geometry – KidsLab

DroneBlocks with Dennis Baldwin

hansamann — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 18:33:39 +0000

In this episode, we’re talking to Dennis Baldwin, the creator of DroneBlocks. DroneBlocks teaches STEM and the real-world application of drone technology.

Dennis has been fascinated with remote control cars and airplanes since he was a kid. Through his passion of the RC hobby he learned many aspects of engineering by building, wiring, and programming flight controllers for his RC planes and quadcopters. He shares a majority of his research and development on his YouTube channel – check out the links in the show notes at kidslab.dev!

Fast forward to 2015 – Dennis has already met Marisa, an elementary school teacher and they are both working together for after-schools classes to teach kids to 3d print, wire, build and fly quadcopters. He experiments with block programming and the DJI SDK – DJI is the market-leading drone manufacturer. Students loved it and so Droneblocks was born.

Droneblocks is block-based programming for drones. After connecting the Wifi of a Laptop. Tablet or Smartphone, the students can connect to the drone and run their missions. Missions are sets of blocks, typically beginning with a takeoff, followed by various commands such as fly forward, yaw right, etc. and finally – of course – you want to land the drone. With drones such as the Ryzerobotics Tello and some indoor propeller guards, you can easily perform an indoor workshop with a whole class of kids.

Besides the navigation blocks, there are of course also the typical logic, math and loop blocks available. Droneblocks is perfect for learning geometry, such as sine and cosine. Imagine how excited the kids can get, if they are able to apply sine and cosine to move a drone in a circle movement around an object. There are many practical use cases for such drone missions, for example when it comes to 3D scanning via consecutive images taken around an object.

Together with Marisa, Dennis now also offers an online curriculum and professional development services. I am really very excited to talk to dennis about the intersection of drones & coding as well as his thoughts on STEAM education in general.

Shownotes

BlocksCAD with Solomon Menashi

hansamann — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 16:43:58 +0000

We’re talking to Solomon Menashi, the CEO and Co-Founder of BlocksCAD. BlocksCAD is a cloud-based 3D modeling tool that encourages users to learn math, computational thinking and coding concepts through visualization and designing models to be 3D printed.

Solomon – or Sol as many call him – is the CEO & Co-Founder of BlocksCAD. Sol has been a leader in STEM education both as an educator and entrepreneur for over a decade. After a successful career as a small business executive, Solomon has worked with LEGO Education and as a founder of his own company to teach STEM in after school settings.

Images: Copyright Sol Menashi, BlocksCAD – used with permission

In the course of his career, he has taught classes and developed curriculums. Solomon has an Master of Education (EDM) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) with a concentration in learning and teaching. He also has an MBA from Boston University. In 2017 Sol co-founded BlocksCAD Inc to help educators and students more effectively use BlocksCAD and 3D printers in classrooms around the world.

Here’s a quick intro to BlocksCAD: it’s a cloud based 3d modelling tool, which means kids and teachers can simply use their web browser and a block-based visual coding language to create 3d shapes. By dragging blocks such as cubes & spheres into the workspace and by applying set operations such as union or difference and combining this with conditional blocks or loops, even complex 3d shapes can be created. While having a lot of fun creating these models, the kids learn about logic, coding and mathematics.

BlocksCAD is based on the open-source programming language OpenSCAD, a powerful and popular language in the 3D maker community. BlocksCAD’s block-based interface makes programming accessible to students as young as 3rd grade (8 years old), but is powerful enough to continue making sophisticated designs through high school.

The created designs can be exported to STL files for 3d printing and the projects can also be shared online so other’s can edit and advance the projects.

Besides providing this great 3d editor, BlocksCAD also includes a lot of teacher support tools, for example for managing student accounts and managing the classes. BlocksCAD also provides lessons for grades 3-12, aligned with computer science and math classes.

Shownotes

TurtleStitch with Andrea Mayr-Stalder

hansamann — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 18:41:00 +0000

In this episode, we’re talking to Andrea Mayr-Stalder about TurtleStitch. TurtleStitch allows kids to visually code a stitching path, export it and then have a real embroidery machine produce it!

Andrea Mayr-Stalder is an artist, educator and the project lead for TurtleStitch and is from Vienna, Austria. Turtlestitch is based on Snap!, a browser-based educational programming language, and is used to generate patterns for embroidery machines.

Images: Copyright Andrea Mayr-Stalder – used with permission.

We have interviewed Jens Moenig, the lead developer of Snap! last year, so you might want to check out that episode.

As Turtlestitch is based on Snap!, also Turtlestitch is easy to use and requires no prior knowledge in programming. Using code, you can create stunning patterns for embroidery. It is not just a great way to get kids – both boys and girls – interested in coding, it’s also a useful tool for designers to experiment with generative aesthetics and precision embroidery.

The key concept that Turtlestitch uses is the drawn line, where the line is being recorded as a running stitch and transformed into a widely-used embroidery file format.

To get started with Turtlestitch, you just have to visit turtlestitch.org and open their web-based editor!