Vidor Middle School Science Day Festival

Date: Saturday, October 17, 2009

Coordinators: Kelly Harbour & Kathlyn Doss
4 INSPIRED participants: Daniel Vincent, Kathlyn Doss, Kelley Lester, Kelly Harbour
1 STAIRSTEP participant: Sean Skelton

Preparation:

Paperwork:
i. Photography permission forms for minors. Suggest rewording forms for 'parental/guardian consent for the children listed below.'

Robots: (Dog, Guitar, Sled, 3 MS style robots, Snake?)
i. Ensure batteries are charged.
ii. Charge & pack extra batteries.
iii. Ensure the chosen robots have the appropriate programs on them (ie: Follow the Wall).

Handouts:
i. Information handouts; Inspired, Stairstep, CS Dept, etc.
ii. Suggest making fun sheets for the kids, like crosswords.
iii. Pens?, stickers?, decals?, other?.

Other Equipment:
i. 2 Laptops with their powercables.
ii. 2 cords to connect the robots to the laptops.
iii. A box (used for both carrying robots & for placing over the body of the MS design: hilarious).
iv. A couple extra t-shirts to display on the table. (Next year, maybe 1 each for Inspired & Stairstep).
v. At couple of NSF bags for carrying the paperwork, batteries & pens as well as for displaying on the table.

Telling the Vidor Coordinators what we need:
i. At least 2 power outlets for the laptops.
ii. Real tile floor, not gymnasium bouncy floor, for the robots.
iii. Someplace that doesn't echo or is massively noisy so we can demonstrate 'calling' Dog-bot.

Reports by the Coordinator and participants:

Coordinator reports:

Kelly:
The Vidor Festival was quite successful, there were about 200 kids plus parents. The school had a number of other shows including telescopes, rocks, pelts, balloons, static electricity and a live owl. The Vidor coordinators informed us that we were one of the two most popular tables and our robot-dog was the most popular robot. We advertised our upcoming Middle School Academies and had quite a bit of interest. Vidor is very interested in hosting another of these events next year and having us come back. (Link to her reports page here)

Kathlyn:
Kelly Harbour, and I co-coordinated this event, which occurred on Saturday, October 17, 2009. Cynthia, Sean, Kelley Lestor and Daniel were participants in this event.

Set up at Vidor began at 9am, and clean up started at 2pm. There were around 200 students who showed up at the school. The Vidor coordinators reported that our booth was one of the favorites, along with Stairstep's Physics booth. There were several kids that came back to the booth over and over again. There were several parents who sounded interested in the MSA camps. Vidor expressed a big interest in getting us to come again next year as well. (Link to her reports page here)

INSPIRED/STAIRSTEP participant summaries:

Daniel:
It was a wonderful Saturday afternoon. There were many middle school students there that were interested in the robots. We demoed the puppy, guitar, dog sled, and autonomous robot Lego NXTs. Most of most time was spent trouble-shooting. Honestly the only reliable robot we had there was the guitar. Although we had an overall great presentation, we definitely need to revise the build, programming, and presentation of the robots. One of the problems that we encountered was the surface of the floor in the gym where our booth was set up caused the autonomous robot programmed to follow a wall (box) to break its loop, because it could not travel in a straight line. The distance variables that the puppy uses needs to be adjusted for the turn of the neck and the drive left and right for a move believable act. The dog sled fell apart a couple of times, I think it should be reinforced to help with stand the impact of the having the motors at 100%. We have definitely benefited from the experience of this event now that we have some notion on how to improve our demo for upcoming events.

Kelley:
This event was GREAT! We had a lot of fun with the kids and robots. I've already started looking at making cross word puzzles and word searches. I have emailed the team and asked them to send me a list of words to use. We talked to numerous parents and described the upcoming academies. I think most will be looking for the applications to come from the school. I explained that once we set our dates, we would be sending the applications out. Some of the Vidor teachers were interested and were promoting our academies. They were telling parents and children that they needed to participate with us. I think having us actually talk to the parents is one of the best ways to get more participation.

I saw what some of the other booths had to attract the kids and thought maybe we could do something similar. (Link to her reports page here)

Sean:

Feedbacks from participants:

EMAIL:
I wish to thank your group very much for coming and participating in our Science Day Festival. It was beautiful outside and lots of fun inside. Everyone that was involved in our festival was fantastic and very knowledgeable. We ended up with about 200 people showing up.

We will be having another one at least next year and will let you know so your group could come again if possible.

Again thank you very much for coming and participating in our event.

Cynthia Harland

Statistics:

Vidor Middle SchoolSchool ~200 kids, plus parents
Number of Undergraduate Participants: 5

Selected pictures:

""
Kathlyn Doss, Abigail, Shyanne, Quincy ""
Kelly Harbour, Abigail

Others: