Physical Computing Meets AP CSP - Arduinos Part 1

This is part of a 2 part post on using Arduinos in AP CSP.  

Last year I borrowed a SparkFun Inventor Kit from KSTF's Tech Lending Library.  I was curious.  I also was low on time, so a few days before I need to return it, I threw it at some students in my CS class.  They dug in and LOVED it.  They showed me what they were able to do in a few hours so I decided to learn more.

The PD
Learning more took me to SparkFun's HQ in Boulder, CO for a week long workshop in Microcontrollers for Educators.  I would HIGHLY recommend this PD.  It was one of the top 3 PDs I have ever attended as a teacher.  There was so many great things that happened that it is impossible to summarize them all here, but the best thing they did was give us a chance to CREATE with the materials.  In a lot of ways, the workshop was run much like you would run your class.  We didn't just talk about projects, we DID the projects.  We even did a hackathon, which, not to brag, our team won with our voting climate system.  It was pretty awesome.

But, from this I saw first hand how "low floor, high ceiling" problems could be implementeed in a CS classroom.  Thanks to our fearless leader, Brian Huang, I decided to have a "movable light sculpture" project for my CS students after the AP exam that would be a final project for a physical computing unit.

Materials
From there, I wrote a hefty materials proposal for a grant.  It included a lot of things.  The biggest chunk of money came from ordering the Sparkfun Inventor Kits.  But along with that I ordered maker materials that I had seen used most frequently in the workshop.  This included polyfill, tissue paper, cardstock, hot glue guns, rubber cement, tape, duck tape, fun duck tape, extra LEDs, extra M/F extender cables, more user-friendly motors, a lot of stuff.  I also stock piled any box that came to our apartment so students could use them in their project later.

Introducing it to Students
I'll admit that the Inventor Kit can be a bit intimidating.  There are wires, lot of tiny pieces that look the same, it is hard to know how much attention to detail you need when putting pieces on the board.  Sure, some students feel really comfortable diving in, but even I was a bit intimidated when I first got the kit.

You know what's NOT intimidating?  play dough.

I saw this done at the MN Coding in the Classroom Summit with Professor AnneMarie Thomas and then once again modeled at the Sparkfun Workshop, but essentially there are two different recipes for conductive and "insulative" (or lower conductivity) play dough.  From there you can make circuits with battery packs and LEDs.

I loved how this was a hands-on, low risk way for students to play with circuitry.  I turned my kitchen into a Play Dough factory and made massive amounts of play dough.

I wanted students to be able to make a basic circuit so they would get the general idea of how electricity needs to go in a loop and will find the path of least resistance and also see how LEDs work with their positive and negative ends.  Realistically, I knew that the lesson would take 10 minutes tops, so I decided to add the idea of logic gates with circuits.  Students had to create a total of 6 different circuits with the play dough and then sketch what it looked like next to the directions.  They had to create an AND gate, OR gate, NOT gate and (as a challenge) an XOR gate.  Here is the handout.

Interestingly enough, some of my physics high-flyers were too cool for play dough and just sketched out the diagrams on the sheet of paper.  When I challenged them to actually make it with play dough, it took them a while to translate their diagram into the real world.  Overall though, it was a hit.

Introducing The Arduino
Play dough day took about one hour class period, but I could have even introduced the Inventor Kit in class that same day.  I start with giving each group or pair of students a kit and putting their name on the outside - from an organization standpoint, this was huge!  I didn't do it the first time around and then all the kits were mixed up with people not really caring where they put pieces.  I had students open up the kit and poke around to see what they find out.  I gave them 3 minutes to take things out and explore before we shared out as a class as to what they found.

Then we made the most basic circuit which is a blinking light.  We used codebender's EDU site on the chromebooks for the code which worked out pretty well.  Keep in mind you need to install the chrome extension and the server was down for two days, but other than that it worked great.  From there, I told students that we were going to take the next few days to explore the features of the tools... and of course, if you're going exploring, you cannot leave without your passport.

Enter the Arduino Passport.

Ahead of time I had identified key "labs" in the Sparkfun guide that I wanted students to experience.  For better or worse, most of the labs come with all of the code they need, so students don't need to read the code at all.  However, for the "kinetic light sculpture" project, students would need to wire and code their own inventions.  I used the labs provided as a jumping off spot and had students modify the code or the circuit and then write about how they did this in their passports before I would stamp them for completion.

The first time I did this, I didn't have students jump off from the labs enough.  So when it got to the final project, students were unproductively frustrated.  The second time, I added more space for students to modify code or add components and the project went a lot better.

And then I introduced the project...

MakerSpace Projects - 3D printing and Laser Cutting

Our school is lucky enough to have three 3D printers and one Laser Cutter.

I also appreciate how these resources are available to EVERYONE in the school.  There is no special permission needed to use it at all and the woman who runs the whole thing is always willing to help and is SO patient (with teachers AND students).  We have great resources.

But, I have noticed it is the same few students who use these pieces of equipment and often they use them to create something that they found on Thingiverse - most students aren't creating their own plans from scratch.

To me this is inequity, there are students who feel like they "belong" in the space and students who don't.  After the AP test, my goals were 1) to ensure all students could use the equipment, 2) to have students create (not copy) with the equipment.

From there I went to Twitter in search of ideas.

Laser Cutter
The blog A Recursive Process was instrumental as he talked  about using Desmos to create art to cut out on the laser cutter.  This was perfect since it allowed students to take something cool they made in Desmos and bring it to the real world.  Additionally, students could engrave their design on their TI calculator if they wanted too also.

Here is what some students did:

It wasn't all smooth sailing.  I needed to create very careful directions for students which I created collaboratively with our tech person (you can find them here).  The program sometimes had trouble seeing the piece as one connected line which caused some people's pieces of art to fall apart in their hands.  My hope is that students will be able to use this for future Desmos creations as well.

3D printing
For 3D printing, fellow CS teacher Eileen King also suggested doing a 3D printing project around having students design their own monopoly piece.  This was a GREAT idea since the laser printers take a while so doing something small was really the only way to ensure that all students would get to use them.

I decided to use BlocksCAD who also recommended that students try some design challenges before diving in to make their own monopoly piece.  I had students show me that they could create a torus cage, a block of cheese, and a ring of cubes just to get familiar with working in 3D space.  I stamped each of these off as they created them and showed them to me.

To be honest, while most students designed a monopoly piece, not everyone got to print.  And some students decided they wanted to create something else.  I also suggested that students who were already familiar with the 3D printers do something around volume of solids and curves since the 3D printers can be a powerful tool to help visualize that method in Calc. 

What I would do differently:

• Rent out a space in the library for my class to be so I could float more easily between the MakerSpace and the classroom.  I am so thankful for students I can trust that I could leave my students in either place without worrying about unacceptable behavior.  BUT being closer would make it easier to support all students during class.  There was a few times where a student in the classroom would come to me with a text message from a student in the MakerSpace that said they needed help. 
• Make a schedule.  Timing was still an issue to get all students through the equipment.  Next time I would make a schedule with different students signed up each day to ensure we were on track. 
• Fix timing.  Even with a schedule, it takes too long for every student to 3D print.  Especially when they are prone to breaking or other students starting projects on them who are not in my class.  Also, when students come up with a really cool new idea, it usually takes longer than 30 minutes to print.  At most I could get 6 students though the 3D printers in an hour - and that is even optimistic.  I let students watch Hidden Figures while other students were printing this year, but I don't love that solution.  Next year I will need to think of a different project that students could do while others are printing.

Celebrating Successes:

• I saw all students using the equipment.  I saw more girls in that room than I had ever seen before which was a huge win in my book.
• Students were creating things. They would always proudly show me the thing they just made which means that the work was meaningful to them.