iCloud Poster - Criteria C

Criteria A - Week 3 (Tech Fair)

Tiny Dancers Promotional Video 

Criteria A - Week 2 (Tech Fair)

PowerPoint presentation on the chosen idea

Reflection:

In this lesson we got to choose our partner for the Tech Fair that is happening in March this term. My partner is Aria and I'm really happy that we got to choose our partners because I know that we can work really well together. We both decided that the Tiny Dancers were going to be our project because once I showed them to her, she was so fascinated and thought they were so cute; exactly what I had thought. But then we thought that we wanted to go even bigger (because in fact the tiny dancers are quite small) so we decided that on top of the dancers we would firstly film us making the tiny dancers and how they work etc. but then we will project the video. But not on just any ordinary projector, no, we will be making the projector using a shoe box and a magnifying glass. It wasn't hard making the PowerPoint, in fact we made it in the first 30 minutes of the lesson and so got the rest of the lesson just playing around and editing it to make it look formal and presentable. I'm very excited for this term and the 'journey' that we have ahead of us to create this project of ours.

Criteria A - Week 1 (Tech Fair)

Tech Fair - Week 1

Unit: Tech Fair Project

 Global context: Scientific and technical innovation 

Statement of Inquiry: Developments in technology could be seen as blessing or a curse depending on the impact it has on an individual or society. 

Inquiry Question: How can we use Technology to help develop our ideas to create a masterpiece for the ‘Tech Fair’?

ATL: Thinking skills and research skills

Here are a few ideas that I have chosen to do for the tech fair: 

• Creating a stop motion film and then projecting it on a DIY projector 
• Mini dancing ballerinas made out  of batteries 
• creating an artwork out of old computer pieces e.g. CD's 
• Click and grow machine which will grow strawberries 
• Solar powered robot

I'm most interested in the Mini Dancing Ballerinas ideas because it's like nothing I have ever seen before and it is not the usual robot which everyone is most likely to chose. Basically these tiny dancers are a wire sculpture made out of copper wire and batteries which dance. This idea uses a homopolar motor which are not necessarily used as everyday motors but it is used in technology and science experiments because they involve electricity, wires, technology. This ideas came from a blog post which was written by Ana Dziengel. This product benefits the society because instead of throwing away your batteries or throwing away the little scraps of tissue paper that are practically useless you could re use them and recycle them by creating this quick and easy project that could even entertain children.

Below is a video showing how the Mini Dancers work and how they are created:

References:

Babble Dabble Do (2015) Home/ Engineering for Kids/ STEAM Project: Tiny Dancers (A Homopolar Motor)
http://babbledabbledo.com/steam-project-tiny-dancers-homopolar-motor/
[Accessed on 12th January 2016]

YouTube Video 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XilLC0uVCQ0

Reflection: 

I must admit my research went well and I found out a lot of ideas for the tech fair, and some interesting ideas like the Tiny Dancers came up which I am looking forward to sharing with my partner. The keywords that I used in the search engine were tech fair, project, ideas, easy, DIY, for high school but I also used Pinterest which then gave me the idea for the Tiny Dancers. When I was searching on google for ideas, I didn't get immediate results because a lot of the websites were for a science fair there weren't many interesting ideas for a tech fair. I then tried to just write tech fair without the words 'easy', 'DIY' etc. However I still wasn't satisfied with my results and I found it really hard to take inspiration from those project ideas. So this lead me onto my next stop which was the one and only Pinterest. When I typed up tech fair ideas, fascinating and interesting projects started popping up and the Tiny Dancers project caught my eye and so I decided that whoever my partner will be, I would have to create the dancers; they are just to cute!