CREATE Lab

Check out this post from our friends at the Heinz Endowments Breathe Project. High School science teacher Joe Krajcovic uses our Speck air quality monitor to gather data on the air quality in his classroom, proving the dangers that a diesel generator powering a wireless tower on the school's rooftop was posing to students and staff in the building. 

We recently had the pleasure of working to help organize a cultural exchange through GigaPan between Lycée Louise Michel in Grenoble, France and Manchester Craftsmen's Guild Youth & Arts here in Pittsburgh, PA.  

The partnership between these classrooms was born of a shot in the dark, an e-mail sent to Manchester Bidwell Corporation after watching an especially moving TED talk by Bill Strickland. After a discussion between Paolo Nzambi and Dave Deily in Pittsburgh, and Rebecca Clark in Grenoble, we decided a virtual exchange could be set up between two schools across the Atlantic. The project is being led by Rebecca and Justin Mazzei of the Manchester Craftmen's Guild.

Their one aim for this collaboration is for the world to get a little smaller for our students, and for them to understand themselves, their surroundings and empathize with others, their environments, surroundings, and cultures. Their aim is to help teens see that the world is just a village, to be shared by all, so that we can learn to appreciate each other and the wealth of our diversity.

The project began by a first videoconference, which took place on March 27th, 2014. In order to accommodate both groups, they met at 6:00pm for the French students and 12:00 for the Americans!

Says Rebecca, it was really great to be able to talk to students on the other side of the world about school and studies. The French students did a great job speaking English and the Americans had set up a great videoconferencing theater.

Justin Mazzei, teaching artist coordinator from MCG Youth and Arts, proposed using CREATE Lab and their Gigapan project as a way for students to share pictures and talk about their lives. Below are some of their images.

Check out this post from our friends at Public Lab! The author, Mathew, shares his experiences and observations after spending two weeks using a Speck air quality monitor.

Along with our colleagues at ASSET STEM Education, we recently hosted a two-day train-the-trainer workshop for members of our Satellite Network around the principles of photography and its use in the classroom, particularly through the lens of social impact.

Participants kicked off the workshop building a pinhole camera, and concluded it putting together a digital camera. (see full workshop schedule below)

The goals of the workshop:

• Deepen understanding of photography fundamentals, to anchor and enhance the GigaPan outreach and support provided by CREATE Lab Satellites.

• Hands-on consideration of the Bigshot camera kit as a Satellite Network wide offering within a context of community empowerment. 

Below are testimonials from workshop participants. The accompanying photographs were taken with Bigshot cameras, which participants assembled and experimented with during the second day of the workshop.

MPH students at Westminster College in Utah used Specks to supplement an anti vehicle idling campaign at an elementary school and achieved promising results. Most notably, their campaign resulted in an average of 92 percent reduction in idling! Please see their poster for more details about the study.

Our friends at BirdBrain Technologies have just launched a new KickStarter campaign to support production of the second generation of Hummingbird kits: the Duo! 

Building upon the Parents' Choice Gold Award-winning version one Hummingbird controller that operated as a tethered I/O board, the Hummingbird Duo is essentially two boards in one. It operates as either an original Hummingbird controller or as an Arduino Leonardo with an integrated motor/servo shield and improved connectors. The version one Hummingbird can be thought of as a "pre-Arduino," because using it helps build skills and confidence that make it easier to use Arduino. With the Hummingbird Duo, the Arduino is built right into the controller so that anyone who wants to can immediately take that next step! 

Please check out the KickStarter page for more information, and consider supporting BirdBrain Technologies and Duo if you can.

This blog was reposted from The Brashear Kids Association Blog, which can be found here:  http://www.brashearkids.com/2014/05/hear-me-comes-to-alec-to-record-student.html

Hear Me Comes to ALEC to Record Student Interviews

Hear Me, an initiative of the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, came to the Allentown Learning and Engagement Center (ALEC) to record our students' thoughts about the Pittsburgh Police.  ALEC is located next door to the Zone 3 Police Station. Interactions with the police are part of our students' daily lives. 

Through this collaborative campaign with Allies for Children, students from all over the city of Pittsburgh had the opportunity to record their responses to such questions as, "What is the job of a police officer?" and "How would you describe your relationship with police officers?"  Once all the responses are recorded and edited, Hear Me will present them to Mayor William Peduto to help inform the selection of the new Chief of Police.  

Students at ALEC listened to their interviews  and then interviewed one another.  They had such a great time sharing their stories with Jess and Ryan of Hear Me, and we can't wait to share the final edit. 

Hear Me is a collaborative network of community organizations, institutions, businesses and foundations working together to provide a better future for our kids. Through this project, our students have had a chance to share their voice with a wider audience and participate in the democratic process.  To learn more, check out their website.

Create-a-Bot

Ages 8-9, Full Day Camps 9 am – 3 pm

http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/programs/summer-camps-full-day-8-9/

Call 412.237.1637 or Register HERE 

June 16 – 20
July 21 – 25
Aug. 4 – 8

Create-a-Bot 

http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/programs/summer-camps-full-day-10-12/

Ages 10-12, Full Day Camps 9 am – 3 pm

Call 412.237.1637 or Register HERE

June 9 – 13
July 28 – Aug. 1
Aug. 11 – 15

Technology and imagination unite as you combine craft materials and robotic components to build and animate robotic creations. Using Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab's visual programming software and Hummingbird Robotics Kits, campers will engage in the artistic side of robotics.
$235 members / $250 non-members (price includes materials fee)

Register HERE

July 28 - Aug. 1

We will only be offering one week of this super awesome session! We will be using the fantastic Hummingbird robotics kit to teach programming. This versatile platform was designed at Carnegie Melon’s CREATE lab.

We're so excited to share this Arts & Bots story, featured yesterday on WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR News Station! 

Sue Mellon, gifted teacher at Springdale Junior & Senior High School and longtime friend of the CREATE Lab, describes her classroom's use of Hummingbird kits in the English curriculum. Mellon uses Arts & Bots as a way for her students to explore themes of poetry that might otherwise feel intimidating or uninteresting. “Repetition in poetry increases comprehension of the poem, so by building you get this natural repetition," says Sue. "They’ll have recorded the poem so it’ll run while their robotic actions highlight what’s going on in the poem. That’s another form of repetition. They have to keep referring back to it to make it come alive.”

Check out the full story here, and watch the video below for a demonstration from one of Sue's students.