Design Space: McMaster's Engineering Meeting (virtual)

 

Experiment and Create: Design Space

We signed up for the McMaster University Virtual Girl Guide Workshop: Sustainable Energy. When I signed up in September, I thought it would be a back pocket meeting for if we had a storm -- not realizing we'd be virtual again for another couple of months!

The video is basically the whole meeting. I asked the Guides' families to set up a Scratch account before the meeting so we weren't dealing with that during the meeting. We watched the whole video through first, then went back to the coding section and watched it again with the Guides building their programs. 

The older Guides did better with it -- the Grade 6s are using Scratch at school. We had about 18 Guides when we started. 2-3 of the Guides were frustrated and didn't get it all. 3-4 of them would ask us to pause the video to catch up, which I would do for 10-15 seconds. And 10-12 of them got through it and got it to work. 

After the meeting, I sent home the video and my completed program so the Guides who didn't get it and understand it could either go through the video by themselves or just play the game without finishing the program. 

I had added our Land Acknowledgement for Halifax and a link to the SDGs, but we didn't have time to discuss either after the video so I'll plan to bring them forward to another meeting. 

Google Slide Show

Design Space - Analog Coding (Virtual)

 

Experiment and Create: Design Space

We're planning to do the McMaster Engineering meeting next week and the majority of it uses Scatch, a simplified coding program for kids. So I thought it would be a good idea to introduce the concept of coding before jumping into it. 

Note: We had a porch pick-up this week for craft supplies and some printouts of the different cipher decoders. 

• Science Scavenger Hunt: I found a list of ideas from this website and picked out 10 or so that would be fun and mostly related to physics/design.

• Exact Instructions Challenge: We've done this before but I had no idea it was an internet challenge now! We discussed where we find instructions, watched the PB&J video and then created instructions of our own on how to brush your teeth. 

• Morse Code necklaces: I couldn't decide what kind of beads/cords to use, but then I found instructions for perler beads and I thought it would fit great. I sent home 80 beads each -- 4 colours, half flattened for dots and half left whole for dashes. They flatten in a 400°F oven for 3 minutes but it takes a bit of work to stand 1100 perler beads on end! I'm quite happy with how they turned out. Then we used one set to make our names and another set to a special word. 

   

• Decoding Riddles: These are from an activity I made for Pathfinders/Rangers about 5 years. One part was decoding riddles so I repurposed them, not knowing if we'd get through them all or not. I sent home the code instructions for the different codes. They were able to figure out the first riddle and then I just gave them the other riddles to guess at, without decoding them. 

Slideshow: Design Space - Analog Coding

Mighty Minds (Virtual)

Be Well: 

Mighty Minds

 

Virtual meetings look a little different. I like to make Slideshows of our activities, to give the Guides a visual as we go along. 

In this meeting, we

• talked about fun things we did over the break
• Self appreciation check-in (from WAGGGS Positivity Patrol ideas from GGC)
• We All Have Mental Health video (from YouTube)
• Staying Positive (from WAGGGS Positivity Patrol ideas from GGC)
• Destressing Kim's Game

Google Drive Slideshow