What to do with some nerds?

October 1, 2008 9:06 PM

diy tech-filter: I will be teaching a 45 minute class for 7th & 8th graders title: Technology. What I do in there with them is COMPLETELY up to me, which is both neat and scary. It will be extra-curricular so I can run with things. I'm looking for activities that include building, making, designing, are CHEAP or FREE and would appeal to inner city kids who love technology but don't really know how it works.

I would love anyone who has any fun/easy diy projects. Stuff that might be on instructables would be cool.

Thanks!

posted by allthewhile to education (13 comments total)

The first thing I thought of is on Instructables: simple motors. Similarly, for about $20 you can get several simple flashlights (mini-maglight knockoffs are good). Mix up good batteries & dead ones, good bulbs & bad ones. Take apart all the flashlights & have the kids reassemble them & get them working again. Then discuss the problem-solving process.
posted by TDIpod at 9:25 PM on October 1, 2008

Some friends of mine have been making light sabers with kids. (The blog post does not feature explicit plans, but it does explain the general idea.) Everybody seems to love this project - I certainly do! The finished product looks tremendously cool, and you learn some electronics in the process!

There are other plans out there for making lightsabers, like this one for the handle only from Instructables. If you find a plan you like for the handle, maybe you could add on a glowing "blade" lit up with Christmas lights covered in some light-dispersing paper or fabric, as the first link suggests.

Also, if you have access to machining tools, perhaps the kids could make some of their own parts for the handle. That's a really useful skill.
posted by Cygnet at 9:25 PM on October 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

You may want to check some of the issues of Make magazine. If you get a subscription, you also get access to digital copies of back issues (or we did, a couple of years ago). There's lots of simple and fun projects in there.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 10:11 PM on October 1, 2008

Have you checked out Make Magazine? It's got tons of cool technology projects you can do on the cheap. For example, they had instructions for making a guitar amp out of $5 worth of parts from radio shack. I've always thought it was cool when teachers taught me something I could actually use. If you subscribe, you get instant digital access to all their archives so you can go through every project they've ever had and maybe choose a variety so you can appeal to more people (and the digital archives are in handy printable form).
posted by systematic at 10:13 PM on October 1, 2008

On non-preview, what dipsomaniac said :)
posted by systematic at 10:14 PM on October 1, 2008

I couldn't come up with an actual suggestion for you but I felt compelled to link to Strong Bad on Technology.
posted by XMLicious at 12:10 AM on October 2, 2008

At a high level, I'd try to resist the urge to keep treating "techology" as shiny gadgets. Our consumer society already does a good job of that.

Instead, I'd try to start by going back to the word itself and the broader theme of creating tools to solve problems, rather than hammering on them with bloodied fists.

So as much as they might "fun!" and "cool!", abstract gadgetry doesn't teach much, I don't think, other than Sony makes doodads that look better than school-made ones. If you're going to pick instructables or other projects, find ones that you can present as solutions (possible solutions) to a problem, like water wells or solar/wind power or such.

Better overall educational value there, if you can get them thinking in a "what can we invent to solve (this problem) way."

IMHO anyway.
posted by rokusan at 4:57 AM on October 2, 2008

Building, making, and designing is only half the picture of understanding how things work. You need to get these kids disassembling, breaking, and limits-testing. This is the best way to really learn how things work: dismantling something that it is okay to destroy. The flashlight idea above is a great start, but seriously, go find some old, highly mechanical cruft that no one wants to have working and won't cost you a ton to dispose of in the end. Printers, copiers, sewing machines, etc., are all really fun victims.
posted by whatzit at 5:36 AM on October 2, 2008

I think what would be interesting would be to start at a beginning stage of American technology and work your way up, and also expand their thinking outside of gadgetry.

You could start with a light bulb and work up to playing with LED lights. Maybe even make a pinhole camera and then work up to teaching them to work with digital pictures on a free editor like Picasa. Also, how about getting someone in the medical profession to come in one day and show off new medical technology that is saving lives? How about new cooking technology- they could create foams!
posted by haplesschild at 5:37 AM on October 2, 2008

along the lines of rokusan, you could inspire your kids to go for the Project 10 to the 100th prize, which rewards a great idea that helps people around the world with fund money. Fun and slightly possible fame...

Their example is a wheelbarrow that carries water easily and effectively.

Otherwise I'd say find something that is really hard to google and do it. Kids will be able to find anything online these days. Your job sounds like it should be to find what they cannot or wouldn't normally find. instructables and discovery.com are probably old hat, no offense. cockeyed.com has some funny/interesting stuff, too.
posted by prodevel at 5:41 AM on October 2, 2008

This might not be what you're looking for, but in my technology in education class yesterday a girl gave a presentation on Webon, a site for making websites easily. She said it was free up to a certain point, and her presentation made it look pretty accessible to almost anyone. Perhaps they could use it to make their own websites?
posted by lilac girl at 6:08 AM on October 2, 2008

I've been teaching a workshop on making a junk electric guitar (see website in my profile for video) -- wind your own pickup, hotglue it to a stick, stretch a steel guitar string on the stick, and you're about done. It takes a little bit of soldering, but it might be possible to design that out. You'd need to have a guitar amp on hand. To get it reliably under 45 minutes you'd need to standardize the parts and process rather than letting people bring their own materials and experiment. Materials cost is $5-10 per student.

If this is a multiple-session class rather than a one-time thing, they could make the $5 guitar amp one week and the junk guitar the next!
posted by moonmilk at 6:25 AM on October 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

Something I have done with middle school kids that I thought worked well was to buy some small breadboards and logic chips (and, or, and inverting gates only) and have them work in groups to design segment drivers for 7-segment numerical displays. For example, one group would take the middle segment of the figure-8 and design a logic circuit that would turn on for binary inputs for 2,3,4,5,6,8,and 9 but not for 0,1, or 7. Then they built and tested their design. I was worried that there would be problems with static and the hcmos chips, but we never lost one.

I have been tempted to try this compound microscope from hackaday but have only got as far as getting a classroom set of discarded disposable cameras from a local film developer.
posted by Killick at 8:54 AM on October 2, 2008