Overlake
Technology

Overlake high school students interested in technology will have an opportunity this summer to hone their work skills.

The Overlake School Technology Department is extending its summer internship program to include up to four positions open to Overlake students.  These projects could include Web and mobile app development, networking, computer lab management, technology testing and image deployment.

The program, offered by the Overlake Technology Department, provides students interested in science, technology, engineering and math careers with a “hands-on” work experience in a school environment.

Interested in a career in technology?  Want to learn more. We are now accepting summer internship applications. Please contact Thomas Frizelle tfrizelle@overlake.org by June 1^st if you are interested.

After 4 days of preparing and learning today we were finally able to have fun with our robots. After making some minor adjustments and added some new sensors we were ready for our next challenge, the 2^nd obstacle course. It seemed pretty simple, a couple of swerves and a 90 degree turn to the right but as it would turn out would be a hard task to complete. To complete this task we used many methods. The first being using our new encoders to see how many revolutions our robot should take before swerving from one side to another. At first that was the main idea behind most of our programs but as time went on everybody started taking on new ideas. Ideas would vary from trying to go straight through the course and hope for the best to, just plain bulldozing the course down. After about an hour the course changed very much as it went from a course with a couple of swerves to a straight line with a sharp turn. Following this, we all went up to the student center to enjoy a nice pizza for our final day as a group. When we returned, instead of having a set of instructions to follow we decided to have fun with our robots and find new cool things we can do with them. After a while of fooling around we had to make our fun dance video. And, since this is robotics we did incorporate the robots in the video. After all this we had to round up our robots put them away and say goodbye to what has become a truly fun filled week.

Continuing where we left off on Tuesday, today we started programming our robots. Our objective was to program them to get them through a seemingly simple obstacle course, which would turn out to be a huge challenge. After over an hour of working on the robots and countless failed attempts to succeed at getting past the obstacles only a handful of us were able to achieve victory. After lunch we started working on improving our robots by connecting monitors that will record the amount of revolutions the wheels of our robots would take which would prove to be tricky. It took us the rest of the day but finally we were all able to complete our robots and eventually most of us would complete the very challenging obstacle course.

Today our group went to Digipen. Digipen is a college of technology and fine art located in Redmond, which is geared towards game design and programing. When we arrived there, we got our passes before proceeding to a nicely furnished lobby.  We took a short tour of the building, watching people working and taking classes, while learning about how the school works, and what the students do. Digipen recently bought a series of apartments down the street, providing new dorms for students who go there. Though the school doesn’t have any sports, they do have a unique activity twice a year: Zombie Apocalypse, in which some of the students are “infected”, where they run around trying to get everyone else. Other non-infected students would have nerf guns, and try to survive as long as they can.

The school has a variety of clubs, from the long-running Pokémon club, to the zombie Apocalypse club, to the game testing club. The game testing club plays a large role in the school, for everyone has to make at least one game during their time at the school. Their gaming has gone a long way in the world, such as the largely loved Portal, which started as a student test game which was loved by a company at a competition.

Digipen teaches many things about computer sciences, the two major things they teach are fine arts (For game backgrounds, characters, graphics, etc.) to computer programing (Game making, robotics, website design, etc.) We took a small one hour class after lunch on building robots. We had used a kit with just screws and bolts before, but this was the real thing. We took something called a breadboard, which was just a little plastic box filled with holes. We got into pairs and tried to connect little parts around the breadboard with tiny little wires that plugged into the holes. Our goal was to make it so that when we flipped a switch, it would make this car robot go until it got near a wall, upon which it would stop. Only a few groups were able to make that work, but in the end, most people weren’t able to finish it.

After that, we went back to the busses to go back to Overlake. We arrived shortly after 2:00; and half of the group went on a hike, while the other half stayed by the flagpole and talked. We also received little goodie bags from Digipen, which contained information on their programs as well as summer camps.

Today was the second day of our project week. In the morning, after our brief meeting in discovery hall, we went to the TLC computer lab where we continued to work on our programming of various mimics including programming a robot mimic to act as a child’s educational game. We then continued to work on a mobile over a baby crib and presented our work as a marketer attempting to sell our mobiles. In the afternoon, we started the major project of the week: actual robots. We started to take the directions and put together the robot pieces using directions with ‘exploded diagrams.’ We left off by discussing our trip tomorrow to the DigiPen in Redmond.

Today was the first day of robotics project week. It started off fairly normal with introductions and assigning positions for people such as leader of the day, blogger, clean up etc. Other than introductions we of course also started learning some basics of programming using Flowol 4. It started off at a pretty slow pace only learning how to turn a light on and off but as we went further into the day; our tasks started getting more challenging. What was at first simply making a light blink became trying to play a little game with a robot. The class seemed to breeze through the first couple of tasks but as we started to learn more aspects of programming such as sub routes the class started to get more complicated but also much more entertaining. Today we managed to make our programs talk, make decisions, and have multiple options. Though it may be only our first day I have no doubt that the class will become much more challenging and entertaining throughout the week.

Just a reminder.  We are a Microsoft DreamSpark member school. This allows us distribute free license keys for professional-grade software developer and designer tools to Overlake students. For more information about software availability check the DreamSpark website here. If you are interested in obtaining a license key please visit the Technology office in the TLC.

This week Janet Rothfel’s Latin students completed their Women in Livy project.  I asked Janet to write a brief description of the project to share on the technology blog.  Her description follows…

I designed the Women in Livy project to focus the advanced Latin students on women in ancient Rome.  Most often men are featured in ancient histories and events, and most often it is their personalities and achievements that are written about.  While Livy includes women who represent society’s ideal, he also tells stories in his Ab Urbe Condita of women whose behavior is held up as dreadful examples of womanhood in Rome.  Students interestingly tackled both and produced websites that provide the Latin and their translations of extant literature referencing the chosen women.  Students were asked to analyze what the additional readings provide in fleshing out the character and story of each woman.  Students also explored and discussed the historical impact that these writings have had on artists throughout time.  Poetry, paintings, woodblock prints, coins, and even opera are evidence of these women’s lasting impressions.  Students then had the opportunity to produce their own personal artistic work in any genre inspired by the woman they researched.

Students in Sara Baquero Garcia’s 8^th grade social studies classes are looking at propaganda in their world, and examining how this propaganda can affect the world around them and them personally. All of the projects for this year can be accessed through the links below.

The Propaganda Project is an intricate, challenging project that requires that students examine what is beyond the messages they are given, and think about how all of those messages can have an effect on who we are personally and collectively.  This year’s projects also highlight an issue of interest to each student during this year’s presidential campaign.  It can be found in the “My Issue” tab for each project.

This fall, we launched a Canvas pilot program on campus. Canvas is a robust Learning Management System utilized by many colleges and universities as well as K-12 schools.  To learn more about Canvas click here. The pilot program has been largely successful and we continue to feel Canvas is the best LMS for Overlake.

• We have 9 teachers on Canvas as part of the pilot program.
• Faculty in the pilot program receive ongoing support and targeted training related to teaching with Canvas.
• In the next few weeks we will be soliciting feedback from parents, students and faculty.

Planning

• For the 2013-2014 school year Canvas will replace our existing teacher websites.
• Training for all faculty will begin in the spring.
• Parent-Student orientation will begin in August 2013.