Month: March 2020

The best laid plans of mice… so I’m starting to get into a rhythm, but not like the off season (aka Summer). Monday I returned to school this time to stay out of people’s way as they handed out food, school supplies, and Chromebooks. I had made the decision to contact a few of the kids on the robotics team and give them a task to accomplish. 5 students on Monday picked up complete robot kits. Basically, the robot they had used for the season, a charger, a battery, a controller, and the necessary wires. Their job- become experts in programming. VEX released VEXIQ blocks this season as their own programming solution. In the past robots were programmed using a variety of programs: Modkit, Robot C, etc. for those of us in the elementary school these wear all block based programs, meaning that instead of typing in commands, commands are dragged into the workspace, and variables are changed to get the results you want. That’s pretty basic, but that’s it in a nutshell- as always there is more to it, but I have never been a good programmer (ask my wife- she still chuckles over the fact that she got an A in programming and I dropped it! Although I still claim it was because I had the class at 8:00 AM and in college I wasn’t a morning person.)

I have been quietly waiting to find out exactly what eLearning looks like for me. For the classroom teacher with “only” 30 students, while not easy, there is a limited scope to what you do. Mostly you stay in contact as best you can with those 30 kids and make sure that they know you are there for them. Helping them keep some sense of normalcy. While focused on learning, we are mostly (and rightfully) focused on the child and meeting their needs. For me I’m trying to figure out how to do this with over 700 kids. The school has been experimenting with solutions. That’s really all we can do right now- try something out and see how it works. From calls & emails, to video conferencing we’ve tried a number of things- Talking Points (text messages to families) Canvas & SeeSaw (online Learning Management Systems), Zoom (video conferencing) and many others. The issue is how can the students access the information. We are discovering that everyone has a smartphone, not a computer. So many of our solutions only work well on a computer. Currently texting through Talking Points is the best solution. I just don’t feel right texting 700 people just to say “Hi.” I’ve learned as a special area teacher that for the most part families care a lot about the core subjects, but as for Music, P.E., Robotics, etc. unless they are interested in the subject, or are grade driven, it isn’t as important. So for the time being I have been using Twitter and Facebook to send out resources and activities to the world. That is about to change, hopefully for the better.

As I sat thinking through what I could do with 700 kids from Grades 1-6 in Robotics & Design, I fell back to Design. Design is something I have tried to do to make up for the lack of an Art class at my school. This year as I have waited (almost patiently) for certain bits of technology to work I have fallen on drawing as an alternative. So what if I did this online? Then this led me to the 3rd grade Fairy Tale unit that ends with the students creating a fractured fairy tale in comic book form. The culminating activity is a “Comic-Con” in which everyone dressed up as a hero of their own making for a day. I chuckle, because when I last checked no one in third grade had ever attended a Con, so all they had was the media’s view- which is weird people wandering around dressed up in costumes aka society’s view of Cosplay. I didn’t want to overstep so I asked the third grade teachers and only heard back with “we were hoping you might do some drawing with our kids”or something like that. I pressed on and asked my principal, so I brought I up at the daily meeting of the grade level PLC leaders. It got a lukewarm warm response, but no one said “no.” So now we are on Spring Break, and I have a week to put together a multi-week unit on comic book creation using the other thing that everyone has access to- YouTube.

Besides school/work the rest of the week had some high points and low points. You can decide what goes into column A and which goes in Column B. Sue is now working mostly from home. Everything nonessential has been closed down. We have started ordering take out to support some of our local restaurants. Comic Carnival, my local comic book shop, has had to close for the duration. They were able to get out Wednesday’s books on Tuesday. I have purchased gift certificates to help them out. Saltire Games, my local game shop sent out links to game companies that are giving a percentage of each sale to local game stores. My niece & nephew just got a few board games heading their way. I’m getting to all those pesky projects that I have been putting off.

The rebuild of the LEGO Batcave is one of those projects. Those of you who don’t know (how could you not know?!) I build with LEGO. The term is AFOL Adult Fan Of LEGO. I have found it a nice way to relax after a hard day. In past I have displayed things at some of the local shows. One thing I built after the LEGO Batman Movie was a Batcave. I incorporated an iPad Mini into the build as the Batcomputer- which would cycle through trailers of the film and finally the film itself. It was enormous, taking up at least one full table. I liked it, but it just was missing something.so I took the whole thing apart and walked away from it. This week on the show LEGO Masters the teams were asked to build a superhero/supervillain headquarters/lair/hideout. I decided to go back and try the Batcave again, but concentrated. My first two iterations dealt with area- how much space could I take up? This one I’m limiting to just two base plates in area, so I need to build up not out. I’ve started on the base which would be the water- so the home to bat boats and bat subs and bat kayaks. So far I have not added any details, just the setting. Building it as sturdy as possible – with the time I have this could be a challenge, especially if I run out of elements, but then again, that’s what makes it a challenge.

Finally- I’m catching up on things either Sue or I have missed. We saw Outbreak, for the first time, because… it seemed appropriate. We’re getting to know our share of Disney princesses. Learned way too much about the tiger trade in the U.S. We discovered love isn’t always blind, and what a “catfish” is in social media (I guess we just don’t hang around with the right crowd online, or maybe we actually do). We’ve learned about Viking warrior women, and drained the Bermuda Triangle, San Francisco Bay, and the area around the Titanic before looking for Atlantis. All this while our cats have snoozed on our laps.

So when will this all end? I’m guessing not for a while. Knowing how the world changed after 9/11, I wonder how the world will change after this pandemic? 9/11 brought about massive changes in the way we travel, some rules make sense, others not so much. Will we end up with a Department of Pandemic Preparedness? Will everyone be required to carry disinfectant wipes & hand sanitizer? Will maximum occupancy rules take into account social distancing? Will we build monuments to those who lost their lives or to the people who helped keep life going? So many ways this could go only time will tell.

I’m not going to make light of the situation the world is in, I’ve read and watched more than enough science fiction to know that would be bad. We currently are in the preface of a dystopian novel, or the scroll at the beginning of the film explaining how the world ended up in however bad way it is presented. So I open by saying – wash your hands, don’t touch your face, & stay home.

So my school was initially closed for two weeks we would be away for three because of Spring Break, it seems logical- people need to stay away from each other so the disease won’t spread as quickly as it can. Schools like mine would operate by doing e-learning. What is e-learning? E-learning initially was the kids having paper & pencil lessons to do at home in Humanities & STEM. Humanities means Reading & STEM means Math. Yes, there’s more to it, but in a nutshell thats about it. As a “Special Area” teacher, there was nothing for me to do…yet.

Friday, was a get prepared day. I honestly think no one was prepared for school to be canceled Thursday afternoon. Everything started in earnest on Monday. This was kind of strange, they wanted us to stay home, but everything else was open. Personally, I’m guessing that for many people it was a play day. This attitude carried through to the weekend as more and more restrictions were announced. This was all at the State and local level… the federal government while acknowledging there was a virus, still was hoping it was all a mistake, a hoax perpetrated by the media & the democrats. Some people still believe that.

So Monday comes, and teachers are allowed in the building to pick up things and to help distribute packets and food to the kids. I added a small LEGO poly bag I had a few of to the mix, so the kids could build even if they didn’t have any LEGO at home. After pulling together some things (more on that later) I went to help. I’m not sure how the system worked, I spent my time filling bags with cartons of milk & juice, then taking them from the kitchen to the pick up location at the front of the school. From what I could tell it went something like this: cars line up. Someone finds out what need and writes that on a post it note that is stuck to their window. As the car gets close, another person shouts out how many bags of food and which grade’s packets do they need. The people delivering food run it out to the car, the people with packets either run the packets out or relay the message that they need a packet for a certain grade. Once everything is in the car, they move on to the next car. This went on from 10:00 to after 1:00. No stopping the line never got smaller. I helped for a couple hours and then headed home with a bag of treasure.

What did I take from my room? I decided if I was going to be at home, I needed to use that time wisely by taking things I wanted to learn and bring them home so I can try them out and develop lessons so they can be used. So I have a LEGO WeDo 2.0 kit, and a LEGO Spike Prime kit, both I’ve had for a while, but have been missing some component needed to get it to work. I have my own tech at home that I know works, so no need to wait for someone to get what I need. Next there is a Makey-Makey board. This is a programmable circuit board which allows you to do so many things, it would take two or three posts to just scratch the surface. My thought for this is using it with 4th grade when they study electricity. I also grabbed a Raspberry Pi (because I was hungry). This is basically a stripped down computer. Like the Makey-Makey it is something I heard about by reading almost anything about making in an educational setting. The rest were bits and bobs that I had picked up over time and brought school with the best intentions. I thought I have three weeks, I can get to figure all this out. By the way, while people might think I’m confident using all this, I’m not, I’m actually pretty terrified. While I come across confident and all knowing, I am Oz the great and powerful, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I won’t go day by day, but I will go project by project, starting with LEGO WeDo 2.0. I’d taught myself LEGO WeDo when I first took my job.a simple drag and drop block based programming language. Over the years 1st and 2nd graders have built and programmed many things that make them very happy and most importantly confident. This was the next version. The biggest difference is the new version isn’t attached to the computer, so what you build can move around a lot more. Very cool. This week I got everything set up and got one of my tablets to connect to the block. Nothing big, but I did get a light to change color on a LEGO slug. What I have learned so far is that my skills with WeDo are pretty transferable to the latest version. My confidence is high- if the technical issues at school can be addressed.

I decided to dive into Spike Prime. This is the latest from LEGO Education and is geared toward upper elementary and middle school. First thing you notice are the wild colors. Most every element is in what I consider a non-traditional color. Secondly, there are a lot of new elements. I took a look at everything and thought I could go ahead and do all the various projects, or I could try to get something we already do and see if I can reproduce it in Spike. I, of course picked the latter. I started constructing a SumoBot like 6th grade is building. Ugh.

In class 6th grade have been working on Sumobots, which is the culminating activity for them. They must demonstrate the engineering design process as well as program two different sensors. We currently use Mindstorms NXT elements and Mindstorms EV3 software to program. (FYI: an NXT light sensor needs to programmed as an NXT sound sensor comparing decibels in order to work) The lesson begins with the building of a simple robot – LEGO 9797. This is basically the test bed for the sensors. It also gives those who have limited experience building with Technic a good grasp of how you can put things together. Once the basic bot is finished the students start with the light sensor. The idea is to program the sensor to back up when it sees white. The field is black with a white outline. Once that is done we move onto the ultrasonic or distance sensor. If they can get both of these working, it’s time to design a sumobot. Students can either add things to the basic bot, or rebuild something awesome. It is at this time I tend to bring out what ever I have tried to create this year. The students all try to copy it because they weren’t listening when I said “my designs usually look really good, but never win, in fact they lose all the time.”

It is with this background I started to build a sumobot. I started tinkering, moved on to trying to build a 9797 bot even though the motors are completely different. After that I moved to building a box that could hold the motors and the brain. When I got something that could work, I added sensors and moved into programming. At first glance Spike is a cross between WeDo and EV3. While I have very little knowledge with Scratch it looks like it is pretty close to that block based language. I still have a long way to go, but since they have now closed school until May 1st I think I might have some time 😁

Besides starting those two projects, I decided to build LEGO City set 60200. Which has a wide variety of things that belong in a city, which I built a few things each day. Now the fun part… taking what I’ve built and making it even better. That starts Monday.

The only other thing I’ve done is get overwhelmed by all the things people are doing to help during this time. Writers, artists, libraries, museums. It’s amazing how everyone is pulling together. I tend to pass things along on Twitter @professorzoom or @explorobots or on Facebook @explorobots. I guess I should add figuring out how I can better use Instagram, may is a long way away.

On Monday I return to school to help out again and find out if I can do an e-learning unit for the entire school that I asked about. Wait and find out.

Catchy title don’t you think? So due to what seems to be the plague of this century, school districts across the country, including mine, are closed. I completely understand the reasoning and the Science. I just hope we took this seriously in time to make a difference. So what does this mean to me, a healthy-ish 50-ish public school teacher? Right now, not much. Friday was our first day off and we’re getting information as decisions are being made so slowly. I just can’t see why global pandemic wasn’t part of the districts emergency management plan… maybe alien invasion, but… well actually while some people saw this coming, most didn’t or ignored any warning signs. I was visiting China during SARS and thought the panic here was silly- amazing what a few more years of experience does to you.

I treated Friday like a snow day- without the snow. I did laundry, vacuumed, spent some all important kitty time, basically caught up with a lot of stuff I can’t do regularly during the school year. The weekend has been pretty normal with the exception of consciously not going out. We did go to get supplies and pizza, but I now see that even though we tried to social distance ourselves, the best thing to do is stay home unless there is something you absolutely need (pizza & ice cream do not count, no matter how important they seem).

So what are my plans for the next few weeks? I’m hoping to get more done, but also take this gift of time & catch up on things I have wanted to learn about or do – starting with a long time missing blog entry which you are reading now.

Let me catch you up on what has happened since I last posted anything. Then again in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya “Let me ‘splain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.”

Since my last major entry (not in any order)-

– I left the 3rd grade classroom to become the Robotics & Design Teacher at my school (over 700 kids grades 1-6). The first graders call me “the LEGO Teacher.”

– The school was renovated (if this happens to you- just remember Architects lie- budgets are too small for their grandiose plans)

– I was moved into a new room (post renovation) that has large windows into the hallway so I cannot hide.

– We got another cat – his name is Issigonis but we call him “Issi”

– My mother passed away. Lots of baggage to unpack there, but it’s my baggage so don’t worry about it.

– I was named a LEGO Education US LEGO Master Educator. Yes, that is the official title and yes, it is long. I currently am the only one in Indiana.

– At the end of the 2018-19 school year I was named my school’s teacher of the year (an honor)and then my district’s teacher of the year (a shock). I was not named the state teacher of the year (understandable). Two out of three ain’t bad.

– I visited Paris (France, not Illinois or Texas) and attended ComicCon Paris plus a few other touristy things.

Those are pretty much the highlights. I actually started blog posts about some of them, but never got them posted.

Over the next couple weeks I’ll try (and probably fail) at going into a little more detail and talk about my view of this crazy planet most of us live on and get into a habit of posting stuff here since social media platforms are getting weirder and weirder.

Before I start on anything let me begin with my view towards COVID-19. Wash your hands and whenever possible stay home. “This is the way,” “Science has spoken.” For those paranoid and thinking that this is all a hoax, or conspiracy- even if it is, don’t you want to at least do whatever you can to support your community? Even if it means curling up in a pile of toilet paper reading a book, playing a video game, or spewing vile opinions not based on fact or logic in social media. Even if there is a 1% chance that the conspiracy theorists are right, I care about enough people who this could be life threatening that I don’t want to take the chance. “It’s the end of the world as we know it- and I feel fine.” So if you one of those people who think the entire world has ganged up against the current US administration- I respectfully agree to disagree (a new concept in this day and age – respect). Now go wash your hands. I’ve got to go out and buy more hand sanitizer & toilet paper, there’s still room in the basement.