NXT, AppInventor and ?! [1st DRAFT]

Interrobang invites students to participate in missions and share their work as deeds that are reviewed before publication on their website http://playinterrobang.com. Ariel and I are evaluating the environment by submitting a collaborative mission. Interrobang held our work in limbo for more than three days.

Sunday evening they returned access to our work with a request to revise before they will accept it. The reviewer suggested that we add some video to our contribution.

Deed Needs Revisions

The deed you submitted for the mission "Knowledge Swap" needs some more work before it can be approved. You can keep working on it and submit it again at any time.

Here's what you need to work on:
This is very cool and we want to accept the deed -- but I think it can be much more illuminating to the community if you also upload a little video of what you're doing. Is that possible? We'll give you more points if you do so. Thanks!

So, I am saving it here as part of our development process and evaluation.

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"Ariel M. and I worked together combining her knowledge of NXT and mine of AppInventor"

I am developing experience with AppInventor and track the new features as they are released. When I saw that Liz Looney was developing AppInventor support for NXT robotics, I anticipated that this would be highly engaging for ITeam members.

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/reference/components/legomindstorms.html

Ariel uses NXT robotics outside of school. She showed me how to use the NXT module and test a variety of sensors. For example, she used the ultrasonic distance sensor to determine its range (~1 to 90 inches). We connected it to math by measuring the maximum distance and comparing it with the distance we measured (as 7.5 x 12" tiles on the floor outside he library).

We could make an even more engaged connection with STEM by conducting a more complete comparison of observed (sensor) with measured (tape measure) distances and plotting those for analysis and interpretation. Once ITeam members are sufficiently familiar with the tools, we may be able to help MAMS sixth-grade teachers and Ms. Hogan, the technology integrator, incorporate ideas into the force and motion unit that they are developing.

We were able to connect the phone to the NXT Bluetooth and control both the tone generation and a test motor! Ariel was sufficiently excited that she started building the robot described in the NXT instructions booklet.

12/10/10- Today we worked on adding another motor to the robot. We also took some pictures of what we were doing. Hopefully by next week we will have the motors put together and many more pictures.

InterroBang ?! - A network for student-centered learning?

We need infrastructure to support project- and challenge-based learning that we are doing in both MAMS ITeam and MTA Capstone. We have been exploring and doing action research using AppInventor to control NXT robotics as they roll out new features. We want to share our work with others who might be interested in it.

I learned about ?! (InterroBang: http://playinterrobang.com/) through a message that Jim Matthews posted on the ARISgames group (http://groups.google.com/group/arisgames). I investigated, created an account, selected a mission, created an entry based on current work, invited Ariel, one of our experienced ITeam members, to contribute and help evaluate the system. After we submitted our entry to the system, I wrote the following reflection on the wall of of my user page at InterroBang.

Stephen Spaeth [Note that this link will not take most users to the right page because you need to have an account to get access to this page.] Ariel joined our team and contributed to documenting the deed. She took the picture, wrote the caption, and added text to describe the continuing work we did today. She decided that we were ready to submit the mission and hit the button. Apparently, it takes the deed out of our hands and we no longer have access to the deed. I can understand the need to freeze it during the approval process but I'd still like to be able to see the preview. It is unnerving to loose control over our own creation.
about 18 hours ago

As more time elapses, it becomes clearer that providers of this service need to:

• Make the time-frame for approval process clearer
• Make it clear to users that they will loose access to their own creations
  
• Add the option to cross-post entries to other venues (e. g. to this blog for me) or at least the option to make the entry publicly accessible
  

Ariel thought that we should encourage ITeam members to use this service. I'm pretty sure that we don't want to do that until we resolve some of the outstanding issues.

Update: AppInventor developers and beta users are cranking out useful resources almost every day. For example, Liz Looney shared ShinyLegoNxt, a new source file to demonstrate the new NXT resources.

Re-Building Capstone

We are establishing a formal Capstone program at Mt. Ararat High School to give student alternative ways to show that they meet the mission of our school. As part of the process, we are running a Capstone Pilot with a subset of students. At yesterdays' committee meeting, Dr. King described Chandler M.'s plan to rebuild a motorcycle. After the meeting, I wrote to Dr. King:

Thank you for making time in your schedule to participate (even briefly) in the capstone meeting today. I thought that your part added much to the deliberations. Your story about rebuilding a motorcycle resonated with me because my brother's student initiated learning project consisted of 3 or 4 years dedicated to rebuilding two Model A Fords.

Students have wanted more engaging learning experiences for a long time. But only the most persistent and/or well-supported have been able to do substantial interest-based project and connect them with their school experiences. How can we make it possible for all students to get the benefit of doing the "hard fun" of something they want to learn?

Alex's Blog

Alex came to visit and updated us on his work at Hoboken and the new opportunity to do work on transportation security in London. I told him about discussing Capstone Projects with Brad Smith. He gave us the address for his blog:

http://alexkbernier.blogspot.com/

Organizations selected for Google Code-in 2010

Organizations selected for Google Code-in 2010

For several years, Google has supported the development of open source projects by sponsoring Summer of Code Programs and related competitions. They typically have recruited undergraduates to participate and compete for prizes. They programs are sufficiently successful that Google has developed infrastructure to support projects. They are now extending the program to include secondary school students (13 to 18 year-old). Since this is the age range of our students, I have studied the program in more detail.

Previously, I thought they were primarily interested narrowly in "code." The Code-In Program makes it clear that all aspects of open source development are supported including outreach and training. These elements are closer to the mission of MSAD 75 ITeams so I want to understand the opportunity even more.

One of the projects selected to participate in the Code-in Program is LimeSurvey. Since we use surveys extensively to support learning and management, I wonder whether we can find ITeam members or others who would be motivated to participate. Since they build mentoring into the process, these opportunities would make great Capstone Projects for students who are motivated: Announcing Accepted Organizations for Google Code-in.