Tag Archives: hackathon

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education designathon, liveblog (ish) – hands-on activity resources for teachers

look! it’s a woodie flowers, who as it turns out really dislikes massively open online courses (MOOCs).

chilling at the designathon
http://www.edudesignathon.com/
lots of cool people and ideas being thrown around (mmm… throwing people)
you can read all about prof. flower’s agenda against MOOCs in the tech & the faculty newsletter
http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/243/flowers.html
http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N42/fnl.html

kittens! from education arcade talk

people gave talks. 
==
e..g the educational arcade one, some notes:
why do goats and animals continue to play dangerous games that can end in death? play must be advantageous if this behavior wasn’t selected out by evolution/
4 freedoms of Play
freedom to experiment, freedom to fail, freedom to try on identities, freedom of effort (can play intensely or at a relaxed pace)
exact opposite of
4 freedoms of school

educational games are not “grand theft calculus,” tricking people to learn calculus by giving something the skin of a game
==

Then we did a lot of research into my recent problem of finding hands-on activities for primary school kids.
A teacher there mentioned, there lots of message boards where half the activity is teachers looking for a specific activity to fit a specific curriculum standard
e.g. http://learningcenter.nsta.org/discuss/default.aspx?tid=fIPYH6I51D8_E

This is my fourth year teaching but my first year at a new school. I am having a hard time trying to find labs for my students to do. I am in a regular room that is not made for a science class. I do not have bunsen burners or gas. I looked in the chemistry chemical cabinet and there are really not many chemicals.

Wah, this is cool way to not bother busy teachers, lurking on teacher forums 🙂

  • july and august: good times to get teachers to notice new things, when they take a break / do professional development workshops / reflect on their lessons
  • scale: must do it through professional societies (american association of physics teachers, etc.)
The Head of the MIT Department of Physics was also there and he is so awesome. He specifically said he is trying to figure out how to increase the numbers of people from underserved communities coming into STEM. %lt;3
Anyway, Turns out there’s an excellent site specifically for finding science and math hands-on activities, (perhaps more oriented at least for the lower grades), at

Our research notes here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HEDoIiyxYJlqWxNQMds2i14_Ak0v7xLwAYfM23iV_j0

talking to teachers!
hi michelle

So, we decided the issue we were trying solve (collecting resources like how2today and observationsblog and connecting them to teachers) was approximately solved by howtosmile.org (probably busy teachers want a fully-fleshed out lesson plan anyway), and we split up to work on different things.

I’m going to make a drawing robot and go ahead and throw together a demo online education with real-life kits thingamabob.

Hexapods

I made a video about hexapods.

I made a video about hexapods! yay. I’d estimate it was a full 4 or 5 days working on it, learning final cut pro along the way. It basically covers my journey through 2.007 two years ago, and is meant to be a resource for students in the class.

Note to self: shortcuts: < > ctrl-= alt-w

Meanwhile, I think an instructable a week sounds like an excellent plan for Spring semester senior year.

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General Update / Capture the Flag Competition

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Whoa!
I have disappeared for a long time.
I hope to fix that by issuing… a series of short low quality posts! Or something.

 ~~
I thought I’d briefly mention the MIT Lincoln Labs Capture the Flag competition.

image credit: the CTF people listed on the image; from the lec 1 slides

“In this version of a “Cyber” Capture The Flag competition, you will work in teams of three to both to defend your system and attack those of others. The target system is a Content Management System (CMS) Web Application with a plug-in architecture. New functionality will be introduced during the competition via plug-ins, so be prepared to adapt to novel situations quickly.”

I’m in this with two hallmates, Pranjal and Cathy, and two dormmates. We’re not super-serious about it, but I am excited!

Back in the day before — actually who am I kidding, I’m still this way — I thought that computer security was reserved for really cool people. Going into this, I have no idea what’s going on, which means anything I do I’ll learn a lot from (even if I don’t contribute anything to the actual competition). Yay! (yes, this is my “well i’m not taking any CS classes, how will i feel good about my minimal progress in becoming an engineer if I don’t try to pursue multiple topics, also everything is fascinating” syndrome kicking in).

Unfortunately, the lectures are all during 2.009 lab meetings, but they put the slides up (whoops, j/k, they took them down as of 10/25/12). But for me, while I’m learning a lot, I still have zero idea of how to actually do anything. That is, actual practice.

One way, I learned, is to check out previous Capture the Flag competitions. In particular Pranjal mentioned the Stripe one. There’s actually detailed walkthroughs for it, so I’ll be checking those out.

image credit: https://stripe.com/blog/capture-the-flag-20

~~

Oh yes, I should rant about that sometime. The whole attitude that: you’re completely lost but you should still try to do the lab because that’s how you’re supposed to learn things according to years of … tradition. Maybe that’s not the way I want to learn, maybe I want to not get frustrated and lost and not learn anything and have zero confidence in myself . Maybe I want to rush through things and then when I want to, on my own time, I’ll go back and learn things in depth for reals and prove to myself that I do have critical thinking skills. -___-; For instance, I don’t feel like I learned 2.007 in depth, but now I want to actually be a good UA, I’m going back and reviewing the material in preparation for next semester (and just to actually learn engineering / estimation instead of putting s* together and hoping it works). (although I have zero regrets about doing the PSTaHIW method first, since it’s given me the confidence / continued interest in building things that keeps me going and and gives me the confidence to go back and read up on all the engineering).

Whoops, looks like I just ranted about it.

Anyway.

Additionally, I am tired of whining about myself on my blog. I do that enough in my own head. So f* hardcore engineering, I’ll place faith that I’m on the road somewhere and have fun in the meantime.

To add to my list of things to blog about: 2.007x, post-graduation plans, cultures (MITERS) changing over time, confidence and asking questions correctly, miters seminars, the whole diy nanotech thing, parrots and swapfest, hair color, strobe lab (bullets!), how maker faire went (project packing optimization!), stepper motor position profiles, trash can washers and MIT facilities magic, things and youtube videos i’ve learned about china, emailing a jacob’s ladder, NHK filming, one-day loft, nyanwallace, 18 MIT seniors working on washing trash cans XD || veggie co-ops, camping trips, slugtalks, …

(Side note: I wonder if I built a caffeine pill vending machine, would I earn money on any reasonable sort of time scale? Dispensing pills would be an interesting problem to solve, even if some days I hate trying to replicate work which has already been done infinity times by the invisible engineers of the past/present).

I’ve decided to neglect nouyang.blogspot.com. The original idea was to have a blog that was presentable for job-like things, then I wanted to separate project and personal posts, and now I’m just going to try to blog, because I always find it worthwhile. Even now, I’m trying to dig up some of the files I made for MAS.863 How to Make Almost Anything, where I made a terrible site (required) and never put any of my files up, and I’m just sad. Sad. As in, there are five operating systems,  four computers, and a few USB sticks (some of which are no doubt lost), random emails in gmail, two dropbox accounts, and who the f* knows searchspace between me and my files. Sad. @___@