Today I took my POVpoi prototype that I’ve been playing with (read: breaking, fixing, recording changes to be made, etc, etc) to school and show to the 6th grade science kids. First I did a short explanation of what P.O.V. stands for and how it’s used in our daily lives to some extend or another. Then I talked about the unit itself before turning it on and showing them what it can do. Afterwards I asked them to raise their hands for each of three questions:
- who’s interested in the science aspect of it? (how it works, what we see, and how our brain sees it)
- who’s interested in the chemistry side? (how components are made)
- who’s interested in the programming aspect of it? (how to write those cool patterns or process images to do that)
Of those three, the results were roughly 10%, 5%, and 85% respectively on a group of about 160 kids. Not bad really. One question I kept getting every single period was, “Where can I buy that?” Which is putting me on a fast(er) track to get more made. But, now we’re talking about what we can do next year. I’m thinking maybe an afternoon or two where we strictly cover ‘How to play with a digital LED strip and FastLED’ and forgo the Arduino basics, and a much longer session (I’m talking actual classes during the day) where we actually teach them Arduino.
This is fun, it’s slowly growing into more than I would’ve ever expected. To have this many kids interested in some aspect or another just gives me the warm and fuzzies. The reception at the nearby high school wasn’t anything like this. Maybe because those teenagers are just lazy and don’t give a damn. But these middle schoolers are, well, to put it another way, “nipping at my heels!”