Posts Tagged ‘Technology’

Levers – pt 4 (Tech Class)

Hello everybody! For our fourth week in technology class, we have been learning about levers and how they work. Each lever has three parts, an effort, a load and a fulcrum. You can arrange these parts differently, and that what creates different types of levers. We have been learning about class three levers (effort is in the middle). Class three levers are actually pretty weak, but are used in so many things today. Fishing poles, baseball bats, even your own arm is a class three lever! To experiment with this topic, we made mini catapults out of popsicle sticks, because they too are third class levers. Overall, I thought it was a fun project and I look forward to doing more stuff like this in the future.

Baby Carrots and Triangles – Pt 3 (Tech Class)

Hello everybody! In class this week we have been learning about the structural integrity of the triangle, and how trusses are used in buildings all around the world. For our interactive projects, we used baby carrots and toothpicks to make structures to hold up objects. To make the structures we would place toothpicks into chopped up baby carrots to make joints to connect the sides. Our challenge was to use triangles to hold up as many weights as possible, so I designed a cube with toothpicks going diagonally on the sides to make triangles, and it held up a lot of medium sized books! Overall, I thought the project was a really cool way of showing how triangles made things strong, and I really enjoyed it!

I-beams – pt 2 (Tech Class)

Hello everybody! In technology class we have been working on I-beams, and I have to say they are pretty cool! I beams are classix beams used in structures all over the world, and they are very strong and hold almost everything you see today up. Using cardboard, tape, glue and an instructional video from my teacher I was able to construct a working I beam, and work it did! It held up 6 oranges, 4 clementines, and some other random heavy stuff I could find. Anyways, the I-beam is a miracle of technology and I am so glad people have invented it.

Hope you all are well

Starting Technology Class – pt 1 – (Tech Class)

Hello everybody! Recently I have switched quarterlies and I am now in technology class, and I am pretty happy! We started class with learning about glue and the origins of the adhesives, and how they evolved over time. In the lesson we also learned about how glue sets, and how rain affects different glue. It was very interesting and enjoyable. I believe we learned about the power of adhesives for upcoming projects that we are going to do, for we learned how to bond things using glue and how long it takes to set. I am excited for the next few months, there is going to be a lot of fun projects and things to learn about.

I hope you all are well.

The absolute value fish – Tynker – Pt 9 (Comp Tech)

There are only two weeks left in our computer tech class, and for our final project, we are making lessons about things we’ve learned in school in Tynker, than asking a series of questions about that. I chose absolute values, because you can explain it in two sentences, and I just like writing |20| = ?. Anyways, I had a fish explain the lesson because, well, I felt like it and I went to work dragging “if then else” statements across the screen. After just about ten minutes I had a lesson with three questions at the end of it, and it did what was asked and produced something that worked.

We also were asked to view other peoples projects, and it was very fun to see what people have done. Everybody did different topics, different sprites explaining the topic and different moods of their projects overall. One person did a project where they had a troll explain least common multiples, and would play music if you got questions right. Overall, it was a cute project, a little on the easy side but it was definitely fun to see what other people have done.

 

Spreadsheets – pt 8 (Comp Tech)

In tech class, we have been creating spreadsheets. We have been monitoring our fitness through the week to test it out. Here is my chart:

To make this chart, I would use google sheets. The first thing I would do is fill in the cells with the amount of fitness I’ve done this week. Then, I would click “Create chart” and then google would create a chart for me! For doing averages, I would type =AVRAGE(), and then I would type in the exact cell location I wanted it to average. I love this feature, and it is much better than adding up 5 numbers in the google calculator and then dividing them. Spreadsheets are helpful in many ways, from counting your party guests to tracking the amount of books you read over the summer. Learning how to use google spreadsheets is easy, so I love using it for whatever random thing I have to keep track of.

I hope you all are well.

Answers – Swift Playground – pt 7 (Comp Tech)

Hello Everyone! Today I am going to go over a project we did in tech class on Swift playground. We did a simple answer machine, which took an input and repeated that input back. 

Lets see here, our program is asking a question and getting an input, which it then uses to say something about it. For example, when I put in the input “Stela” it would then say “I also like Stela,” The thing about this is if I put in anything, it will say the same thing, “I also like ___”. We did the same thing a couple times in a row, just using different questions. And that’s it! 

I hope you all are well.

(Btw shoutout to SkyBox Labs and Giant Squid for making those great games)

A Simple Problem – Swift Playground – pt 5 (Comp Tech)

Hello Everyone! For Computer Tech class, I am using a program called Swift Playground, which is another “learn to code easy” app. Today I am briefly walking you through a problem I was solving on the app!

(Goal of the project, collect gems on the top of the stairs and use functions)

This means, our character will repeat the “Solve stair” function, with additional help by turning around and turning left. We defined “solve stair” in a separate space, so instead of writing all the code down we used a function shortcut. The character (Byte” goes through these steps:

Solve stair to collect gem.

Turn around and then solve stair to collect gem

Turn left then solve stair to collect gem

Finally turn around then solve stairs.

 

About me project – Tynker – Pt 2 (Comp Tech)

Hello everybody! Today I am going to be talking about the program Tynker, and what we are doing with it. I am in the Computer Technology quarterly at my middle school, and we are using a program called Tynker to make it. Tynker is like a kids block based coding app where kids learn how to code and stuff. Anyways, it’s pretty easy. For class we have to build an about me page, where it shows different facts about ourselves. I put little people up on the screen, and coded stuff so that they would show a fact about me when clicked.  It went somewhat like this.

when actor clicked

Say “I have a cat,” for 3 seconds

Of course I don’t really remember what I put, but we don’t have to talk about that. Anyways, I put around 4-5 people on my thing and called it a day. Overall it was pretty easy, but it is a good learning experience.

Computer Science is Changing Everything – A video overview – Pt 1 (Comp Tech)

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and there is so much I need to talk about. But I will do that in another post. Today I will be reviewing a video called, “Computer Science is Changing Everything,” and talking about a specific part of the video. 

The video has a couple parts, each talking about how computers have affected the industry. Today I will talk about the agriculture part of it. The video interviews a person who has built a software to monitor lettuce crops, and improve the amount of lettuce harvested. What I find intriguing is that agriculture is one of the most important industries in the world, and it is really important to our society. The fact that we can automate our crop management, and have a computer nurture to each crop. The “Lettuce Bot” is used in the video to see and manage 1.5 million crops. Now that is a lot of crops. If we can use this technology for crops in the world, thousands of peoples lives will be changed, and farming will become much less taxing. This is one of the many examples the video states, and it is truly a wonder what computers can do.

I will follow up on some of the things that I’ve been doing in another post.

I hope you all are well.