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.

Looking to the Past and the Future

Tuesday at Tech Club we did three main things:

1. Learn about the contributions African Americans have made to science and technology
2. Discuss what classes are helpful to take in high school to prepare for science and engineering programs in college
3. 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!

Technology Expertise for Mentoring Students

The Cabrini Connections "Cabrini Madness 2010" tournament raised over $23,000 for Cabrini Connections and the Tutor/Mentor Connection!!!

The tournament brought students, volunteers, community leaders, and you and I together in the name of a great cause - tutoring and mentoring - helping students reach their full potential, in an era where school cuts and budget crises continue to undermine the value of a public education.

Many new volunteers, donors, and mentoring advocates were introduced to the cause through the tournament.

Many others, already active with the cause, got a unique chance to meet, work, and have fun with others they might not otherwise have met.

And while only one team could be crowned Tournament Champion (GUARANTEED VICTORY edged out TEAM IMPECCABLE in the fundraising $6402 to $6120 on a last-minute donation by a professional NFL football player)... at the risk of sounding cliche.... "everybody won!!" :)

Well, that's what we, Team TEMS, are telling ourselves anyway :) We fought hard but only came in 6th place. You helped us raise $1175 for the cause! Thank you!

"Team TEMS"? As you likely know by now, Cabrini Connections Tech Club entered a team in the tournament... which was named "TEMS" by the 7th-9th graders who participate each week in Tech Club. "Technical Execution Madness Squad."

An intimidating name for a tournament. But like everything we created and learned during the tournament (The kids used their ever-improving tech skills to design logos/fliers/artwork, like the one above, for the tournament... and they took the lead in organizing two "Game Night" fundraisers)...

The name "Team TEMS" will stick with us...

Team TEMS - "Technology Expertise for Mentoring Students" - will be the name all our Tech Club projects will be produced under, henceforward.

So please take a look at this quick video that reflects on all the afterglow from the first annual Cabrini Connections Tournament.

And please accept our many thanks for your donations, which helped us make the first cut and finish in 6th place with $1175... as well as for all your support and words of encouragement these past couple months... and for coming to the two "game night" fundraisers the kids organized... (action picture to the left!)

But don't forget to check in from time to time, to this blog, and keep an eye on Team TEMS moving forward.

Because the tournament kept us busy, but it did little to distract us from the development of our next "Team TEMS" production... a video game... which builds on the teamwork, tech, advocacy, and troubleshooting skills we learned while competing in the Cabrini Madness Tournament.

We look forward to sharing it with you when it is released early this summer!

Tech Club Creates Graphics for Cabrini Madness

Visit the Cabrini Madness page on the Cabrini Connections web site and you'll see this graphic. It was created by students in tech club working with volunteers who work with technology and graphic design for a living. These students are learning a skill that can lead to jobs and careers.

In Cabrini Madness teams of students, volunteers, staff, Board members and friends are competing with each other to see which team can raise the most dollars to support the ongoing operations of this organization. It's a great competition and many students are learning valuable leadership, communications and team work skills that are valued by business leaders.

The Tech Club has it's own team, and created its own logo. Click here and you can support Zzu-Han Ho, Charles Hill, Mike Trakan, Mark Shore, Vicky Georganas Trakan, Christine Kochevar, Sean Mayfield, Kierre Halbert, and NyShanell Freeman in their quest to win the Cabrini Madness competition.

Tech Club Students Profiled blog

Chris Warren profiled Cabrini Connections Tech Club kids in his weekly student profiles. Take a look.

The Team

Tech Club has lost a great team leader in the past week as Alice Toth has taken a project in Atlanta. This means we're in search of a couple of other volunteers who will help with the Tuesday night group at Cabrini Connections, and who will help share what the group does via this blog.

One source of volunteers is the local universities in Chicago. Chris Warren wrote about one way we hope to recruit volunteers, and financial supporters, in his blog.

We'd like to see a team of tech volunteers, and students, organize for the same goals, but focused on helping tech volunteers work with kids in programs like Cabrini Connections, while also working to make sure funds are available to support the technology. Read Vjeko's blog to see how important this is.

Thanks Alice for helping the Tech Club for the past year. I hope you stay connected virtually. If readers would like to join to help keep this group going, just email tutormentor2@earthlink.net or call 312-492-9614.

Congrats Sean Mayfield!

Tech Club's own Sean Mayfield was elected by a group of his peers to be on the Youth Leadership Council.

Great job, Sean!!

For details on the election and the other student representatives, I'll send you over to Chris' post.

Emulator: that which imitates

Tuesday was a quiet day at Tech Club this week -- some students weren't able to get here because their moms were busy voting (our sincere thanks to everyone who made the time to vote) so rather than get too far ahead with learning Audacity, we had a play day.

Sean took center stage and showed me the Gameboy emulators that are available online. For those of you not familiar with emulators, here's a good tech definition from wikipedia:

An emulator duplicates (provides an emulation of) the functions of one system using a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system.

In other words, running the Gameboy emulator on your computer makes it behave like a Gameboy and allows you to play the Nintendo games.

Where I work, we use emulators to develop software because it's easier to write the code and test it on your computer, rather than writing the code and then transferring it to another device, such an iPhone. I didn't realize, though, that Gameboy had an emulator so thanks, Sean, for sharing!

The Audacity of Sound

Now that we've recovered from the Haunted House, Tech Club is picking up where we left off with our exploration of digital audio. Our tool of choice is Audacity, a free, open-source audio editor and recorder. We downloaded version 1.2.6a, which is a stable release, and at this time opted not to use version 1.3.6 Beta. We did debate the pros and cons a bit, but decided our mission was to first learn the software; later on we may opt to be Beta testers.

We'll see you on Tuesday!

Sound: Vibrations That Travel Through the Air

This week was our first foray into audio. Using the Web, we worked together to find an audio application that had the features our students wanted (cut, copy, splice and mix sounds) but still fit into our budget (free).

Our research led us to Audacity, which is a free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. Sounds perfect! (as bad puns go). Time ran out before we could do anything more than download and play around with the application, but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun and I'll keep you posted as to our progress.

Call Now!

Think the Fall Session of the Tech Club is going to be kind of neat but want to know more? Or, want to be the first in line to sign-up? All you have to do is:

Call Cabrini Connections at 312-492-9614 for info

There now, that was easy -- wasn't it? Look forward to seeing you in the fall!

Why Adjustment Layers Rock!

Have a digital photo that you want to manipulate but don't want to destroy the original? You could accomplish this by making a copy of the original and working on that. Or, you can use Adjustment Layers in Photoshop.

Adjustment Layers allow you to apply various types of adjustments to the original photo sitting on a layer below your new Adjustment Layer without directly changing the original photo. It's kind of like looking at the world through a pair of sunglasses. The world takes on the hue of your sunglasses (green, brown, blue, gray) but the original world itself hasn't changed -- only how you're seeing it. Same thing with Adjustment Layers.

For example, let's take a photo

And add an Adjustment Layer of Hue/Saturation and set Saturation to -100 (remove all the color) -- I now have a black and white photo.

But I do miss the color and here's where I stepped away from Adjustment Layer and added in some other cool tricks. First I copied the original photo onto another layer *above* the Adjustment Layers. I then reduced the Opacity for that layer (made it see-through) so the black and white photo is also visible:


The color is subtle; maybe too subtle. So I again copied the original photo onto another layer, placed that layer above all other and deleted everything in the photo *except* the pink flowers:


I think I may have ended up close to the beginning, but it's a start. :) Here's my layer palette showing the different layers mentioned above:


Now, flowers may not be your thing, but this will give you a taste of the cool stuff we'll be doing with digital photos this fall.

Fall Session Preview

Thinking of signing up for Tech Club? Well, here's a sneak peak at what we're offering for the Fall '08 Session:

Fall Session:

1. If you don't already know, learn how to use a digital camera and take a photo tour of the area


2. Learn what makes a good photograph; then, retake area photos using your new knowledge about photography


3. Digitally edit your photos. We'll get into:
   
   
   
   • Photoshop tools (magic wand, marquee, cloning tool, etc.) and how they're used
     
   
   
   • applying filters, such as distort, sketch, artistic, noise and seeing how they change your photo
     
   
   
   • using adjustments to experiment with color balance, brightness, contrast, etc.
   
   
   • changing your photo from color to black and white and how to create an old-fashioned brown-tinted photo


4. If time allows, we'll start learning about animation or we may save that for the spring session

Tech Tuesdays -- Summer Edition

It's summertime and you're taking advantage of the long days and open beaches. What fun!! But please don't forget about Tech Tuesdays.

Our summer session is setup to accommodate the casual visit. Stop by weekly and build on what you're learning each week, or sign up for a week here and there, just to keep your toe in the technology water (so to speak). Even just the causal day or two will give you a heads up of what we'll be doing come this fall.

So sure, we'd love it if you could come every week, because the program does build on what you learned the previous week, but we get it. After all, they aren't called the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer for nothing!

It's All About the Tools

We started playing around with manipulating our digital photos via Photoshop. First stop, a discussion about the various tools at our disposal, what they do and how they can be used.

As you can see from the toolbar at the left, there's a lot of stuff to learn: magic wands to select areas; cloning tools that act just like a stamp; cropping, dodging, burning; adding text. Oh and then we also threw in a bit about layer and the history list. Phew! That's a lot, but this is just the start.

Next up will be taking some of the knowledge we just learned and see what we can do to one of our photos -- the good, the bad and yes, even the ugly. I have a feeling both CTL + Z and the history list will be our friends.

Photo Mania

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July!

I wanted to share some pictures Sean and Anthony took at last Tuesday's Tech Club. We started off with a talk about what goes into making a good photograph -- things like the rule of thirds, identifying the photo's subject, composition, etc. With camera in hand, Sean and Anthony then took to the streets looking for photos of the urban landscape, but this time with more of a photographer's eye.

I think they absorbed the lesson well -- what do you think?


Anthony's Photo:




Sean's Photo:

Tech Club - Summer '08

Tech Club will be having a fun time this summer getting into digital photography, manipulating the photos via Photoshop and then (if we have time) creating some Flash animation using your altered photos. It's an ambitious mix of creativity and technology, but I think we're up to the challenge!

Details will follow in later posts, but stop by Tuesday nights (6p-7p) so you can be a part of it!