Project:Classroom HackSpaceChallenge

Overview

We have been accepted onto the "Great Global Hackerspace Challenge". This is a challenge to build a piece of equipment for the classroom.

File:GGHC-ParticipantPack.pdf

More details in the original announcement.

Code can be found here.

Updates

Official updates will be posted via our profile page on Element14's website, here.

Judging Criteria

• How reproducible is the final project
• How easily can the parts be sourced in locations around the world
• How low cost is the final output
• How well are the plans documented
• plans documented
• How relevant is the project to helping education today
• How inventive and creative is the design and build of the project

Justification

We have to say why we should be allowed to enter, by the 11th of march. This section is a draft for ideas about why we are awesome. I suspect they are looking for impressive projects, so if people want to blow their own trumpets go ahead. Ideally mobile/electronic stuff? Srimech's turing machine might be a good thing, if he wants to get involved?

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We have recently started Young Hackspace where we show a bunch of kids around the space and get them to interact. One of the activities was we got them to draw pictures for the hackspace zoo, which we then scanned and laser cut for them to take home.

Ideas

There are different routes we could go in terms of educational content.

Creative

• Plasticine makerbot

Programmable

• Some robot or other. Maybe a plotter controlled like logo?
  • Moved to discussion page.
• Programming Bricks (see discussion page)

Science

• A visible (possibly UV) spectrometer.
  • See above link or this pages Discussion.

Roles

Put down what you are interested in working on

Software

Member	Language
Eb4890	Any
Ciarán	Python
Solexious	Arduino c++
Mark	Any

Electronics

Member	Skills
Ciarán	Basic soldering
Solexious	Electronic Fu

Mechanics

Member	Skills
Ciarán	Happy to design, and cut stuff on laser cutter.

Time Table

We've got to give two reports a week, so I'm going to make a tentative timetable based upon that. Feel free to mod.

Week	Deadline	First report
1	25th March	Create your profile and submit first blog update
2	1st April	Hackerspace Challenge Blog Post 2
3	--	status of your build and quick summary of obstacles encountered
4	15th April	Hackerspace Challenge Blog Post 3
5	--	provide a review of the challenge to date. Is the pressure on? What have you learned?
6	30th April	End of Build Date
--	2nd May - 5th May	Judging Period
--	6th May	3 Semi-Finalists Announced.
--	Week of 16th May	San Francisco....
--	22nd May	Grand Finale

Bios

We have to have bios. Foolishly they didn't specify they had to be serious bios.

Solexious: An advanced robot sent from the future for turning pizza, chips and Cola into circuit boards and lulz.

Mark: Well known Tom Cruise impersonator ms7821 takes breaks from his busy impersonation schedule to hack assembler, C, python and troll people on IRC

Ciarán: One day this chemist wandered into the hack space, a lair of programmers and electronics geeks. So far he has managed not to arouse the suspicion of the natives.

Eb4890: This overly dreamy coder/CNCer tried to organise an application for a global hackspace challenge. Too late did he realise his mistake. In revenge for his heinous crime of organising he was crowned leader of the challenge. An empty title, but now he has to relearn little used cat herding and electronics skills.

Monkeyjam: The youngest member of the group, he will make sure that the old guys can communicate with young people and not go into endless monologues about how back in the day we only had 50 MB storage and 4MB of ram. And no that was not in our phones, it was in our computers. Having spent the highest percentage of his life in education, he is well aware of its cravats and current technological weaknesses. One of those, is being taught how to handle and use ZIP drives.

Others: Please to be placing yourself

Archive

Original Proposals