Technovation Challenge Fall 2012

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Do I need to complete all fall activities to participate in the Challenge? No!


Hi Technovation Teachers and Mentors,

I wanted to address this question since some of you have emailed us about it. Thank you for reaching out to us with your questions.

Fall activities are optional. They are great ways to get momentum going for teams that have more time together. If you are not able to schedule a field trip this fall, you could show your teams a couple of the virtual field trip videos from our fall course to get them excited. Week 7 of the 12-week spring curriculum is about career exploration, so you can always schedule a field trip later in the program.

What we mean by "Hack Day" is a collection of App Inventor tutorials that get students comfortable with using App Inventor. Ideally, students will complete the tutorials before they start the 12-week course (i.e. before January 21). In the fall course, we share some ideas on how to present the "Hack Day" tutorials to get girls excited and build momentum for the 12-week Challenge. For example, one way is to meet with nearby teams and spend a Saturday going through the tutorials together. This is simply a suggestion. You are free to provide the tutorials to your teams in any way that works best for you.

Please share your ideas and experiences so that others can learn and give feedback. We'll include your suggestions in future materials and resources for our program.

Are you planning a field trip or Hack Day? Share your experience here.

Task Discussion


  • Shannon said:

    Hey all! Wanted to share some of our learnings from Hack Day for others.

    In Portland we are dividing Hack Day across a couple of meetings (starting in December) and will be complete in order to start the 12 courses with everyone else. This allows girls who weren't able to attend one single day so close to the holidays to participate.

    Also what we discovered is that by printing out the instructions and giving each girl a copy they started to zip through the steps on their own and weren't really paying attention to 'the presentation'. We went with it and it yielded some interesting dynamics. The first is that by working on their own they were experiementing with the tool more and therefore learning more faster.  They started showing us capabilities of the tool that weren't documented (these are girls who have never coded a single line before). The girls who were faster started mentoring their peers. It also allowed we mentors to spend time with the girls who were struggling without creating peer pressure on them to 'hurry up'. Everyone was fully engaged. At the end we had show and tell -- some of the girls invented new ways to code or had added capabilities completely on their own.  This was the first exercise! 

    Also when it was time to use a sound file I suggested they go online and find an copyright free audio file of a sound they wanted the Crystal Ball to sound like. That created a whole new learning curve and level of enthusiasm as they started to conceptualize, customize and own their creation. This is also a very real world scenerio of doing discovery online and we were able to teach them advanced search techniques.

    What surprised me was the two girls that struggled the most when asked over lunch if they had enjoyed themselves got a bright light in their eye and said something along the lines of "That was fun, can't wait to do more!" The levels of frustration they were experiencing were rewarded with success (everyone completed the app in their own way), and that meant something important to them. I was concerned we were going to lose them until then. 

     

    P.S. All the mentors said they had fun too and were looking forward to the next session. That matters as well! :)

    on Jan. 9, 2013, 9:51 a.m.

    Angelica said:

    Hi Shannon,

    Thank you for sharing your ideas and successes completing the Hack Day tutorials. I am thrilled to hear how the girls tinkered with CrystalBall and customized it to get more from the experience. Excellent job facilitating the learning and adapting to help your team. It sounds like the tutorial also helped build comradery between experts (or students who got the concept fast) and novices. I can't wait to hear how the rest of the tutorials go.

    Thanks again,

    Angelica

    on Jan. 9, 2013, 12:47 p.m. in reply to Shannon

  • Kelly Powers said:

    Our AMSA Teams completed their Hackathon this past Saturday on 1/5/2012. We completed all of the tutorias except for the invent your own app. We will have the students create a simple app at our next meeting and then award them the Hack Day Badge.

    Girls seem psyched and happy to be creating some awesome apps. Especially the no text while driving and getting it to work in the emulator was awesome.

    The Marlborough, MA team still needs mentors!! We have some emails out but still are in need of mentors. Pass the word !

     

    Kelly

    on Jan. 8, 2013, 8 p.m.

    TahaniZ said:

    That's awesome Kelly! I'm so happy to hear that the girls are enjoying making the apps! I'll definitely spread the word out. 

    If anyone knows women in MA, it would be great to tell them about Technovation and help us find mentors for the girls in AMSA.

    Thanks!

    Tahani

    on Jan. 8, 2013, 11:23 p.m. in reply to Kelly Powers