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.