Dear students,
As you dive into the final weeks of BB&A, we encourage you to start thinking about where your project will go after the class ends. This is up to you, but there are a few concrete opportunities to consider:
The course project for Beyond Bits & Atoms is a working prototype of an educational technology, accompanied by a paper suitable for submission to the Interaction Design and Children conference. In prior years, course projects have gone on to become academic research projects and commercial products.
On Thursday, March 1, from …
read moreOnce you have decided on your final project group, please record it on this spreadsheet. The teaching team will use this spreadsheet to keep track of final project groups and progress, so please update it when/if your group or project changes. It was so exciting to hear all your …
read moreIn this station, you will work with Arduinos at two different levels of abstraction.
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I2C is a communication protocol allowing high-level communication between components. All you have to do is connect four wires:
Basically, the …
read moreDesign and implement a user experience for the game "Treasure" or for your final project. For the purposes of this assignment, the nature of the application is not important. Rather, your focus will be on designing user interfaces and user experiences for learning. You will discuss these ideas in depth …
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Chris's school purchased a mediocre information system to manage all the school's information about students, parents, teachers, schedules, attendance, etc. The system could be configured to provide various views of information; Chris was tasked with designing the teacher portal. This isn't …
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read moreTLTL is the proud home of four home-made tangible user interface tables. These are interesting interfaces because they support physical interaction with programmed environments in a context well-suited to social play. They are also an excellent example of how our digital fabrication technologies can be combined in powerful ways …
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read moreThe joint project for the two courses is a working prototype of a constructionist educational technology, to be displayed at the BB&A Expo, and an accompanying paper suitable for submission to IDC as a Demo Paper. In 2017, 4 papers from BB&A students (as well as several from …
read moreWrite a “Gears” essay – a short essay on “evocative” objects from your childhood/youth which have had an important impact on your intellectual life, in the same spirit of Papert’s foreword to his book Mindstorms – available here:
This is a typical assignment in constructionist course …
read moreThis week in lab, we add in the last big layer of digital fabrication: code. We will be introducing Processing and using our homemade tangible user interface tables to discuss some higher-level programming concepts. We will differentiate stations this week, with one group of beginners and another of people with …
read moreCo-design a tangible learning artifact with a child, develop it through iterative prototypes, and then build a final version you will give to the child as a gift. (It could also be a gift for another child.) The artifact might be:
Here are a couple of links you'll need to install the GoGo board widget in your computer.
read moreAs a class, you will build a single Rube Goldberg Machine, using the GoGo boards with various sensors and actuators, the laser cutter, and the lab's woodshop tools. The Rube Goldberg Machine you build will consist of 7 stations, each of which takes a particular sensor input and has to …
read moreCheck before you run your piece through to make sure your hands will not be in the sphere of action. Turn on the saw, and ensure the blade does not travel or waver. If it does, grab someone on the teaching team before …
read moreIt was so exciting to kick off the course and meet everyone last Thursday. It has also been fun to see people starting to get comfortable with the lab--we'll end up spending a lot of time together! We have a few announcements as we head into week 2:
You are welcome to use the espresso maker as long as you clean up after yourself. Frequent users are encouraged to bring a mug.
We’d like for you to keep a journal on your learning through Lab Projects as the weeks progress. We want you to pay special attention to the choices that you make as you explore multiple ideas, leverage social and material resources and seek feedback. It would be useful to …
read moreDesign and build an Omni-Animal. In this assignment, you will get comfortable with working in the TLTL, and with using the laser cutter to prototype two- and three-dimensional objects. Alternative: Propose creating another object, useful or beautiful, of similar complexity as an Omni-Animal. Your project should still meet the same …
read moreEach assignment should have three parts: first, an explanation of the assignment's goals and deliverables. Then an explanation of the assessment. Finally, a more detailed list of steps. This is where you should include or link to resources students will need for the assignment. Many of these resources will …
read moreLink to the Scratch website
Click 'Create' on the top left corner to get started! To save your work, create an account.
The slides from class can be found here.
Topics introduced in this lab include - polygons, looping, encapsulation, parameters, recursion
This station is a top-down introduction to some important programming concepts. Rather than learning the nitty-gritty of a language, you will start with a working game, read the source code, and discuss design considerations for your own programming. Key concepts include:
These safety norms apply at all times in the lab. There are additional safety precautions for each tool; make sure you read these before using a tool.
