Reflecting Upon Girls Make It 2: Flower Power

On 24 March, 21 participants from seven Vermont schools converged upon the Burlington Generator maker space to usher in the arrival of spring. Lucie deLabruere, Leah Joly, and Jill Dawson orchestrated the day's events, aided by the leadership of Maxine Breuer, a senior from Essex High School, and Eva Joly, a middle school maker.  To learn more, or to check out additional photos from the day, visit
http://www.girlsmakeit.org.

Inspired by MIT's robotic flower garden, Lucie devised a way to introduce girls to coding by turning a frenzy of handmade flowers into artistic arrangements of blinking and fading buds.

Teams met design challenges, wiring up their flowers and connecting them to Lily Pad microprocessors, to control each flower's behavior.  By the end of the day, each team created a portable floral arrangement to take back to their schools and contributed one flower to a community garden, which will be displayed at the Generator's birthday bash later this week.

HERE'S WHAT WORKED:
Like the previous event, having teams work together to solve problems was a good approach.

Because we asked each team to bring two flower tops with them, we were able to spend more time focusing on the coding and circuitry than we would have, had each team constructed all of their flower tops on site.  This approach also resulted in quite a variety of hand-made blossoms.

Participants brought their own lunches this time, which kept costs down.

Prominently posting the wifi code and email address to the Girl's Make It blog encouraged teams to share their progress and achievements with the community.

Having two student mentors helping out was fantastic!

Teams were very invested in making their take-away projects beautiful (and blingy).

We were flexible, based upon the energy and interests of our group;  our pacing felt more natural than it might have, had we tried to pack more into the day.

WHAT MAY BE IMPROVED UPON:

As could be expected, it took some time to get every computer up and running with Arduino.  We also encountered issues with a faulty cord that caused the LEDs in one arrangement to burn out.

We had planned to review circuits prior to having the teams wire up their flowers, but we ended up having them jump right in.  As a result, some flowers took longer to function properly.  Doing the review first, to explicitly tap into the girls' prior knowledge, would have been a good thing to have done.

Having a set of wire strippers would have been helpful.  The scissors worked, but wire strippers would have given the girls experience using a tool meant for that specific purpose.

We didn't anticipate that we'd have a shortage of alligator clips.

Girls Make IT: Session 2

Registration for Girls Make IT:  Session 2 is Open!

Reflections on Girls Make IT

Seven schools, 21 participants, and two high school volunteers attended our Girls Make IT event on 30 January 2015! Although we ran out of time to get to the coding (we had an ambitious agenda), the creativity and perseverance of this crew was an inspiration!

Here's What Worked and Some Ideas for Next Time:
1.  The icebreaker was fun, but it went over the time we'd allotted for it.  I'm glad we didn't interrupt the creative process, though, because it was valuable for getting people talking, sharing, and problem-solving.

2.  Each person got a packet of instructions, so individuals and groups could work at their own pace and help one another.  A couple of my instruction sheets may need a few small tweaks.  Next time, we should consider adding links for "How to videos" to each hand-out.

3.  Tag-teaming with Leah was fun and essential!  Having another instructor circulate and assist groups might be helpful in the future (unless we reduce the group size).

4.  Each team got a bag of supplies.  Next time, we should put names of schools on the bags (and include an inventory checklist).

5.  The progression of skills used in the projects made sense conceptually, but we ran out of time for the coding.  The only way to get around this would be to reduce the total number of projects in future workshops or plan to do the coding in a subsequent workshop.

6.  Creating a word wall (or handout) with key terms such as circuit, short circuit, polarity would be useful.

7.  Having a high school mentor speak about her experiences at EHS and teach the girls how to solder worked incredibly well.  Thanks, Max!

8.  Ensure time for a proper wrap-up and more sharing.

9.  Post the wifi code (and add it to the girls' packets).

10.  The use of Google Classroom was a good way to give our girls digital copies of the projects.  Adding video instructions here would make sense.

11.  Sending out certificates was a nice touch.  Thanks, Lucie!

Empowering Girl Makers: Infographic

I created this infographic, titled Empowering GIRL Makers, for my Instructional Design class at Marlboro College. Since I have been thinking about girls and e-Textiles lately, I thought that this was a fitting topic to explore more deeply.

This is the first full-length infographic that I've created; this is my revised version.  Clicking on the image or the link above will take you to a PDF of the Google Drawing.

I used a variety of tools to create this, including Google Drawings, SnagIt, PiktoChart, Grafio, and Paper53.

I like the images and the research that this graphic portrays.

(FAILURE LOG)
I had tried inserting a Tagxedo image in one section, but the resolution was terrible no matter what I tried.

Girls MAKE IT: Circuits, Coding, & eTextiles

Girls MAKE IT:  Circuits, Coding & eTextiles

I am honored and excited to be collaborating with +Lucie deLaBruere, Vermont Works for Women, the Generator, Tech Savvy Girls, and an all-star cast of inspiring volunteers, including +Leah Joly, to host an all-girls Maker Event on Friday, January 30 in Burlington's Generator maker space!

Read about it below and then "SIGN UP" a team from your school!