STAR I Workshop
Over the summer of 2018, the C Design Lab conducted a two-week Toy Design workshop for students in grades 7 and 8. The Toy Design Summer Workshop is a combination of lecture-based and project-based classroom exercises. The students work in groups to complete certain engineering challenges, but also work individually for a more personalized learning experience. In the first week of this toy design workshop, we covered topics such as:
- How to sketch
- Strength of Materials
- Reverse Engineering
- Simple Vector Analysis
- Forces
- Newton’s Laws of Motion
- CAD & Rapid Prototyping
- Basic Circuit Analysis
During the final week of the workshop, the students participated in a Storytelling Challenge where they worked with their team to write a short story and incorporate at least one of the learning outcomes from each day of the previous week. The students presented their stories for their friends and family on the last day.
PULSAR II Workshop
The Smart and Interconnected Toys workshop is a combination of lecture-based and project-based classroom exercises designed for students in grades 9 – 12. The students worked in groups to complete certain engineering challenges, but also worked individually for a more personalized learning experience, building their own robots from scratch. Much of the design uses recycled materials for all construction and sustainable design thinking embodies the NSF IGERT Sustainable Electronics partnership. In the first week of this workshop, we cover topics such as:
- How to use a breadboard (Basic circuit analysis)
- Fabricating touch and bend sensors
- Arduino Programming
- Controlling Arduinos over Wifi
- Computer Aided Design and Rapid Prototyping
- Controlling DC and servo motors
During the final week of the workshop, the students participated in a Battlebots Challenge where they worked with their team to create a Battlebot that will eliminate their opponents robots by popping a balloon located on the rear end of their robots. The teams were required to create different mechanisms for their Battlebots that are sure to beat their competition!