These classes were spent working on finishing the final projects. Some groups started on their PowerPoint Presentations, while others still have the last two classes to complete their projects.
For the final presentation, everyone will be presenting their project, a powerpoint presentation, and their blog for a group of fellow students, teachers, SoBRO staff and Vision Education staff.
This will be held Tuesday, Dec 20th at 4 PM at SoBRO!

On Wednesday, Nov.30, Neysa Pranger from the StrapHanger's Campaign came to SoBRO to speak to both sections. She was informative and entertaining, providing us with information about the subway lines and involving the students in what is most important to them.
Taking a class vote, we found that the most important factors to students were crime and frequency (meaning how often the train comes).
She gave us some facts about the fastest and slowest trains, the dirtiest and the cleanest, and how much each car costs (millions of $!!).

The students enjoyed her talk and shared some of their projects with her. She was very impressed!

We hope to see her again for the final presentations!!

In this class, the students startedplanning their final projects. Most groups started with programming but a few started by building with legos. Some ideas were changed or refined as the students worked. The students were given a Design Document in which they had to fill out:

1. Team Name
2. Team Members
3. Project Name
4. Project Description
5. Necessary Components
6. User Scenario (3 steps)

It was important to have the students plan well before they started working so that they could have a good foundation for a project.

In the fourth classes, students got to try out simple tasks on the crickets for themselves. They worked in teams of two to light an LED in different colors, display a number on the LED display, display the value of the brightness sensor, and use some sound. The students got the idea of how this works and were ready for a task.

In the fifth class, I divided the class into teams for their final projects. The teams and team ideas are as follows:

1. Jose Reyes, Jose Vargas, Abraham Garcia - Map with lights to indicate where the Subway is located.
2. Josefina, Jonathan, Mudassar - Lights + Sounds to indicate when the Subway is arriving
3. William, Joanne, Maria - A system that doesnt require a person to be there, in case of handicapped or mothers with strollers that need to enter the subway.
4. Fatoumatah, Mariama - "Subway Fortunes" - reads a fortune for you every time you scan your card
5. Moussilimatou, Djatoube - Wind in the subway to indicate when the train is coming
6. Matt, Alpha, Ibrahim - Getting rid of subway cards and using fingerprints instead.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In this class, we had everyone upload their photos as their user picture for their blog. Anyone who has not done this should do this when they get some extra time.

We also went over different programming languages, and I gave a demo of FrontPage and how you can see the html code, and the Preview mode for any webpage.

I then went over the components of the Cricket, and I showed the students how to:

1. Turn on an LED.
2. Change its color
3. Change its power
4. Turn on a motor
5. Reverse a motor
6. Turn on a LED display
7. Have the LED display show the values of the light sensor

Then all the students played around with the software and explored its many facets. Next lesson we will have the students work in teams of two to program the above list.

In this class, we talked about some of Don Norman's design principles. We talked about:

Affordance - the property of an object that determines how it can be used. When affordance is taken advantage of, the user knows exactly what to do just by looking.

Natural Mapping - The relationship between two things – the controls and the results. For example, the steering wheel on a car – you know that when you turn the steering wheel to the left, the car goes left, and when you turn it to the right, the car moves right.

Feedback - sending information back to the user about what action was done. For example, when dialing a telephone number, each number will make a different beep. On a cell phone, there is a visual feedback of the numbers showing up on the screen.

Then we thought about the good and bad design aspects that you can find in the Subway or Bus in NYC. We talked about what is good and what is bad. See Picture!

YES!!