by 7th grade student Marco
written by Ella, Alex K, Noah, Gabe, Alex MC, Bill, Lexi, Cillian, Sarah & Jac
What a day! We were out the door by 9am and took CalTrain south to the San Mateo Expo Center. After a half-mile walk we arrived at the purpose of this trip - the Maker Faire. We saw so many amazing things over the course of the day…the pictures below by Ella, Cillian and Bill tell a better story than words ever could:
My favorite part of this day was:
“the imploding quarters!” - Cillian
“the tv-b-gone that can switch televisions on and off from 100 meters away and the jeep covered in Lego!” - Lexi
“the super-realistic R2-D2 robots!” - Ella
“the life-sized mousetrap!” - Noah
“the Lego world exhibits!” - Alex MC
“the Van der Graaf generator!” - Bill”
Today we rode the train up to San Francisco today and then took the #30 bus from the station to the Palace of Fine Arts. We spent the morning at the Exploratorium - the museum of technology, art and perception.
Gabe got to “see” a sound wave using a vacuum tube filled with water. We climbed inside one of the columns supporting a rotunda built for the 1939 World’s Fair and filled the space with low tones that appeared to have volume fluctuations based on where we stood within each waveform. Alex MC spent some time today testing his ability to walk quietly while being judged by a decibel recorder. We interacted with visual illusions, psychophysical experiences, mind games and tactile curiosities.
We walked a mile to Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers, where we ran into Joe Grand. Joe is one of the stars of Prototype This, Discovery Channel’s awesome engineering and programming show.
“It was really cool when Joe opened his backpack and showed us a bunch of circuit boards that they used on the show” - Gabe
Joe was incredibly generous with his time, and spent a couple of hours with us. He told stories of his time on television, his interests as an engineer, his favorite projects and the DEFCON hacking conference. He entertained our questions about his favorite iPhone apps, OS thoughts, SF landmarks and life as a new dad.
Our afternoon plans were to visit the Golden Gate Bridge, but an overwhelming majority of us wanted more time at the Exploratorium for fun with physics.
Late afternoon we got a call from Mari Malvino, who works for the Giants baseball club. Mari and her boss, Pat Gallagher, invited the digital arts crew to a behind-the-scenes tour of the announcers booth and scoreboard control room. Jim, who works with the scoreboard, gave us an overview and pointed out some of the amazing technology they use. We watched an editor build the presentations that play between innings and saw the sound control guy using iTunes to manage his library. We got to take a pre-game stroll of the club level, where there is tons of great memorabilia.
“It was cool to see the stadium and scoreboard from the controllers point of view.” - Alex K.
At 9pm we were tired, cold, and a little taken-aback by the colorful language some Giants fans use when talking to the other team. We headed to the train and collapsed by 11:20pm. Tomorrow we are off to San Mateo for the grand finale - a full day of Maker Faire! We’re hoping to run into Ani, Adam & Raphael from Thursday and Joe and some Exploratorium folk from today.
“I can sum up the day in 5 words: walking, sitting, eating and guitar-hero-ing” - Cillian
We started the day hanging out at SeaTac in Terminal A and were mesmerized by a kinetic sculpture by Seattle artist Trimpin.
We boarded our Virgin America flight on time and “There were no snakes on the plane (says Noah).” The entertainment system was broken but we thought Cillian could fix it…by the time we took off it was working again. Alex MC watched Hannah Montana - Ella watched the College World Series on ESPN.
SFO has cool hand drying machines that Alex K tricked into turning on without drying anything. Lexi sat on the people mover railing and floated down the terminal.
We took a shuttle to the hotel and checked in. They gave us free toothpaste and hairbands!? We ate our lunch in the hotel courtyard and tested the hotel wifi connections on various electronic devices.
3rd form of transportation for the day - we took the CalTrain into downtown San Francisco and then walked 2 miles through the Mission district to Noisebridge, an incredible hacker space. We arrived unannounced and got a super tour of the facilities by Ani Neo - she showed us the tinker space, the electronics lab and the danger room.
We also saw some installation art, such as the Game of Life and one of the original Teen Hunger Force Adult Swim LED ads from the Boston freakout.
“I didn’t want to leave Noisebridge” - Bill
We met Adam and Raphael from NYC Resistor, who are in town for the Maker Faire. Adam has a 3-D printer called Makerbot and will be doing demos at the Faire - we hope to see all our new friends on Saturday.
“Amazingly awesome and I was extremely jealous of their workspace.” - Noah
Once our brains were full, we walked 2 miles up Van Ness to Japantown. We walked by City Hall and then stopped at the Peace Center. After a short rest, we carried on to Jac’s brother’s house, where we ate pasta, broccoli and ice cream and played a couple hours of collaborative Guitar Hero World Tour.
“The Stevester is awesome!” - Alex MC
We ended with a mile sprint to the train station (we missed our train by 6 minutes) and then hung out for a half hour until the next train. Back to the hotel by 11pm.
In cleaning up the file server, I came across this hilarious video from the graduating class of 2008. “Unexercise” was created in a collaboration between Kasha’s 8th grade Language Arts class and Tech. The assignment: create a video that demonstrates your understanding of satire:
In cleaning up the file server, I came across this hilarious video from the graduating class of 2008. “Assigned Seats” was created in a collaboration between Kasha’s 8th grade Language Arts class and Tech. The assignment: create a video that demonstrates your understanding of satire:
Jac is out of town this week, on the Olympic Coast with the 7th grade. 6th grade students won’t miss a beat - this week they are introducing themselves to Google Sketchup, a great free 3-D modeling program.
Students begin their learning by watching a short YouTube introductory video that will introduce several tools. To get more information, try this link to the sketchup video series to learn more.
Over 28,000 students submitted artistic renderings of the Mountain View, California’s company logo. No Billings entrants this year, but several sixth grade students are already asking about participation for next year!
Gavin and Isaac recently traced the stainless steel in hockey skates back to its production process. Their presentation included an embedded YouTube video from the Discovery Channel and a historical pictorial of hockey skates through the last century.
The 6th grade’s tech visitor series concluded today by spending time with Blair, a Seattle freelance designer who has designed and coded for many companies including Nestle, Microsoft, Cadillac and Burger King.
Blair discussed the benefits of working for yourself (he has 2 chickens in his home office!), how being creative can turn into employment (he makes games and then gets hired to put company logos onto them), and how his interest in art and technology has turned into a career.
Blair uses his own website as a showcase for his talents and is also starting his own small business, PillowMob, which is a great example of bringing a creative idea to the marketplace.Billings Middle School thanks Blair for his visit!
