March 2013
2 posts
intro to computing class
We have finally started using the internet and the ladies have so many questions and doubts. Some have stated that the internet is the reason why they do not agree so much with technology, they are scared of the dangers that it might bring to their children. after wrapping up our class at noon( 3hours of discusion, question and answer, and demonstration) i felt the ladies left with a better view...
Steinmetz HTML Class Assistance, Sem. 2 Interim
To preface this entry, some weeks ago the site code.org created a short video starring several big names of tech talking about their early programming experiences and how they applied to their lives in general, not just in their job. Since watching the video, it’s had an interesting effect on how I go about helping out the students at Steinmetz: even if they’re just using HTML and...
February 2013
3 posts
3rd Saturday of comp Class
This Saturday was very exciting because we actually started looking at how to write into the computer. we began by looking at notepad, and then at wordpad. I asked the ladies to give me some differences between the two and they right away noticed them so once they saw the differences we began exploring wordpad. We had a great time using wordpad because the ladies played around with the font and...
Second day of computing class
we had a great time this time no a lot of the ladies showed up because they had prior arrangements but the ones that missed will be attending the next class. by the time 11 am came the ladies were still not ready to leave and we got so caught up by what we were doing that we stayed till 11:30am. I am very excited about the next class because we will be starting to work with word and they have all...
First day of Computer Class
This past saturday I had a great time at the first day of intro to Computer class. Most of the ladies did not even know how to turn on the computer which i was very surprised (all of these women are hispanic and typically house wifes). I had a written agenda for the class but they where all so excited about learning that they kept asking questions and I found myself trying to get back on track and...
January 2013
1 post
Steinmetz HTML Class Assistance, Semester 2
Today I returned to Steinmetz to help out with HTML classes there. Both the teacher and the students in general (in the periods I’m there) seemed very glad to have me back. The curriculum from the last semester was finishing up, and the students were turning in design templates for personal web sites. These sites will eventually be fully created at the end of this semester using all the...
December 2012
3 posts
In Which The Ring is Cast Into Mount Doom
Last Friday (12/7) marked my last day at St. Viator Elementary. Overall it was a bittersweet day; while I’m happy that the project reached its natural conclusion, I think I might actually miss my students, despite all the grief they gave me.
It was a relatively quiet day. I had the third and sixth graders wrap up their Scratch projects and submit them as is. My supervisor wants to learn...
The Workshop and The End
11/17/2012
The workshop was here! Everyone worked hard in order to get everything prepared for the event and we were about to have close to 40 middle school students coming by. I arrived around 1:15pm to everyone getting things ready for imminent arrival of the students.
I began to help by setting up the many tables of the stations for the kids to work on. Everyone was contributing in some way...
In Which I Take Heart, Land is Within My Sights
I can’t believe this semester is pretty much over, but at the same time it’s fine by me because I’m finally at that point where everything’s hilarious anyway.
This week (12/7) will be my last visit to St. Viator’s to make sure my students’ projects are completed to my satisfaction and then turned in to computer teacher. The end is so close at hand, I can...
November 2012
13 posts
The Set Up
11/16/2012
Today was a very fun day. We had to set up for Saturday’s Robotics Workshop. Around 40 kids for grades 6-8 were coming to Northside to work with our robotics in order to learn about Computer Programming and Robotics. Everything was being organized and run by the Robotics Teams/Colloquium Class. What we had to do was assemble about 20 robots for the kids to use on Saturday.
...
The Clean Up
11/14/2012
Today was a cleanup day. After scrambling to get our robot working and taking it to a friends’ house to finish, we have parts everywhere that needed to be organized and a mech room that was a mess. It was a relatively quiet day as the competition had passed and while we did OK, the feeling of wanting more was in the air. We cleaned and moved stuff around for about an hour. No one...
Mentoring at Hamdard
The kids had fun this week working on a Scratch version of Mad Libs that I found posted in the ScratchEd resources. While I like to create the projects myself some weeks, it’s interesting to see what other educators create/post other weeks when I don’t have time to make a new project and the accompanying handouts. There are a lot of really fun and practical materials on ScratchEd...
In Which I Rope Souls And See The End Is Nigh
Now that the holiday has passed I have some time to pick up where I left off with these posts. Thankfully I’m not as far behind as I thought I was, due to the fact that computer classes were cancelled and the kindergartners had a project to do on November 16th, so my presence was not needed.
On November 7th I went with two other classmates to help Dr. Greenberg rope some souls into...
The Competition
11/10/2012 Updated 11/30
Northside College Prep Robotics
The competition came really quickly and both teams spent the night together at a friend’s house in order to complete and make any final changes to the robot. Of course, that resulted in many of the students tired and falling asleep at the competition which began registration at 730am. =)
Both teams were able to complete their...
The Learning Process
11/07/2012
Northside College Prep Robotics Team
Everyone was really nice to begin with. They showed me all their designs and implementation that it was really easy to understand and begin to help them on how exactly their robot was going to work. I was able to work with the guys much easier than the girls as their implementation for the claw and lift was different. I needed to see it...
Fall @Hamdard Wk8
The weeks are going by much too fast! We’ve gotten a lot of work done in the last few weeks however. The kids have been using Scratch to send messages back and forth from one block of code (sprite) to another, create variables to add simple numbers, and create ‘text sprites’ to use text in a new way - for drawing.
Here are the project files and programs for message and...
Career Fair at West Leyden High School, 11/7
People ask a question, “What’s computer science?” And I tell ‘em, it’s not about sitting in a basement working on some obscure code. Oh no. There’s a lot more than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life: some the money, some the expertise, others the sense of accomplishment, the glamour, or the fame. But a computer scientist - oh, he’s...
Pam African Association
I am bit a late for these repsones on Tunblr, but the experience Ive had helping underprivileged people has altered the way I see immigrants and people from different backgrounds. Lately, I’ve been teaching basic computer skills to refugees from African and the Middle East. It is pretty challenging to communicate ideas to immigrants who have had very little experience with both computers and...
Much Ado About Lego
So now that I’ve gone a good number of times, I feel ready to unleash a big blog post explaining what I’ve been doing all semester. Every Monday/Thursday from 2:30-5 since the first of October I’ve been going to West Ridge Elementary School to be the assistant coach of their First Lego League robotics club.
It’s a lot of fun. There are roughly 14 kids who show up...
NSCP Robotics Team
10/31/2012 Gus Pacheco
I arrived at Northside College Preparatory eager to see my former school and teacher. It was here that I began to see how much Computer Science interested me. It was here that I learned about my future.
It was Halloween and many students were dressed up. My old teacher Mr. Solin was dressed up as well but if you didn’t know him you probably wouldn’t be able...
In Which I Write A Monster Report
Midterms smacked me upside the head this year, so to make up for my silence I’ve got a monster report heading your way.
The last few weeks have been nothing short of chaotic at St. Viator’s, but as I’ve been told that’s nothing out of the ordinary. The week of October 19th Mr. C, the computer class teacher as well as my site supervisor, had a seminar to attend, so all...
Tech Star Kids at Have Dreams
10/9/12 - Today we started to make a gravity game in Scratch so that the sprite would jump up and fall down realistically. Brian showed a demo of the game and the scripts that are associated with it, and everyone was paying attention. As it turns out, most of the kids got this project done before their time in the lab was up. They really seemed to enjoy how simple the scripts were and how much fun...
October 2012
6 posts
HTML Class Assistance at Steinmetz, Wk2 (10/2-16)
In the past few weeks work with the classes has largely been checking in with the students’ work and answering questions as they come. Maribeth has also tasked me with critiquing quizzes that the class is to do throughout the year, along with uploading questions/quizzes into a new quiz-taking service online (the old one went out of business), keeping in mind their actual progress compared to...
There and Back Again - Survival of Bureaucratic...
Last Friday marked my first day at my official volunteer site, St. Viator Elementary School. It’s been a struggle to get this far, since the CPS strike this year temporarily took out all the public school sites. I ended up finding this site during the strike through a coworker at one of my jobs, and I started talking with the principal and computer education teacher. After a week or so of...
5 tags
Fall @Hamdard Wk2
Unfortunately, I don’t actually meet with the kids in computer class this week due to my own work-schedule conflict with our normal class time. However, I have created a Scratch math game that will be used over the next two weeks or more to demonstrate some cs concepts. We started out making shapes and talking about how technology can be used to do things for us… like drawing nice straight...
7 tags
Fall @Hamdard Wk1
After a long break (August/September) I am happy to return to Hamdard this week to work with the small group of kids that volunteered to attend our weekly computer sessions. The group is down to six kids now (was eight in the summer), but they have the enthusiasm and energy of maybe twelve! They were really excited to get started and those that were also in the summer session seemed interested...
"Tech Star Kids" so far
” ‘Tech Star Kids’ teaches children aged 9-13 who are categorized as having ‘High Functioning Autism’ (or in some cases referred to as Asperger’s Syndrome). The goal of the program is to provide social interaction by working as a software development team, and then using the creation of a video game as a motivation to learn computer programming.”
That was the...
HTML Class Assistance at Steinmetz, Wk1
Day One - 9/20 (Thursday) - Orientation/First class (10-11:30A)
With the ending of the Chicago Teachers’ Union strike, classes at Steinmetz started and I could go in to render my service. I came in during the teacher (Maribeth)’s break period and got briefly acclimated before the bell rang and in five minutes I was helping a class with their HTML assignment. I would walk around and be...
August 2012
1 post
4 tags
Summer Mentoring Wk3
The last week of mentoring at Hamdard was actually a few weeks ago now. The session went very well. We started by watching a demo of the example introduced in week 2. While the demo was running, we talked about what was happening and how the loops and events were constructed in the program. I tried to emphasize that the animation was just simple statements combined together to make a more...
July 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Summer Mentoring Wk2
Since the kids were so quick to combine basic commands in the first week of our Scratch workshop, it seemed that a more complex project would be needed for the second week. I created two simple animations as examples and took screen shots at each step in the process of building those animations. The first example shows how to make a character move across the screen and then start back at the...
3 tags
CS Mentoring at the Hamdard Center
My first day at Hamdard, and first day mentoring kids anywhere, was already two weeks ago on July 10th. While I wasn’t sure what to expect, I was well-armed with materials to share. The Scratch website and accompanying Scratch Ed site have a lot of information on learning and teaching both Scratch programming and also the underlying concepts of programming in general. Particularly, I...
Third and fourth week at I.C. Stars
The third week there, I accidentally walked into their corporate meeting and made a fool out of myself. The interns were relocated to a different floor and I was unaware of that change. However, Debs made sure she directed me to them after she saw me look confused. As I arrived where the interns were situated, I introduced myself to the entire cycle - I only had met few of the interns before. I...
June 2012
1 post
First and second week with the summer cycle of...
Andddd I’m back!
I resumed my volunteer services at I.C. Stars two weeks ago and things are a bit different than last cycle. For one, there are 17 interns, which is seven more than the previous one. Secondly, I have been working on administrative work more than one-on-one with the interns. I haven’t met them all yet, but hope to do that soon. There are two projects that I have been assigned. The...
May 2012
1 post
My Last Week with I.C. Stars
Though I named the title as my last week, it won’t be so. I will be returning to the organization as a volunteer again in June for the next cycle.
In my last service hours with the cycle 25 interns, there wasn’t much going on. The main assignment they were working on was the “Dream Speech” which they have to present during their last week in I.C. Stars (next week)....
April 2012
4 posts
Week 11 at I.C. Stars
Today at I.C. Stars, the interns were studying and prepping for their final examinations as well as surveys they had to complete for the cycle. Like me, they will be graduating May 11th. They will have finished the 25th cycle at I.C. Stars. As they were quietly focusing on their final tasks, I helped them wherever I was able to help. One of the interns had been working on a gift for the cycle...
Week 10 at I.C. Stars
As I walked into I.C. Stars this afternoon, the interns were in the middle of virtual conference with a person from another consulting company. Debs (the training program supervisor) was coordinating with him and ensuring the interns were following through properly. At first, the interns seemed a bit flustered due to the overload of information that was being provided, but that’s where Debs...
Week 9 with I.C. Stars
The previous two hours with I.C. Stars was bit of a stressful one for the interns. It seemed that they had a short deadline before their Siemens assessment proposal was due. Because they only had couple days and the weekend to complete their writings, each of them were productively typing away. I did my best to construct outlines and help them gear the right direction with writing - since I have...
Eight week at I.C. Stars
Due to a class meeting I had right after my volunteering hours at I.C. Stars, I wasn’t able to post a blog entry afterwards. Thus, I forgot to write something until today.
Last Friday the interns were researching on various departments of Siemens. They had attended a meeting at the company’s office and retrieved general information they needed to successfully perform their prompt. Their prompt...
March 2012
3 posts
Seventh week at I.C. Stars
This Friday was unlike the other Fridays. The interns did not have a particular project to work on so many were either finishing up incomplete tasks or researching for internship/training programs. Some were still working on their queries whereas others were looking into the Cisco internship opportunity that came up. One of the interns saw the income potential an employee could make by being a...
Fifth week at I.C. Stars
My fifth week was sort of a modified repeat from the fourth week. The interns were still working on their innovative ideas and seemed to be moving along well in their projects. I continued to help them by providing ideas, research tips, thought-provoking questions, and so forth. At this point, the groups had created their websites and were working on making changes to resemble them as a...
Sixth week at I.C. Stars
Due to spring break last week, I did not attend I.C. Stars, but as I returned this week, the interns were gleefully welcoming me. This week they are given the task to assemble/code SQL for 15 different queries. For each query they have to write up the code as stated by the problem and run it within 2.30 minutes. Due to this each intern kept practicing the SQL writing to stay under the time frame....
February 2012
2 posts
Fourth week at I.C. Stars
This past Friday was a more relaxed day of activities. As I arrived, the interns were seated by their group and working on their latest project. For this project, the interns have to think of an innovative product based off a product that is already in the market. One group was thinking of an advanced version of Dropbox, while another one was researching of a medication alert system. The project...
My first, second, and third week with I.C. Stars...
I.C. Stars is a social enterprise company that hires individuals to carry on consulting tasks for other companies. In the early stages of my settlement with the company I was a bit confused on how I was going to perform my services since they provide work in various departments. After several conversations, Deborah Cane (Training Program Manager) wanted me to accompany the interns on Friday...
December 2011
4 posts
Last Day at Hamdard
Today was my last day at Hamdard Center. Some of the kids were a little bit upset, but I let them know that there is a chance I will be doing SLC in the spring which would mean I could come back to teach. However, if I don’t, I will do my best that perhaps another Loyola student who takes 390 in the future can take my place.
For the last day I had the children have a choice between...
Pan-Africa: The End
So today was my last day at the organization. There was no fanfare or anything, just class with students…as you do. Overall I would say that this experience was really rewarding, as I’ve never anything quite like it before. I got to know some interesting people and teach them things which they will take with them for the rest of their lives. I even taught myself a few things in the...
Starting ALICE
Thursday, Dec 1
Today I decided that I was going to show my class the Alice program. Alice is similar to Scratch, it is a drag and drop oriented program and is very visual, but it is quite more advance. It is developed by Carnegie Mellon University.
Since my class has a lot of younger students, I felt that Alice would be too complicated for them to follow along and do problems I set for them,...
Robotics Finale 12/03/11
This is the team I worked with over the semester. They were really awesome to work with! Go FTC Knights!
the last day I was able to obtain interviews about being on the robotics team from the adult mentors and the kids that participated. It was a very nice experience overall and I really enjoyed my time there. I feel like I learned a lot and got to really give back and help.
Toshiba Competition Progress
The girls managed organize into three groups of four and finalize topics. They have all come up with really great ideas that they’re able to expand and visually how these technologies can be implemented for other purposes. We spent a majority of the time today working on researching and beginning the report on the history of the projects as well as the title page, bibliography, and timeline....
November 2011
12 posts
A Little Computer Maintenance
Due to the rather blustery weather conditions today, only one student showed up to class. I was able to help her for a while, but another duty called. The organization’s main computer was so incredibly bogged down with gunk that they had me go and fix the whole thing, cleaning out and gutting many of the programs on the machine. It took quite while to get things working to a normal...
11/22 Class
As the weather was fairly dismal this Tuesday, not very many people showed up to class. The ones that did therefore got special attention! It was the first time I have worked with another volunteer this semester - she stuck with one of the new students, and I helped another. Specifically, I helped the student tackle her resume and cover letter (to a fictional company of course), and explained...
