The wheel, fire, plumbing.
Speaking to a comment down thread, show them how to wire a three way switch.
Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
61–70 of 246 posts
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#62How much time do you have? I did a peanut butter jelly robot - where I had the kids call out how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They had 10 minutes to write out the instructions. I took each instruction as literally as possible. Then I talked about algorithm design. It took about 30 minutes.
This. The PB&J exercise is really good.
I'd suggest not trying to impress them. It's not a date. They're kids. Try to connect with them. Talk about your job, sure, but more important to share things you're enthusiastic about.
Also, from what you describe of their background, they may think that what you do is inaccessible to them. Try to reach them, especially the girls. And let them ask you questions.
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#63try VR headsets !
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#64Real time object recognition/tracking
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#653D printer
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#66I was recently asked by a friend who teaches 5th graders to do something similar for their school's "career month." I tried a few different things, and found the most successful was showing them how to use a web browser's built-in developer tools to inspect the source of and make live modifications to web pages.
My reasoning behind this exercise was:
- I checked in with their teacher ahead of time and confirmed that all of these kids had a least some experience using a web browser. Generally it seems like a likely "lowest common denominator" of tech experience for kids.
- Most web browsers have powerful developer tools that can be used to inspect and modify source and will display the results of many types of changes in real time. It is easy to get kids to understand the relationship between HTML/CSS code and the webpage that results from rendering it when you can make live changes to the code and see it immediately reflected in the rendered page.
- Web browsers are freely available. I gave them a handout with instructions on how to access the developer tools in web browsers that are either free (Chrome, Firefox) or readily available to them (Safari, since their school computer lab had a few Macs). I specifically wanted them to be inspired and continue experimenting after I left.
I concluded by spending 10 minutes taking student's requests for the modifications to nytimes.com. It ended up with a bizarro color scheme, comic sans on all the things, and pictures of dinosaurs and Pixar characters at the top of every article. Everyone had a blast, myself included!
I think the demonstration tickled the kid's innate predisposition towards mischief. An immediate question was "can everyone in the world see this changes? are you hacking right now?," which allowed me to naturally give a high-level explanation of the server-client architecture of the web. A few kids came up to me afterwards and asked me to specifically walk them through finding and opening the developer tools so they could continue experimenting at home, and that was the best outcome I could've hoped for!
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#67Trivia Vending Machine is a very lovely example of a Raspberry Pi project. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6gs8NtXPIk The "Untrue Zoo" can be created with LiveCode Open Source (free). See https://www.his.com/~pshapiro/UntrueZooHSHTML5/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37nfon24_aY Bicycle treehouse elevator can spawn a lot of conversation and thinking -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5FSWkjFPxs Getting kids to make their own screencasts (using free screencasting tools) is always interesting and useful. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M11WT3H_DqU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvSxhyJhfM8 Get kids into interactive fiction using Twine (free, open source). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNKhqDr6pg
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#68I was recently asked by a friend who teaches 5th graders to do something similar for their school's "career month." I tried a few different things, and found the most successful was showing them how to use a web browser's built-in developer tools to inspect the source of and make live modifications to web pages. My reasoning behind this exercise was: - I checked in with their teacher ahead of time and confirmed that…
The inspect element tool is actually a meme on TikTok, where the content creator changes some high priced luxury item (ie yeezyees) to a low price and improbably buys them. I’ve seen others where they change their “grade” in a class. I think this would go over well also.
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#69Once, with a group of 7th graders (but I think it'd work with 5th graders as well), I explained programming as a form of puzzle-solving, illustrated by a little game based on an old puzzle/problem:
"You have a 3-gallon jug, a 5-gallon jug, and an unlimited supply of water. How do you get exactly 4 gallons of water without estimating?"
We made it a game by having them write down the steps they would take, e.g. "Fill five gallon jug, pour from five gallon jug into three gallon jug, etc...", with a prize of a candy bar for a correct solution.
I gave the talk to 5-6 groups of ~20-30 7th graders, and there was at least one correct solution in every group. My favorite was afterward, waiting in the library for the end of my wife's workday, one of the kids spotted me and came over to ask questions about alternative approaches.
Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology
#70Make some groups, teach them an easy method to encrypt messages (like Vigenère cipher) and let them play writing encrypted messages between groups or think about a game in which they need to decipher a secret code. It worked quite well for some adults I taught few years ago.