Gadgeteer Robotics for 8th Graders

You may not want to record this session… :wink:

@ ianlee74 - I am not sure I can record any sessions, I still have to check to see if the parents signed the right permission slips, the school was handling that end

Yea, that’s usually a problem with schools. Did they do a background check on you? I assume not… :wink: My kids’ school won’t let parents participate in out of / after school trips and activities unless they pay $50 for the background check and get “certified”. As an instructor I would have to go through that before teaching such a course. They did let me come talk during career week but they wouldn’t let me take any pictures.

@ ianlee74 - The background check would come next year if I wanted to participate in the curriculum but since everything is being held at the school for an after school club, we get a pass

@ Gary - and I just caught your sarcasm about “probably not”…I will have you know that I have monkeys that take care of my “list” :wink:

You talking to yourself now? :smiley: That probably won’t increase your odds of passing the background check.

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Despite what Ian might think of me, tonight went really well. The kids were really nervous to begin with and then they started to relax. However, they reminded me that they were 8th graders again when talking about team names and they wanted to call themselves the “Baboon Butts”! lol

Sounds about right. We homeschool, and that’s still an issue. :slight_smile:

@ devhammer - It did make laugh though, the kids were pretty good and seemed to be really interested. We will see by week 2 when they really get into it.

Congrats. Kids can be a tough audience. Though the coolness of Gadgeteer doesn’t hurt.

I did some soldering with my boys this past weekend, and my oldest is starting a class on Scratch tomorrow. So the timing is getting close to ideal to get them rolling on Gadgeteer. :slight_smile:

@ devhammer - A couple of more years and I think my oldest will be ready.

@ Gary - How old?

Maybe start with some of the easy kits from Make or SparkFun? I was thinking about something like this for my 8yo:

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10723

@ devhammer - He’s 11 and yeah those types of kits would probably be a great start for him.

That just gave me a laugh. When my oldest was about 10 he was obsessed with pink baboon butts. :smiley:

@ ianlee74 - Which is funny because that’s how they asked me if it was ok, student says “What color are baboon butts?”, me “why?”, student “That’s what we want to call ourselves”

So, another successful day. It’s great to see the kids so excited to learn. We also came up with a name that had nothing to do with butts, they are now called the “Robotic Rulerz”.

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You couldn’t convince them that the “FEZ Monkeys” was a good alternative to “Baboon Butts”? How often are you meeting?

@ ianlee74 - 3 days a week for now, for an hour each time. It goes pretty quick.

Yea. An hour is hardly enough time to get into any kind of groove. Are they wanting more at the end of it or have they had enough?

@ ianlee74 - They want more which is what is making it fun. Everything is so new to them from what we can tell, they would probably spend hours working on stuff.

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