Kindergarten Spinning Top

I assisted K-Leahi in their classroom this afternoon as students worked on designing and building a spinning top using craft sticks, bottle caps, chopsticks, thick poster board, and toilet paper rolls. Students experimented with balance while they tested various sizes, height, and weight of objects to see what could improve the spin. It was remarkable to see how each student interacted with the different materials and what they chose to do with them. It was so much fun watching them explore, play, and build as they tested out their designs.

Kinders working through the design process as they build and test their tops for optimum spinning efficiency.

Okinawan Exchange Students

I had the opportunity to work with some high school juniors from Okinawa today. Since I only had a short time with them, I decided to show them how to make their own stickers using the Sketches School app and Cricut Design Space. They loved being able to watch their design get cut out on the Cricut. As an added bonus, I made them a personalized "aloha" keychain. I hope they enjoyed their visit to our lower school Design Lab.

Grade 1 Social Event

The Office of Admissions held a special social event for the accepted grade 1 students. These students were deferred from entering kindergarten this school year as the new K-1 Community is being built. These families have the choice to stay at the school their child is currently attending or join 'Iolani's class of 2031 as first graders in our new K-1 classrooms for the 2019-2020 school year. As a way to introduce them to the Design Lab, we decided to do a quick Engineering lesson using LEGO blocks and teddy bear counters. "Constructioneers" were tasked with building a bridge that spans enough distance for a family of 5 bears to cross a raging river together. Each table had a "river" made out of blue paper, a container of teddy bears, and a pile of LEGO blocks. As an added constraint, a 3D printed boat also needed to be able to fit safely under their bridge and they needed to think about how the bear family would be able to climb up their bridges as well. I was so impressed by the creativity and thoughtful imagination of each bridge design. 🌉

Grade 6 Inkscape Review

I had the opportunity to work in the 6th grade science classrooms this week. Students are learning about Medieval times and are tasked with constructing a catapult that can launch a clay ball from various distances. They have already sketched a design and prototyped it from cardboard, so I provided a quick lesson on how to transfer their design to Inkscape so that their catapult pieces could be laser cut out of wood. It was a wonderful experience as I watched them measure their prototype for accurate dimensions, work together to problem solve design flaws, and put in immense effort to recreate their pieces digitally.

This student is designing one part of the catapult in Inkscape.

By adding a hole to his design, this student plans to insert a dowel through it when it is time to assemble the pieces together.

Catapult pieces fresh from the laser cutter.

5th Grade Inkscape Intro Lessons

I am so excited to be working with the 5th graders for the next 6-7 weeks. They will learn how to use the basic tools of Inkscape (with a focus on bezier) to trace a drawing or image digitally. If you want to convert a raster (bitmap) to a vector in Inkscape, you’ll need to trace the image. When more precise control is needed over the paths you create, you can opt to use Inkscape’s bezier tool to trace manually. We practiced importing an image, using the bezier to trace, setting the fill and stroke settings to determine line variations (which are "cut" lines and which are "etch" lines), then saving our work to be placed in the queue for laser cutting. Through this process, students are able to exercise patience and attention to detail as they recreate various line strokes.

5th graders are focused as they carefully use the bezier tool to trace around the image they chose to import.

These are some examples that students created.