Makebot Robot Project

I'm getting ready to start working on my version of the Makebot robot. I purchased a Makebot last year to see what all it could do and how I could integrate it into my programming classes. It is a nice little robot which you can customize with other sensors, and parts and the programming code is very much like Scratch or Hour of Code with puzzle like pieces. The only problem that I had with it was that it was $80 price tag which for a class of 25 would be real budget buster for a public school teacher. Even getting 12 and have students share would be cost prohibitive, so I started checking into how much it would cost to build my own Makebot from scratch.

The good news is that it is only about $50 worth of parts and if my class 3D prints their body with all of the filament that I have collected over the years, then it makes it a doable project. Also, having the students build their own robot will be a great learning opportunity.th

To be fair, I have also collected quite a few Arduino kits last year for my Mini-Courses so I had kind of a head start with the most expensive part: the Arduino Uno. Having a ton of LEDs, resistors and other parts has really helped too. So I have everything I need to get started including a box full of motors and wheels.

First thing I need to do is solder some jumper wires to the motors so that the students can simply connect them on the breadboard. Then I need to work out how to use the motor controller with the Arduino.

Asus C100P Chromebook

I have to say that I really like the Asus C100P Tablet/Chromebook. I picked one up to try out for my mother since the Nexus 7 that I got for her a few years ago is starting to die. I wanted to make sure it would do everything that I knew she uses a computer for these days, which is mainly texting through Google Hangouts, surfing the Internet and keeping up with the family through email and Google Plus. This Chromebook does all of that and more.

As long as you don't mind living in the Google Universe, which I don't, then this convertible tablet works great. Before using this, I had been using a Samsung Note 10 for most of my daily work at school and around the home. I still miss the ability to use a stylus to take notes, but having the keyboard has been working out okay. It is tricky when there is no Wifi, but I've been able to tether the Chromebook to my phone to get things synced when I'm some place without Internet. But for the basics of what I do every day, this works fine, and the price of $250 really can't be beat.

A couple of draw backs to the system as a whole is first of all the limited keyboard. If they had room for a few more keys like "delete", "home" and "end" it would be a little more functional. Another thing to get used to about the keyboard is that the "lock" button is located where the "delete" key would normally be and I've had to train myself not to touch that key because it is annoying to have to login every time I want to delete a character. Another drawback is that the screen sometimes takes a while or doesn't rotate when I flip the screen around into tablet-mode.

Luckily for me, when Google announced this summer that it would be adding the Play Store to their Chromebooks, this one was one of the first one's they chose. I've been using Android Apps, off and on since June and loving it. It hasn't been all great, some of the apps don't work right and using a stylus on the screen for some of the apps has been a challenge, but overall it's been pretty good. It has been such a good experience, I got my son one and he's been using it as his Tablet/Computer for a while and this has been really nice, because I don't have to worry about him getting viruses or malware on it by going to game sites on the Internet.

So as my day-to-day computer I would highly recommend this device and as for a tablet replacement for the kids, it works great.

Digital Natives Not!

When I first started teaching computers eight years ago, my colleagues and I would joke that within a few years, we could be out of a job as more and more of our students would grow up with computers and technology. Known as Digital Natives, they would come to school already knowing the basics of computers and the Internet; things we struggled with through the 90's. But the truth is that this generation has not become the whiz kids with technology that we were expecting them to be.

While I don't have to teach as many of them what a Right-click is and a Left-click or explain how to Double-click, it still amazes me how many I still have to show how to work a mouse. Keyboarding is also still a challenge, but will probably be until we get rid of the QWERTY keyboard (if ever). Unfortunately, our students have been raised on tablets and smartphones where they don't need many computer skills. They know how to text and play games, but how to write a comment, or make a blog post, or what HTML is, forget about it. The good news is that it means job security for me to teach these skills when they get to my class.

The question is, what skills will they need for the future? For the immediate future I don't see the PC or laptop going away any time soon. Too many jobs still require them. As for tablet's I think we've seen them plateau and while they provide some utility in the work place, they won't be every where. Other forms of computing like voice activation, wearable, and AI is still a few years away and still won't be useful in all situations. So for the time being, using a keyboard and mouse (track pad) to communicate with others will still be the skills our students need and we're still a waiting for those Digital Natives who come to school with the basic computer skills we all need.

Switching From Smart Notebook

When I started teaching eight years ago, we all had just gotten Smartboards for our classrooms and I felt we were truly moving into the future. I had just come from a job where we thought we were on the cutting edge of technology but we had nothing close to a Smartboard. I often joked with my colleagues from my old job that they could come and try out my Smartboard and see what the future was going to be like.

That was eight years ago and while I used my Smartboard for everything that I could for all of my classes, it became more and more just a whiteboard that you could click links on. Today, I mainly use it for giving presentations and launching Youtube videos and the word from our tech people is that the Smart Notebook software won't work with Windows 10, so we will need to either pay for the upgrade or figure out a different plan. I have opted for the different plan.

For the last year I have been steadily using Google Apps more and more since they allow me to be more flexible in where and when I can work. As a school, we have also been better at using things like Google Docs and Google Forms to collaborate and share documents among ourselves. So I have taken the last big step and have started to move from Smart Notebook to Google Slides as my main method of presentations. After looking at my presentations and what I was doing with them, I realized that there was no magic that the Smartboard was giving me for 90% of my content. My classes have become more and more project-based and I was trying to get away from me standing in front of class giving a presentation at all. So while using Google Slides was not a big change, getting all of the content that I had created over the years into slides was going to a monumental task, or at least I thought.

I started by exporting my Smart Notebook files to PowerPoint. I thought that this would at least give me something to work from. Originally this was going to my plan anyway, if I could use PowerPoint at least I wouldn't be using Smart Notebook and PowerPoint still had some "pen" functionality that would work with the Smartboard for those times when I need to write on the board. But after exporting to PowerPoint, there were a ton of formatting changes that I had to make just to get PowerPoint to be functional. Since I had to make the formatting changes anyway, I decided to look into how hard it would be to take the exported PowerPoint file and convert it into Google Slides. This wasn't difficult, simply opening the PowerPoint as a Google Slides file in Google Drive created a Google Slides file and then I could make the formatting changes. Once I started doing this it was ridiculously easy so I just kept going. It does take time, but it has allowed me to add animation which I was never able to do very well in Smart Notebook and to insert my Youtube videos directly into the presentations and not a link. This is important because of all of the times that a video has been taken down and I have to scramble to find a replacement. Now I can see when I bring up the presentations which videos work and which don't. I've been steadily working through my Smart Notebook files and I'm hoping to have a majority of them completed before the end of the school year.

My final problem with this conversion was that there were still some times when I needed to write on the Smartboard or have the students come up and interact with it. But I think I have a solution for this also. OneNote is one of those Microsoft apps that has flown under the radar for years. I've used it for a long time because I like to write my notes out but I use a tablet instead of paper and pencil and OneNote has be great for that. Well, I have just found a new application for this program: using it to write on the Smartboard. I can create content, such as text that needs to be proofread and corrected, and then use the Smartboard to "write" on that text in OneNote. It will also let me write on it when I show the students how to use binary. Finally, it will help because I can then share what is on the board with students without having to go through some kind of export process like I used to do with Smart Notebook.

So my conversion process of getting away from Smart Notebook and replacing it with other tools, will work out a lot smoother than I originally thought it would thanks to Google Slides and Microsoft's OneNote.

New Phone

 

Picking the Right Phone

I've had a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for about two years now and totally loved it. I have always liked having a stylus with my touch screen devices because I like to draw and take written notes and the Note 3 was perfect for that. I also liked the fact that I could replace the battery and add more storage with the micro SD card slot. So when it was looking like that Samsung was not going to update the Note 3 to Lollipop, let alone Marshmallow, I knew it would soon be time to upgrade.

I was thinking that I would probably just go with the Note 5, but I was conflicted. The Note 5 didn't have a micro SD Slot or a removable battery and cost quite a bit of money. I really need to reevaluate what I used my smartphone for and what I really needed from it.

My first thought was that I would just go with a Note 4 or even a Note Edge and then just wait out a year to 18 months to see what other phone makers would come up with. But even these phone were a little on the expensive side and it was difficult to find a new model that wasn't used or refurbished.

So after looking at all of the options I decided that first of all battery life, while important, probably was something I could live with for a couple of years, which would probably be about the time for a new pone anyway. I still really wish that new phones were still serviceable especially for the battery. Then I also decided that having the extra storage was something I could probably get around with putting more of my stuff in the cloud. So since a replaceable battery and an SD card slot were not as important on a phone, I may as well look at what other phones were out there.

I decided that having the latest or close to the latest version of Android was pretty important, especially if I wanted to try out new tech from Google, then I would probably want a phone that gets updated pretty regularly. I also want a good camera since I take most of my pictures on the phone. So all that being said, I thought a Nexus phone may be the way to go.

The Nexus 6P was getting really good reviews from everyone and when I saw that this weekend, Google was taking $50 off and Best Buy was giving away a $50 gift card, I thought the price was right to make the jump.


Changing Phones Ain't Easy

Now changing to a new phone is not something that can be done lightly, especially after being a part of your everyday life for two years. Android does make it pretty easy to switch and using mainly Google services helps too. But it still requires a lot of setup.

It is kind of nice because its like Spring Cleaning and I can just try to get by with the apps that I think I'll really need. If I find I'm missing something I can always add it later. I still need to find a decent background that doesn't clash with my apps. I'm also trying to keep much more of my apps together on one page, but I'm not too sure that is going to work, ts just too busy. I like having similar apps on separate pages.

The biggest setup challenge has been getting my other devices connected to my Bluetooth and getting different wireless networks set up. I got Google Glass set up this morning, but I still need to get the truck hooked up. The wireless at school almost worked but I had to play with the settings to get it to work and I'm not sure if its working 100% yet. Finally, the magnet switch on my Google Cardboard doesn't seem work and I'm going to have to research that one.

Finally, I need to get my accessories like a phone case and screen protector. I may even need to get a second set of cables for this phone since it is using USB type C connectors.

Getting Started with Raspberry Pi Zero

Got my Raspberry Pi Zero  a couple of days ago and was pretty excited that I was able to get one since they are pretty much sold out everywhere. I decided to get the Raspberry Pi Zero Budget Kit from Adafruit.com since I figured I would need most of the parts the kit had anyway. I still needed to pick up a powered USB hub to plug in a mouse and keyboard and a HDMI to DVI adapter to work with my monitor. Once those show up, then I'll be ready to download Raspian and start playing with this tiny computer.

I went to a talk at the PLTW conference last month about how to use Raspberry Pi's and Minecraft to teach about coding and it was a very cool idea. The presenter showed that for a few dollars and a little work you could really get a lot of learning out of these small computers and find something useful to do with Minecraft other than kill zombies and skeletons.

So once I get every thing together I'll be able to get started on trying this new toy of my out in the classroom.

Parts Is All I Need

When working on my projects, I try to have a lot parts on hand to choose from. First of all, it cuts down on the cost for things I need for the project, and second it goes along with my philosophy of recycling. And where do I find all of these parts? From old toys, games and other electronic equipment which no longer works. Believe it or not, there are lots of great parts in old kids toys, VCRs, RC cars or even things like old power tools. 

How do I get all of this junk? Well for starters it helps to be known as a fix-it guy, because then people bring me their broken gadgets, which sometimes I can fix but other times I can't but I kindly offer to dispose of for them. Other times I just have "Bring me your junk" drive which can bring in a lot of stuff. Finally, while not really being a Garage Sale person, if I'm at one, I will pick up some broken electronic stuff.

Once I have a pile of stuff, I start working through it, separating out the useful parts from everything else. Mainly what I'm looking for is motors, sensors, wires, screws, gears, LEDs, battery parts and springs. The one thing that I always felt guilty about was all of the plastic that I had throw away, but I think I may have come up with a way of dealing with that.

There are plastic recycling gadgets now that take plastic waste and turns it into 3D printer filament. They are a little pricey but I feel they will probably start coming down in price soon.

Over all, it's pretty awesome that we now are at a point where we have access to all of this great technology, like 3D printers, Arduinos, and other electronic pieces to rearrange and make into other awesome things.