This blog is an archive of work done at Cabrini Connections in the 2000s. Use it as an example of what's possible in an organized, site-based, tutor/mentor program.
Thursday, July 27, 2023
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Model Rockets
Hi Everyone!
Sorry, long time no post. Schedules have been busy so there have been a few events that have changed up the Tech Club schedule a bit.
Last Tuesday we drew some models of bottle rockets we will build from pop bottles and card board once the weather starts getting warmer. Here are some of the models we created last week.
Sorry, long time no post. Schedules have been busy so there have been a few events that have changed up the Tech Club schedule a bit.
Last Tuesday we drew some models of bottle rockets we will build from pop bottles and card board once the weather starts getting warmer. Here are some of the models we created last week.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tech Club Member Charles Interviewed For WCRX Public Service Announcement
Whoa - how cool is this?
Chicago Columbia University's WCRX radio interviewed Tech Club member Charles Hill, who talked a bit about the Cabrini Connections program. Take a listen!
Here's the 60 second version:
And here's the shorter 30 second version:
Chicago Columbia University's WCRX radio interviewed Tech Club member Charles Hill, who talked a bit about the Cabrini Connections program. Take a listen!
Here's the 60 second version:
And here's the shorter 30 second version:
Sunday, March 6, 2011
History of Video Games
Hi Everyone!
Last week on Tuesday we did some research on the history of video games. A couple of weeks before that we started to create our own video games. Here is an example done by one of the students:
Here is a brief bit of what we learned about some of the very first video games ever:
Computer space
A game created just for fun
1971 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney
Tennis for Two
1959
Missile Simulator
Locate a missile target
1947 Ray Mann.
This week we will keep looking at the history of video games and start researching how to design our own model rockets from pop/soda bottles.
Last week on Tuesday we did some research on the history of video games. A couple of weeks before that we started to create our own video games. Here is an example done by one of the students:
Here is a brief bit of what we learned about some of the very first video games ever:
Computer space
A game created just for fun
1971 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney
Tennis for Two
1959
Missile Simulator
Locate a missile target
1947 Ray Mann.
This week we will keep looking at the history of video games and start researching how to design our own model rockets from pop/soda bottles.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Hey Tech Fans. We need your support
This year's Cabrini Madness tourney has 13 teams of students and volunteers raising money for Cabrini Connections. The team that raises the most by the end of the NCAA Basketball Tournament wins.
Right now Team Five Dragons, which features Tech Club members and Mapping for Justice supporters, is in last place! You can change that with a donation (here) and by asking friends, family, co-workers and tech supporters to give and to blog about the tourney.
Money raised helps keep Cabrini Connections and tech club available to our teens.
Right now Team Five Dragons, which features Tech Club members and Mapping for Justice supporters, is in last place! You can change that with a donation (here) and by asking friends, family, co-workers and tech supporters to give and to blog about the tourney.
Money raised helps keep Cabrini Connections and tech club available to our teens.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Violinist at Tech Club
Tuesday night Tech Club had a very special treat. Engineer, violinist, and entrepreneur Andrew Forde from Toronto visited and spoke about his love of engineering, music and creativity.
Andrew is in his last semester at the University of Toronto, finishing his degree in Nanoengineering. Nanoengineering studies materials at the nano level to find properties one would desire in a material, but from the perspective of some of the smallest pieces that make up that material.
Expanding off of his engineering background Andrew has launched a new company, Sommerfeld Solutions, that implements innovative ideas for other companies. He explained, while nanoengineering is an interest of his, that the research environment doesn't fit with his need to be creative, which is one of his reasons for starting his company.
Since he was four years old he has played the violin, and actually went to an arts high school, not the typical place you would expect a typical engineer to come from. He has released one album, and will be working on a second album in Summer 2011. We were fortunate that Andrew was able to bring his violin and play three songs for us after his talk.
You can check out his music at his YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/violintheory.
Pictures to come this weekend from the event! Special thanks to Cabrini Connections for hosting the event, and to Andrew Forde for sharing his story with Tech Club.
Andrew is in his last semester at the University of Toronto, finishing his degree in Nanoengineering. Nanoengineering studies materials at the nano level to find properties one would desire in a material, but from the perspective of some of the smallest pieces that make up that material.
Expanding off of his engineering background Andrew has launched a new company, Sommerfeld Solutions, that implements innovative ideas for other companies. He explained, while nanoengineering is an interest of his, that the research environment doesn't fit with his need to be creative, which is one of his reasons for starting his company.
Since he was four years old he has played the violin, and actually went to an arts high school, not the typical place you would expect a typical engineer to come from. He has released one album, and will be working on a second album in Summer 2011. We were fortunate that Andrew was able to bring his violin and play three songs for us after his talk.
You can check out his music at his YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/violintheory.
Pictures to come this weekend from the event! Special thanks to Cabrini Connections for hosting the event, and to Andrew Forde for sharing his story with Tech Club.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Tech Club Special Guest | Music & Science
Tuesday, February 22, Tech Club will have a very special guest all the way from Toronto, Canada. University of Toronto engineering student and entrepreneur Andrew Forde will be giving a special talk at Tech Club Tuesday night to play some contemporary music and to talk about how music and science and engineering are all related. Please join us for what will be a fun and engaging event!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Trucks Computer Games & Science
What does a truck computer game and science have in common? Well, on Tuesday we found out. Jordan is learning about graphing points in math, and he was playing a computer game before Tech Club where you drive a truck off a ramp and the game records how far and high the truck goes.
We wanted to see if the game world's gravity worked like gravity in the real world. Assuming the speed is about the same for each case, the higher an object is thrown, the less far it will go in distance away from the spot it was thrown. Also, the further an object is thrown, the less high it will go. We played the truck game 10 times and recorded the height and distance data.
After recording all of the data, we entered the information into excel and made a graph with it so we could see if the game had a direct relationship between how far the truck went and how high it went. The speed was not recorded in this game.
We found there was no direct relationship in the video game between how far the truck went in height to how far it went in distance.
For the rest of the time we did some more experimentation with the Alice programming software before we get started on the first level of our video games. Jordan added a warehouse and had a train car crash into the wall of the warehouse.
After this week, we will be doing one science experiment each Tech Club meeting. It should be exciting. Also, we will be fundraising for Tech Club very soon to get more resources so we can expand the experiments and projects we cover. Stay tuned to this space to learn how you can donate!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Looking to the Past and the Future
Tuesday at Tech Club we did three main things:
We read several of
the bios on http://cr4.globalspec.com/blog/128/National-Society-of-Black-Engineers-Blog, to learn about African Americans in science and engineering. One person who stuck out was George Washington Carver, but not because he invented peanut butter. Things we didn't know about him were that his parents died when he was young and had to move from home to home, and sometimes the area he moved to didn't have a high school that would allow African Americans to attend. Fortunately the people he lived with then payed for him to have a tutor. I also learned he did not initially go to college for science, but for art. It wasn't until he transferred to Iowa State University did he study this in college. He was the first African American to attend Iowa State, and eventually went on to become a faculty member, until Tulane University offered him a job on their faculty and great research opportunities.
After we spent some time reading and discussing these important figures in the history of science and engineering, we talked about some of my first year college experiences with math and programming in the University of Michigan engineering program. I shared which classes I took, or didn't take in high school that helped me, or could have helped me during that first year of college. I felt the two most important areas of study to have a solid foundation in for the first year of college were math and programming, though many high schools do not offer programming courses.
Lastly, we did some Alice programming. Sean built a mini city and added a few characters and had a dragon flying off of one of the sky scrapers.
Next week we hope to do some more programming with Alice, and talk about how Facebook newsfeed works and how people make games for Facebook. That's all for now! See you next week!
- Learn about the contributions African Americans have made to science and technology
- Discuss what classes are helpful to take in high school to prepare for science and engineering programs in college
- Work more with Alice, the programming tool, to learn more about how to add stationary objects and how to make the moving objects interact with them
We read several of
the bios on http://cr4.globalspec.com/blog/128/National-Society-of-Black-Engineers-Blog, to learn about African Americans in science and engineering. One person who stuck out was George Washington Carver, but not because he invented peanut butter. Things we didn't know about him were that his parents died when he was young and had to move from home to home, and sometimes the area he moved to didn't have a high school that would allow African Americans to attend. Fortunately the people he lived with then payed for him to have a tutor. I also learned he did not initially go to college for science, but for art. It wasn't until he transferred to Iowa State University did he study this in college. He was the first African American to attend Iowa State, and eventually went on to become a faculty member, until Tulane University offered him a job on their faculty and great research opportunities.After we spent some time reading and discussing these important figures in the history of science and engineering, we talked about some of my first year college experiences with math and programming in the University of Michigan engineering program. I shared which classes I took, or didn't take in high school that helped me, or could have helped me during that first year of college. I felt the two most important areas of study to have a solid foundation in for the first year of college were math and programming, though many high schools do not offer programming courses.
Lastly, we did some Alice programming. Sean built a mini city and added a few characters and had a dragon flying off of one of the sky scrapers.
Next week we hope to do some more programming with Alice, and talk about how Facebook newsfeed works and how people make games for Facebook. That's all for now! See you next week!
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
New Quarter, New Tech Club, And 3D Programming
Tech Club has been going through some transitions, so sorry we haven't been updating frequently, but you will see many more updates soon about Tech Club. This quarter Tech Club will be focusing on learning some computer programming with the help of a really awesome program named Alice and we will be learning more about careers in science and technology as well as looking at some cool experimental technology people are working on.
Today with the program Alice, we mainly experimented with the objects and did some simple movements with them. Specifically we did some simple flying movements with the red dragon in the picture for this post.
In addition to working with Alice today, we learned about a biomedical engineering student and a civil engineering student on www.egfi-k12.org. Here is one of the students we learned about today:
In addition to learning about different types of science/tech/engineering majors, we learned about some interesting things people have done with technology, specifically, this lego printer:
Possibly in the future we will be doing our own projects with Legos, but that will probably be next quarter. We are excited to do more with Alice programming next week and learn more about what cool new things are going on in technology!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The continuation of madlibs.
Hello everyone! Today we have the first madlib completed by none other then Charles Hill. The madlibs were part of the Halloween spirit and created to scare and create a sense of mystery into people's lives. Here's the first one, and others will be updated soon, the story called, The Moon Savior.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Mad Libs Stories begin
Hey everyone. This is an update on tech club. Please be on the lookout because last week we started to make our very own Mad Libs story using the scratch software. Of course this will use up some of our creativity which will make these stories all the more fun. More importantly this is a way for us kids to get more familiar with the scratch software as we get deeper into making our up and coming Cabrini Connections video game. Please keep you eyes and Desktops open for another update!!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
NEW CHARACTER
Hello Everyone! My name is Savon Clark, as some of you know, and i am here to introduce my new character in our latest project, the Cabrini Connections video game. His name is Neo Nova. For now, his main role in the game will be a student. What he will do exactly is yet to be determined since we are still figuring out a lot of the game at this point. So for now, he will be introduced as an incoming character. Neo Nova hopes to see you all very soon.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Mizawa! The untold story!
Mizawa(Me-Zah-Wa), the character of my choice. The name and meaning is unknown. However, this character is awesome. Amazing at that. The character will bring truth and justice to Cabrini Connections! Believe it!...No. Just kidding, the character was my choice to choose. Off to the Cabrini Connections Adventure!
Nyshanell's character
My character is a Hello Kitty fairy. I decided to make my character a fairy because every body don't like Kitty's but i do so deal with it. (I also love dogs so yeah).
scratch.mit.edu/projects/SidoUchiha/1127332
scratch.mit.edu/projects/SidoUchiha/1127332
Game Chracter- Sido Ritsu
My character was made from a sonic advance game base. I made it by taking a sonic advance sprite and customizing it to my own specifications. The reason I made my character how he appears is because I wanted to make something that would be almost impossible to make emotions for in a sprite comic.
Click here to see the game demo
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The summer so far...
Tech Club's summer has been an interesting one...we started the summer with the Year-End Dinner, which was an excellent presentation of the Cabrini Connections Adventure. It showed what people could be looking forward to by the time we're done. Other details to the Year-End Dinner can be seen here.
This summer in Tech Club, we've made a flier for the Tutor/Mentor Jam. Sean Mayfield was the person who worked on the flier and a few words from him are: "When we made the flier, we decided on how the background would look and what information from the Tutor/Mentor Jam would incorporate into this. So, in the following weeks I worked on the flier and it was a success."
We've introduced new student Avery and returning student Savon. Avery's been with the Tech Club group for a few weeks now, however he's already propelling himself into the world of Technology. In his own words Avery explains: "My name is Avery Harris, I'm currently starting my Freshmen year of high school and love working with technology. I decided to join Tech Club, so that it would help me learn more about technology, and I am really enjoying it." We are really enjoying Avery's company and he fits right in with the Tech Club group.
A few words from our returning Tech Club member Savon Clark, which in his own words he talks about the future of Tech Club: "Moving on Tech Club will continue its main project of the Cabrini Connections Adventure, however there will be a few side projects that will help progress our game along the way and will help us fix the "bugs" or "glitches" that have appeared in our game.
Also! As the new school year starts we will be learning about Variables, in the context of Technology, and will continue our work on the Cabrini Connections Adventure. More updates will be brought to you soon!
This summer in Tech Club, we've made a flier for the Tutor/Mentor Jam. Sean Mayfield was the person who worked on the flier and a few words from him are: "When we made the flier, we decided on how the background would look and what information from the Tutor/Mentor Jam would incorporate into this. So, in the following weeks I worked on the flier and it was a success."
We've introduced new student Avery and returning student Savon. Avery's been with the Tech Club group for a few weeks now, however he's already propelling himself into the world of Technology. In his own words Avery explains: "My name is Avery Harris, I'm currently starting my Freshmen year of high school and love working with technology. I decided to join Tech Club, so that it would help me learn more about technology, and I am really enjoying it." We are really enjoying Avery's company and he fits right in with the Tech Club group.
A few words from our returning Tech Club member Savon Clark, which in his own words he talks about the future of Tech Club: "Moving on Tech Club will continue its main project of the Cabrini Connections Adventure, however there will be a few side projects that will help progress our game along the way and will help us fix the "bugs" or "glitches" that have appeared in our game.
Also! As the new school year starts we will be learning about Variables, in the context of Technology, and will continue our work on the Cabrini Connections Adventure. More updates will be brought to you soon!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Tech Club so far...
Hello everyone! This is Charles Hill here, student at Cabrini Connection and currently involved in Cabrini Connection's Tech Club. Our latest project has been a year long project called: "Cabrini Connections Adventure" our working title. The game uses several characters from Cabrini Connections, the Tech Club group, and also people outside of Cabrini Connections like politicians. The Tech Club group has been led by our Coordinator Mike Trakan, while we've been using the skills of Photoshop and Scratch to create our game. During the Year-End Dinner, Mike and I presented the demo for the game, featuring our Tech Club character Nyshanell Freeman. There are still a few "bugs" that need to be fixed, and as soon as they're fixed we'll proceed with more characters in the game. A link to the playable demo will be along with this post. We'll keep you updated along the way.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/SidoUchiha/1127332
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/SidoUchiha/1127332
Friday, May 21, 2010
Tech Club creates Year End Dinner Graphic
The annual Cabrini Connections year end dinner will be June 10. Details here. This is a fund raiser to raise money to pay for the dinner, for Senior Awards, and for Summer activities. If you can donate or be a sponsor, use this page.This graphic was created by Mike and the students in who meet every Tuesday evening for Tech Club. Hopefully they will write some articles in coming days to show how they created this and talk about other things they are learning.
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