And awaaayy we go!

Today was a shift at LSP, as we moved from brain sweat to actual sweat. The morning was spent reading, discussing, arguing and deciding on what type of wave the Scholars wanted to investigate, and what type of experiment they wanted to design and build to test their hypotheses.

After an hour of researching, the corn starch, power tools, fish tanks and duct tape came out and we got to work. With a quick break for pizza and rolling down the hills, our fifteen Scholars spent the afternoon cutting cardboard, mixing oobleck, tweaking fans, positioning mirrors and being scientists with tool belts.

For "Tinker Time" today, the Scholars played with Tellegami, Explain Everything, iMovie, Exploratorium, and other apps on the iPads that interested them.

It was a great day!

Light waves.

Sound waves.

Wave machines.

Breaking waves.

Radiation waves.

Micro waves.

Wave models.

Causing waves.

Wave vibrations.

Ultra-violet waves.

Tinker with waves.

Waving goodbye.


Translation:) We had a GREAT day! After the general meeting to get started, the Scholars broke into two groups to learn how to make movies on their iPads and to study the effects of obstacles on streams of water. They got to put their hands into a "surf stream" and create their own waves, figuring out the differences between the waves in water and the waves we've been studying. After a quick snack, they switched and started the process all over again!

From the movie studio and the surfing, they moved to making waves in the pool with Mr. Cowman. A lot of splashing and learning later, they came up to play some four-square with the St. Matthew's student volunteers and eat lunch.

Then they began to study sound waves and make music with Ms. Sauerhoff, and learn about radiation and ultra-violet waves with Mr. Harlan.  And just like yesterday, Mr. U brought out some squishy, windy, sweet fun during "Tinker Time" that had all of the LSP staff, volunteers and Scholars laughing, learning and working together to investigate how things work and what we could build.

It was a great way to end the day!

How do you untie a knot made up of fourteen different people, twenty-eight hands and arms, and unlimited opinions? With patience, communication and a little bit of help.

The Lucas Scholars started the day learning in a physical way what Working Together, Having Fun and Being a Scholar really means. Then they dove into the details of their week, and got to put their hands on the iPads. They joined a community space called Edmodo set up specifically for them to interact and crunched some ideas about digital citizenship, waves and energy.

They proved to Mr. H that waves can indeed be used to communicate, and then tested their very own hypotheses about changing sound waves with iPads and straws.

After that, it was lunch time:)

Renewed and refreshed, the Scholars got down to business forming hypotheses, creating experiments and collecting data to prove themselves right or wrong!  In between they had a little bit of fun creating transverse and compression waves with Slinkys...

Then Mr. U showed up with some clay, circuit boards, alligator clips and laptops, and they proceeded to turn themselves into human conductors, playing video games and musical notes with the claps and taps of their hands!

Winding down with some smores and reflection, the Lucas Scholars set their goals for tomorrow and the rest of the week, deciding what they wanted to focus on for their culminating projects and who they wanted to work with. 

A lot of work!
A lot of fun!
A lot of learning!
Day One, in the books.

We had our very first meeting at the Boys and Girls Club on Friday, July 12th. Our team included John Umekubo (Technology Director), Manny Quintero (Technology Associate), Vanessa Gatewood (Development and newly appointed Diversity Coordinator) and Ross Cowman (Science Teacher). You can read even more about these fabulous folks in our Faculty section of the website. We arrived at BGVC around 3:30 to get set up for our 4:00 pm meeting time with the students, which was to be followed by a 5:00 meeting with parents.  We had a few parents show up around 3:45 pm to meet us. We originally planned on meeting them after working with the students for an hour, but there they were so we begin talking about the program even before we met any students. Thinking back, maybe that was superior to our original plan anyway. At 4:00 pm, we met 11 of our potential students, and about the same number of parents trickled in.  Some of the parents said they had kids in the program, but the student couldn’t make this meeting. According to Valentin, he does have the full 20 student roster, including names on a wait list, so we are hoping by the time the program starts in two weeks we will be completely full. We really tried to set our sights to a fairly manageable number in our first year.

We began by introducing ourselves, the program, and talking about our Lucas Scholars motto: "Work Together. Have Fun. Be a Scholar". Then, we broke out into small groups with several students and a teacher. We asked the students questions like: “Why do you want to learn about science and technology?” and “If you could invent one thing, what would it be?”, then students went into an “interview room” to give their responses to the iPad camera. We were going to show this footage of the students to parents at the meeting, but time got away from us. Instead, we will likely use this footage on the website and/or at graduation. You can never have too much documentation in this instance!

After their interviews, we used the iPads. We had them open an app called “Socrative” which is an interactive response system. Students progressed through a teacher led questionnaire and their answers showed up on the board. We then discussed the answers as a group as we moved through the questions. It was all a little goofy, with questions like “Would your rather be a tiny rhino or a giant hamster?”, but also had some questions that sparked lively discussion like “Would you rather get even or get over it?”. It was fun for the students and parents to see their responses on the board in bar graph form.

From there, I had the students fill out a short initial assessment of their knowledge about iPads and our subject matter for the summer, waves. I am hoping this assessment will yield valuable data for comparison.

It was time to get the group moving again, so we started talking about energy and waves. I showed the movement of energy through solids with a marble demonstration, as you can see in this video:

With that bit of background information, we introduced them to three different learning stations. The first was a laser challenge, where students had to arrange a series of mirrors in order to make the laser beam hit the target (light waves). They really seemed to enjoy this one and John led them through the activity in an enthusiastic way. The next table was a sound waves station with four or five iPad minis and headphones. Students were instructed to open the app “Exploratorium: Sound”, and work their way through the app. This is a truly engaging application that operates a bit like an interactive book with each chapter having a certain theme. One chapter is “How Old Are Your Ears?” where students could compare the frequencies of sound they can hear versus their parents’. There is a significant difference! As we age, we lose the ability to hear higher frequencies. The last station was by far the most popular because it involved fire. Leave it to the most experienced science teacher, Bruce, to find this great activity called “Singing Pipes”. He couldn’t be there on Friday, but demonstrated it to us before he left so the youthful and dynamic Ross could show the students. Basically, you heat up a metal pipe stuffed with wire mesh with a propane torch. Then, hold the pipe perpendicular to the ground and it will “sing”, really more like a moaning wail. When you hold the pipe parallel to the ground it stops making the sound because the hot air is no longer going up through the top. Check out this link from Steve Spangler to hear the pipes sing away: http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/singing-pipes

After the stations were done, parents and students started to filter out, saying thank you, goodbye and asking any remaining questions. I can’t emphasize enough how energizing it was to meet these kids, parents, and seeing our Lucas Scholars team in action. I think we all walked away with new knowledge, experience, and genuine excitement for the week to come. Only 12 more days until we're rolling!