https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=65836&picture=child-and-books

A year ago as part of my question to do near earth satellites with my after school tech club I took up reading about and learning Arduino.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arduino-uno-perspective-transparent.png

I walked away over the spring/early summer because of both honey do projects but also because I was getting frustrated with reading and understanding electrical wiring diagrams. OMG! for a psychology major/history minor they are nothing like Venn diagrams & Brain maps. As a middle school technology teacher I also had limited knowledge on electrical engineering. Mostly limited to wiring up a Lego Mindstorm's motors and sensors. That being said being snowed in forced me to look for something to do inside and was warm and productive. I fired up my ol' desktop and dusted off (achoo!) the book on Arduino projects I bought and jumped back into the program and wiring. Argh I hate electrical diagrams but I decided to try doing what I am teaching my students about now, "The Engineering Process!"

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/

So I identified the problem: couldn't get wiring of sensor to work;

I then researched and brainstormed solutions: looked up on the net the sensor I had and wiring diagrams

I picked some solutions: I wired up a few of the solutions I found and tested them till I got one that worked.

I then put the wiring together with the wiring diagram for the program from the book and what do you know it finally worked. 

 

https://pixabay.com/en/graphic-smiley-emoticon-surprised-3643247/

The cool thing about this is not that I got my project to work, although I am pretty excited, I now have a real life story to share with my students and also show them that I do practice what I preach. 

Snow day; online option?

It is has been awhile but with FLL competitions and end of semester it has been a busy winter. However I now have time to write and post more.

https://libreshot.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/playing-children-on-snow.jpg

Today is a snow day for my district and my kids district. This is a day that kids and some teachers dream of, no school for a day. However for some it is a bitter sweet day as we know that it will mean we will have to make the day up later on in the year. For some that isn't a big deal but for others it can be as you may have scheduled vacations on those days. I often wondered what if there was an option to not have to make those days up and still meet the learning requirements?

It wasn't until this year that I may have found an option. Over the past 2 years we have been working on our new school building. This has been an exciting challenge as we will be working in our main building as they tear down and build parts of our new building. One of the challenges we will have is to serve lunch in our main building while teaching. We have had many creative solutions posed and that we are working on but one that was suggested as a way out of the box option is online classes. Some of my colleagues scoffed at the idea, yes I was the one who proposed it. Some outright said it wasn't an option because not everyone had access and other typical excuses when it comes to tech use. However there were some who thought it was worth at least some discussion and thought. It turns out there are some schools back east that offer this option. Instead of closing down for the day due to snow they have teachers submit lessons online for students to do on the "day off". Yes there are access issues for those that don't have internet but lets try looking past that. There will always be barriers to learning no matter how we choose to deliver instruction. Good teachers know how to blow past those barriers or turn them into spring boards to learning.

I wonder if what your thoughts are on this topic. Would this work here in the Northwest? I will your thoughts.