technology with intention
6th Grade
Tech class happenings from the 6th grade, including STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).
Students celebrate Media Arts
736 days
Rory, Jake, Cooper, Ben C, Enzo, and Milo headed over to Seattle Country Day School today for the first Northwest Middle School Media Festival. It was standing room only in the screening room.
There were entries by students from Eton, Whitman, McClure, Vista, Woodinville Monessori and Catlin Gabel. Billings students represented the interactive category, with websites and games. Ben and Cooper entered their Battle of Fredricksburg film, which was well received.
We were honored to be joined on our journey by Noah, a Billings alum who helped found our DigiArts program and one of the organizers of the first Maker Faire trip that we took 2 years ago. Thank you Noah!
STEM: In a galaxy far far away
737 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade STEM students took a break from their recent study of programming and robotics to look at some more practical use of technology and engineering…Star Wars!
The Pacific Science Center and Science Fiction Museum worked together to create an exhibit that looks at the science and technology behind Star Wars and connections between the film series’ science fiction and real-world robotics. Students got to design their own mag-lev trains and explored similarities between the programming in R2-D2 and a robotic vacuum cleaner.
STEM: Lego Mindstorm Sensors
744 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade students are continuing their study of programming and creative problem solving with Lego Mindstorms. Building on our study of robot movement last week, we were presented with 3 new challenges this week, all requiring sensors!
- Convince your robot to stay within a path outlined by masking tape against a black floor. The path weaves around the classroom. So far, students have figured out how to have their robots stop at the tape and change direction, but no solutions yet on how to the the robot to decide which way to turn.
- Create a whisper bot, a robot that will only move when it is quiet in the room. If noise reaches a certain threshold, the robot will stop until it is quiet again. As an added challenge, if the robot receives an extremely loud noice (“STOP!”) then it will cancel it’s program and remain stopped forever.
- Send your robot directly at a wall and have it stop without bumping into anything and then react using sound or movement.
Digital identity quotes
756 days
The 8th grade recently deployed an annual digital identity survey of Billings Middle School students. We are still analyzing the data, but here are some interesting quotes that were submitted:
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STEM: Lego Mindstorm Movement
757 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
STEM students returned from break and jumped back into the Mindstorm NXT programming that we began back in March. Today’s class was presented with 3 challenges:
- Make your robot climb an inclined plane and then traverse a table top, stopping within 1.5 cm of the far edge. Students were encouraged to succeed in this challenge using 3 different variables: wheel rotations, time and distance.
- Send your robot at least 10 feet away from its point of origin and then return to within a 6cm radius of the starting location.
- Program your robot to travel in a figure 8.
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Design Week 2011
774 days
6th and 8th grade students are busily engaged in the Billings tradition of “Design Week” in the days before Spring Break. How excited does everyone get about a week’s worth of exploration around this years topic of PLAY? 106.8 decibels worth of excited, according to our sound level meter! That is louder than a motorcycle or subway train.
To learn more about this year’s Design Week, check out the daily postings on our main website. If you are logged in as a school community member, you’ll have access to each day’s complete photo albums from the right sidebar.
Lego Robots – intro to programming
782 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade STEM students are spending Fridays through the end of the year learning about programming concepts and physics with Lego Robotics. We just built the Edubots in class. Arthur, Jake and Collin are all part of our afterschool club, so they are using this time to plan curriculum and robotics challenges for the rest of the class.
Lesson 1: Collin led an intro to the NXT programming environment and simple move commands. Super cool!
AT&T to buy T-Mobile
789 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
6th grade students discussed the possible reasons and outcomes of a T-Mobile USA takeover by AT&T.
The conversation was wide-ranging…some of the topics discussed:
- what is the history of AT&T?
- how would the purchase of T-Mobile help AT&T provide service to it’s users?
- how would T-Mobile’s customers experience the change?
- how do cell phone companies marketing departments claim colors to represent their company?
- why does the US have more than one cell phone technology (CDMA, GSM, etc)?
- what is a monopoly?
- why is competition important for the US?
- what is the electromagnetic spectrum?
STEM: getting to know 101 neighbors
802 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
With winter program over, students are eagerly back into Friday STEM experiences. We revisited our learning of binary code from back in December and took our knowledge out to explore the community.
Students were presented with 100-year-old photos of Green Lake businesses. Each photo included its street address written in binary code. Students were tasked with decoding the numbers and then visiting each location to take a photo.
In each photo, students are standing either facing the camera or away from it, representing ones and zeros. Their body language spells out the street address in binary!
*Historic images from “Seattle’s Green Lake” by Brittany Wright.
Spanish scripting in Scratch
803 days
by Jac de Haan
in 6th Grade
Another amazing Spanish version of true/false. This game was created by 6th grade student Gus:
