This is so awesome. Building and deploying a satellite is now so much more accessible. Combine cheaper with open source technology, and you get brilliant educational opportunities, such as the ArduSat project mentioned earlier.
Here is the link to an article that provides an overview of the various cheap satellite technologies currently used, and some of the things getting done.
Kelvin Doe in Sierra Leone. View his story:
I used to hack around with electronics when I was a teen, yes FM transmitters too, but the stuff that Kelvin does is pretty amazing. He clearly has an intrinsic feel for how things work and how he can fit together what he has to make something his community needs.
And I think it’s an awesome example of both learning, as well as on how innovation really works. Innovation is not driven by lots of money, and big corporations. Innovation happens when someone sees a problem, and figures out a (new) solution using the limited resources as their disposal.
Certainly, having some resources can help. But “infinite resources” don’t help good ideas bubble up magically. It’s often a degree of scarcity that makes the idea spark happen!
Finally, it’s a good example of how much young kids can do. It makes no sense for kids to never have touched a soldering iron, and possibly get to use one some time during university (if they go there). What a waste.
There are so many cool projects out there to get started with, and local groups that facilitate this learning and exploration! For instance Gold Coast TechSpace, founded by Steve Dalton and others, does exactly that. Check it out!
Meet Homo ergaster (also known as African Homo erectus), specifically specimen KNM-ER 3733.
How cool is this? We think very cool. This is the same fossil you see a photo of all over the net. It’s amazingly different when students can actually hold a print in their hands, and study it. And after that, you realise how unsatisfactory diagrams are.
This is a very old piece of our human (hominin) history. Our ladyfriend ergaster here (the skull is thought to be of a female) is one of the oldest of her kind ever found, and approx 1.8 million years old.
Mind you, this particular print we did is only half-size (by X/Y/Z, not volume) but the detail is fantastic. On the second photo you can clearly see some teeth and yes you can actually feel them!
While the skull is fossilised and filled-in, the zygomatic arches on the side are still there (they’re missing in many specimens) and with the right slicer settings (including scaffolding) the printer has no problem creating a beautiful print. It just takes a while…
This skull print and some others have already been used by Claire Reeler (archaeologist) for a project at Grovely State School. The kids had a great time, an awesome hands-on learning experience, and we hope to publish the materials here soon so you can use them too.
In 1950, legendary British computer scientist (and cryptologist!) Alan Turing devised a test. To pass, a computer program would have to hold a five minute text/keyboard conversation with humans and be so convincing that more than 30% of the interrogators would regard it as human.
A program simulating a 13 year old named “Eugene Goostman” just became the first computer program to pass the Turing test by convincing 33% of its human interrogators.
That is truly a milestone and a very significant achievement. Everybody who has ever thought about this will appreciate that conducting a broad conversation for a number of minutes is actually not that easy.
Did you know… in geek circles the Turing test is also commonly used in jokes, with someone wondering whether a particular fellow human (politician?) would actually pass…
Of course, we have to recognise that the sole purpose of Eugene Goostman was to pass the Turing test. Speaking as a programmer, building a system for a highly specific task with clearly defined rules and boundaries is, in the grand scheme of things, peanuts – compared to a human having to deal with all the variables in the real world. Still, it’s real progress. Well done to all the awesome programmers and other scientists involved in this project!
Most of us appreciate that IQ is a fairly limited and somewhat stuffed measure, but finding effective alternatives is tricky.
So here is one: self-regulation is a better predictor for success than IQ. Self-regulation is of course tightly linked to patience, and that’s an important life skill.
Unfortunately, life in 2014 doesn’t teach patience. We have gadgets around us that pretty much all focus on instant gratification in various forms. Everybody reacts differently to this, but it’s something to keep in mind: those who teach, mentor and parent now grew up in quite a different environment to the one kids reside in today.
STEM projects generally require patience: experiments take time to grow or mature, and building something isn’t done in a few minutes. This also means that doing STEM projects is an excellent way to practice patience.
Want to read more on this topic? See the article Patience! by Ainissa Ramirez at the awesome Edutopia (George Lucas Educational Foundation).
Good things come to those who wait are patient.
Kids encounter an old Apple II computer with floppy drive. It’s very insightful. They’re part appalled, part intrigued.
Yes, technology has progressed. But back then we did know what components made up a computer, we had an inkling (or more) of how it worked. And most kids now don’t know, and I reckon that’s a bad thing in this otherwise awesome evolution.
In the era of the Apple II, growing up in The Netherlands and able to watch BBC 1 on TV, I wrangled my parents into acquiring an Acorn BBC Micro, model B.
I learnt about programming, did some hardware hacking, actually added new components to my machine and built interfaces to other equipment. Over the years computers have been harder to play with in terms of hardware interfacing. Now though, there are awesome new products such as the Raspberry Pi, which once again make it much easier to, for instance, attach extra bits of electronics and learn more.
What I find particularly interesting is that the Raspberry Pi uses an ARM processor. Do you know what ARM stands for? Acorn Risk Machine. That’s right, it’s a direct descendant of the ground-breaking work done by Acorn Computer in the 1980s in the UK.
Most mobiles (including Android and iPhone) also use ARM processors. They’re literally everywhere. Interesting, isn’t it!
The material is much more interesting. When I discussed a topic later in the term, I found that the students…
Laura Davidson, Teacher