Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#91

Post by dankohn1 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

garrettr_ wrote: post #66

I 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…

My 4th grader loves this. Search Google for kittens, run Inspector, change the word to puppies, and close Inspector. It really gives them the feel for reaching underneath to begin to see how things work.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#92

Post by cyrix100 » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #79

payne92 wrote: post #38

I've done an interactive "do you know how many types of engineers there are?" for this age group that's worked really well. Timeframe: 5-15 minutes "Can anyone name a type of engineer?" and for each shoutout, talk a little about what each does. The guessing keeps everyone's attention. Types: software/computer, electrical, mechanical, chemical, environmental, civil, nuclear, aeronautical, etc. Bonus: bring 2-3 props (…

For each engineering discipline highlight the relevant part of a drone and how they're responsible. aeronatical: props and flight control mechanical: chassis chemical: batteries civil: constructing buildings that don't fall over when a drone crashes into them? nuclear: nope, refer to civil engineering

There are some interesting applications for drones in the nuclear industry.

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/multimedia/podcasts/monitori...

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#93

Post by LeifCarrotson » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

alok-g wrote: post #24

I have held many such sessions for kids. Instead of showing them the latest and the greatest: - I point them to the technology already around them, in their daily use, that they see as too obvious by now. And then share stories of how all that had come about to be. Simple things like soap, door handles, stairs, pencils, clocks, ... - Ask them simple questions that they never asked. How does an eraser erase pencil mar…

> Ask them simple questions that they never asked.

This is key to teachinging about high-tech engineering: don't paint over vast swathes of the stack with "it just works" or "it automatically knows".

Take one specific thing it does, and drill down the pyramid, from high-level ideas about user intents way down through platforms and compilers and operating systems to wires and semiconductors.

There's nothing particularly magical about tech (apart from the fact that it often does what it's supposed to). The awesome part of engineering is all the work put in at all levels to make hugely complex stuff work together.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#94

Post by gameswithgo » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

I have a little C# 'game' I am working on where you can evolve images. The images are expression trees and I made al ittle "lisp" language you can edit in the game to edit your evolved images. I showed this to some 4th grade classes I was asked to talk to about programming as a career, and I let them pick what functions they wanted to try, "add, sign, multiply" etc and I would type those into the lisp and we would see what kind of images (and videos, I have a video mode too) resulted.

they had fun with it.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#95

Post by the_watcher » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

Caveat that he designed it for 7th graders, and it was aimed as explicitly an educational program rather than a short show and tell, but my cousin put together a lesson around the "Routing and Deadlock" problem that seemed reasonably successful [0].

[0] https://www.paulcweidner.com/posts/stem-like-me/

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#96

Post by msadowski » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

If you have a budget you can go for robotics. I'd recommend getting a Lego Mindstorms kit, they usually come with ideas for builds (both hardware and software).

When I was presenting this to 10 year olds couple of years back they loved it! With mindstorms you can make it very interactive, you could easily do a show and tell of programming it with block diagrams.

You will most likely have a lot of fun yourself!

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#97

Post by munificent » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

Not super relevant to your problem, but a fun anecdote:

I used to be a game developer at EA Tiburon, the studio that does Madden among other games. Somehow I got roped into giving a short talk to a bunch of visiting high school students.

Beforehand I emailed a bunch of game teams and asked them to send me screenshots of their weirdest bugs. I got all sorts of fun stuff. When a game with rendered animated humans goes wrong, it can look anywhere from funhouse hilarious to horror film insane. Giant players dwarfing the field. Players with their eyes sticking out a foot in front of their head. Arms on backwards.

The kids loved it. Heck, I loved it. It was a ton of fun.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#98

Post by alok-g » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #88

alok-g wrote: post #24

I have held many such sessions for kids. Instead of showing them the latest and the greatest: - I point them to the technology already around them, in their daily use, that they see as too obvious by now. And then share stories of how all that had come about to be. Simple things like soap, door handles, stairs, pencils, clocks, ... - Ask them simple questions that they never asked. How does an eraser erase pencil mar…

> Why do women typically keep long hair while men keep short? Does technology have an answer for this?

That one is not a technology one indeed. I intermingle some non-tech ones just to show that there are curious simple things everywhere, and that there's more than just tech in their lives.

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#99

Post by dluan » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

pryelluw wrote: post #9

Ive done something similar before. Went with a videogame and showed them how it editing the code changed the game. They started requesting silly changes and went from there. Super fun.

I once went in with something way too ambitious, but this is a fantastic idea and something I'll try next time!

Re: Ask HN: I need ideas to impress fifth graders with technology

#100

Post by johngalt » Mon, Jun 03, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

Don't underestimate the programming aptitude they have already.

I coached a lego robot team for kids of similar ages. We spent one tenth the time that I expected teaching programming, and double the time I expected teaching mechanics.

Almost zero instruction was needed on ifs, loops, and stitching together commands and functions. Conversely, teaching what happens when a little gear drives a big gear was brand new to them.