Designing Teens

today my partner and I did pico crickets that danced and also.

The project made sounds and it moved around and round.

It was very interesting to see that it was sensitve. 

TOday I did six more pico activities. i made it dance i made a reaction game show and i made some more stuff. it was cool. when we first started i didn't know how i was going to get into this because it was real confusing but now im into it and know how to do it so its fun.

Today, we did another challenge with the PicoCrickets. This time, we constructed different reaction games using the many materials. We also made Kenetic Sclputers and these were extremly easy to make. I still hope next week is fun also.

Today wasn't much different from last Saturday. We tried new design challenges with the Pico Crickets. We made them dance and tested our reaction time. I really think I'm getting more advanced with the Pico Crickets and I can't wait until next week. 

On Saturday, the youth staff in Design It continued to explore with Pico Crickets. This week more than any other the youth seemed really engaged in the activities that we have planned. Our lesson for today was to "Invent New Kinds of Musical Instruments". The lesson was broken down into three challenges: Electric Banana, Pickel-Oh and Play-Doh Piano. To find out more information about these design challenges and how the lesson went please read the teens' blogs.
 
On the classroom management part of the class, we tried to implement something a little different this week. Normally, all the youth in a component take their break collectively, we wanted to see whether or not the youth would be responsible enough to manage their own break time. After each teen completed their three design challenges and a blog they were to take a fifteen minute break. We had a couple of teens that were running a little behind but for the most part everyone did a great job getting back on time. I think this is something that we will keep experimenting with.

Today we worked with the picocrickets. We took a banana, pickle, and play-DOh, and tried to makedifferent musical notes wit hthem. You had to hook up the sound part of the pico cricket, and then use the aligator clips to connect the food items with the sound box. With the banana, when you peeled it the sound got lower, when you put the peel up, the sound got a higher pitch. the same sequence worked with the other items too. 

I made a pico musical today. one i made with play dough. onewith a banana . and one with a pickle. it was cool but frustrating at the same time.