Train the Trainer: The Science of Light

Along with our colleagues at ASSET STEM Education, we recently hosted a two-day train-the-trainer workshop for members of our Satellite Network around the principles of photography and its use in the classroom, particularly through the lens of social impact.

Participants kicked off the workshop building a pinhole camera, and concluded it putting together a digital camera. (see full workshop schedule below)


The goals of the workshop:

  • Deepen understanding of photography fundamentals, to anchor and enhance the GigaPan outreach and support provided by CREATE Lab Satellites.
  • Hands-on consideration of the Bigshot camera kit as a Satellite Network wide offering within a context of community empowerment. 


Below are testimonials from workshop participants. The accompanying photographs were taken with Bigshot cameras, which participants assembled and experimented with during the second day of the workshop.

"The workshop has been a lot of fun. It was really helpful to begin with photographic history and move through different techniques, tools and concepts. I learned a lot about how modern cameras work through examining older methods of photography. This is definitely something I can share with my colleagues and students."
Kris Hupp
Cornell School District
21st Century Teaching & Learning Coach

"Thank you for the last two days.  I have truly enjoyed learning more about the technical side of photography."
Deb Spencer
Manager of Professional Development
ASSET STEM Education

"Going through that training, it's much easier for me to see how to help others with little to no experience with photography, as I had. I have a better understanding of exposure and focus and what it means and how its used after the big shot session and its easily expanded into gigapan. It was a great session!"
Carrie-Meghan Quick-Blanco
Language/International Studies Specialist
Marshall University

"This picture was taken during our training on the BigShot camera. The session provided an interactive experience that encouraged individual creativity and voice!"
Renee Graham
Research and Development Manager
ASSET STEM Education

"The most engaging part of the workshop for me was when we had to think about harnessing photography as a tool towards making folks aware/educating about a specific social justice issue, and then actually capturing a few images with the BigShot camera towards that end. This took on the flavor of a "project" and strengthened my belief in the power of photography, especially in the hands of students."
Jim Rye
Professor, Curriculum and Instruction/Literacy Studies
West Virginia University

"This workshop was a wonderful resource for new techniques and methods for using photography in a classroom."
Rachel Shipley
Artist Educator Fellow
West Liberty University 

"The impact that art can have on society is not something I have ever thought about, and I now realize its power. The potential these materials have for out of school time is something I want to explore.  I am looking forward to working with and using the resources provided. Thank you for this experience."
Lisa Callender
Professional Development Manager
ASSET STEM Education 

"I loved the opportunity to build a kit-based digital camera and I’m sure the Bigshot will be a great resource for kids to learn more about photography. I also appreciated the examples of photography and image-making for social impact projects. All in all, a very valuable workshop. Thank you!"
Mac Howison
Senior Program Officer for Catalytic Funding
The Sprout Fund


Workshop Schedule

Train the Trainer: Make it Move

The CREATE Lab Satellite Network gathered at the Center for Arts and Education, home of our West Liberty University Satellite, to share two best practices:

Arts and Bots training developed and offered by Lori Maxfield of our Carlow Satellite in collaboration with Yvonne Ng of Engineer's Playground.  The program explores a progression from hand powered mechanisms to robots, while considering - and clarifying - concepts of engineering, design, electric circuits and programming. 

New maker-space at the Center for Arts and Education, a flexible learning environment put together by Lou Karas, the center's director. We explored it in the best possible way - by learning and making in it. 



Here are some testimonials from the event:

About the Workshop

"This workshop really helped me get a better understanding of how Arts & Bots fits into the larger context of an engineering curriculum. Now I feel a little more able to train people on Arts & Bots, not in the abstract, but with the broader picture in mind. I also think learning some nuts and bolts about engineering makes the general subject a little less intimidating for people, which in itself can be really empowering!"

"The session highlighted connection between different aspects of technological fluency: the engineered artistic design and the computer programming behind it. Incorporating this into trainings will be a powerful motivator to learn more about programming and computer science."

"The session gave Arts and Bots a context. All of the activities leading up to the creation of the robot were both foundational and engaging."



About the Space

"The space was fantastic. I did not have a single creative idea that could not be brought to fruition with the materials provided, many of which led to even more creative ideas! It's a very welcoming and functional space."

"It was a pleasure to work in an environment where a variety of tools and materials are readily available, organized and accessible - finding them does not slow the flow of making."

"The Make Shop space will be a real asset to the Education Department. Not only will it provide a perfect space to meet faculty and students creative needs, It will be a great facility for teacher training, for families and visiting public school children."

"best part of the training for me, very inspiring but it was torture to sit there and not put my hands on all the cool materials and make stuff as soon as i walked in!"


About the Event

"Face to face time with other Satellite Network members was important and we should use all the time we can get for those kinds of activities."

"We got to include pre-service teachers which is important as the next generation going into the classroom they are on the cutting edge."

How Children Can Learn

by Gayle Manchin, president of WV Board of Education, following a recent visit to the CREATE Lab: 


I knew that the CREATE Lab was a visionary “think tank” of young brilliant minds--but that does not even scratch the surface of what is “happening” in this arena at Carnegie-Mellon. 

The opportunities given to children to expand their minds, their explorations, their discoveries, and have it all happen as an everyday experience begins to define what education should mean. Young people create, discover, experiment, and solve problems as engaged scientists. This can and is being replicated in WV in remarkable ways. These students will become tomorrow's teams that find the cure for cancer, temper global warming, and change the way they will leave their land better than we left it to them.

Replicated in WV in remarkable ways. CREATE Lab Satellite Network partners in West Virginia.

However, in addition to showing the world how children can learn, the CREATE Lab is also changing our universe. The entrepreneurial spirit that exists in that facility is changing the scope of mankind in what and how individuals can observe, learn and facilitate the integration of new knowledge into our ever-changing, complex world. These young minds enable all of us to know more quickly the challenges that we face as a society and encourages us to be part of the solution in a more effective way.

The visit in and of itself was a overwhelming experience --- but the opportunities that exist are almost incomprehensible in how far the human mind can stretch. I feel so incompetent in trying to express adequately the experience of spending an afternoon in this lab, but suffice it to say, I left there realizing that I had been a part of an amazing vision of teaching and learning at its finest. THANK YOU for sharing with us!!

I hope that our paths will cross in many ways on this journey to educate for the future.

Gayle C. Manchin
President, WV State Board of Education

GigaPan Curriculum Collection - Celebrating 41 Educators

For the past six years, CREATE Lab GigaPan outreach has inspired projects in 20 countries, engaging 1,176 educators, 6,371 students, and 153 leading scientists across the globe. 

Today we are proud to announce the release of a GigaPan curriculum collection including 20 lesson plans, based on projects that were developed and implemented by 41 of our partner educators, featuring a variety of content areas and unique approaches to GigaPan. We're proud to show off their work.

The curriculum collection is available on: gigapan.com/cms/use-learn.
Each unit details the related common core and state standards.

In addition to our gratitude toward our partner educators, we dedicate a very special thank you to Jennifer Geist of  Zeitgeist Creations Global Education Tools, who curated all the unit plans and uniformly formatted them for easy reference and implementation. To complete the collection, Jennifer bundled these units with educator guides for online resources, hardware, activity ideas as well as a project design template.

Photography becomes transformative when the image maker is empowered to capture what is most valuable to them, and even more so when they share this perspective with others. By creating and sharing GigaPan images, educators, students, and scientists can share the stories of their own landscapes and ignite conversations with participating groups all over the world. 


We asked some of the educators featured in this collection to share their perspective about GigaPan. 

Here's what they said:


Elizabeth Lallathin, Kellogg Elementary School, Huntington WV, USA

"Using GigaPan in my classroom has allowed all readers access to inferencing skills and to be part of a greater conversation. Images found on gigapan.com have become a virtual window to the settings of books, lessons, and news. Readers are able to place themselves inside of the picture and see it close up. The images grab the audience and hold the attention begging the onlooker to inquire more deeply with every zoom...GigaPan is a tool that I highly respect and enjoy using within my classroom."

Download Elizabeth's projects: World of Diversity and Travels Through Literature


Hari Prasetyo, SMA Al-Izhar, Jakarta, Indonesia


"GigaPan is an amazing tool. Using GigaPan has taught me and my students many things, such as, partnership, exchanging the ideas, and because we are from Indonesia we practice our English conversation by communicating with our partner school. The gigantic panorama produced by the GigaPan enables us to find/zoom in on unique or strange pictures/phenomenon/scene in our daily activities or cultures. We then can discuss these findings within our class or ask for an explanation from our school partner's students and teacher.  So much cultural diversity or biodiversity that we can understand and learn about." 

Download Hari's project, School Daily Activities, here.


David Williams, Huntington High School, Huntington WV, USA

"What I liked about the GigaPan is that it allowed the students to make discoveries without me telling them and it allowed me to see what interested them. It allowed their peers to help them because they were the only ones online to communicate with. It made the students excited and engaged. I had fully engaged students and by being on the computers students that might not participate in discussions could discuss via the keyboard. This project did a good job hooking my students on learning about the Incas."

Download David's project, Inca & Ancient Civilizations, here


Linda Twedt, South Fayette Middle School, McDonald PA, USA

"The magic of GigaPan is as much in what it can show as in what it can 'erase'. With assistance, we were able to peek inside the contents of a frozen food truck seemingly without the doors. GigaPan excites the students with its Facebook-style interface, allowing them to use their foreign language skills to get to know their partners, who may live many thousands of miles away."

Download Linda's project, Alimentation/Nutrition, here


Briana, student of Brandon Keat, Propel School, Pittsburgh PA, USA

“I must admit Gigapanning for me became a new craving! All I thought about when I walked around was 'this would be a great place to do a GigaPan.' I learned it all – how to set the machine up and how to adjust everything correctly and take awesome pictures. It was an amazing experience and I'm glad I got to be apart of it!"  

Download Briana's classroom's social studies project here


Khosi Ntuli, Tlhatlogang Junior Secondary School, Soweto, South Africa

"I am an educator teaching Life Orientation at Tlhatlogang Junior Secondary in South Africa. Students are faced with challenging dilemmas. Life is all about choices and priorities. My subject aims at equipping them with skills and techniques to face their challenging background. Meeting with other educators made me realize that one way or the other we are all the same. We are faced with the challenge of changing the minds of those kids that God has placed to our care.”

Download Khosi's project, Global Health, here


Becky Severino, Beverly Elementary School, Beverly WV, USA

"The Self-Portrait GigaPan project sprang from a discussion with a preschool teacher about found objects. We decided that we would ask our students to go on a treasure hunt at home and bring to school any small treasures they could find. We used the objects as springboards for creative play. When it seemed that the students had exhausted all possibilities, we introduced the concept of self-portraits. Using the GigaPan site, we visited museums and art galleries to see original self-portraits by famous artists. We used our found treasures to build faces, working without glue so that we could change our work, revisit it, recreate the faces depending on the objects chosen. Finally we created our own self-portraits. We then created puppets from our objects and wrote stories about their lives.

We were so fascinated with that GigaPan that we decided to create our own using the self-portraits of famous artists. We made small thumbnail copies of their works and placed them in various spots around our classroom. We then made larger versions of the same pictures and used those to cover our faces and placed ourselves in the GigaPan.  We were very pleased with the outcome of our work!"

Download Becky's project, Beautiful Stuff: Self Portraits, here


Bonnie Conner, Milton Middle School, Milton WV, USA

"I created the project for a classification unit I do near the end of the year. My students are always amazed at how the GigaPan works. Students enjoy trying to find the organisms and classify them. I even taught a student teacher how to use the GigaPan last year and used it in my digital imaging club with 6, 7, and 8th graders."

Download Bonnie's project, Nine Phyla of the Animal Kingdom, here


Marti Louw, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA, USA

"Gigapixel technology brings a 21st century spin to the natural history diorama. Explorable images not only make accessible the remote, rare and hard to see, the technology enables learners to explore, observe and discover meaning in their own way."

Download Marti's project, Stories in Rock, here


Jason Jackson, Beverly Hills Middle School, Huntington WV, USA

"The projects main focus was to broaden the horizons of children. Many places around the world seem so similar to us here in the US, but the differences in everyday activities, like grocery shopping, can be surprising. During this project we took time to look at local prices for a gallon of milk and compare that mathematically to the price of a gallon of milk in other locations. We started our investigation by asking family and friends who lived in other states what a gallon of milk cost. Then, we explored the GigaPan site and other internet sites for the price of milk per gallon. After locating several outlets, a convenient store in the middle east, a European Sweet Shop, an Asian open market, and grocery stores in the United States, the data comparison assignment started. As a culminating assignment, students had to use the information that we had learned to create a visual representation of how the prices varied among other objects located in our class' original GigaPan. Most students chose a spread sheet which related back to our math basis."

Download Jason's project, Nutrition & Markets, here.


View the full curriculum collection here

See For Yourself - Event Schedule


5/6 Monday            Hands-on GigaPan Training: ages 8+ Registration Required 
5:00-8:00pm           


5/8 Wednesday      Robots! Learning Party 
4:30-7:30pm 


6:30-9:00pm           


5/13 Monday           Circuits and Robots Workshop: Children’s Innovation Project ages 3-7  |  Arts & Bots ages 7+ 
4:00-6:00pm           


5/21 Tuesday           Community GigaPan Projects: presentation by Pitt student-teachers
6:30-8:30pm           

5/22 Wednesday     Kids+Creativity at 2020: Lunch and Learn with Illah Nourbakhsh. SOLD OUT
12:00-1:30pm          


5/28 Tuesday           Hear Me 101 Student Film Screening 
6:30-9:00pm



Arts and Bots Training in Mingo County, West Virginia

The June Harless Center held an Arts and Bots training in Mingo County at Mingo Central High School on November 5, 2012.  Twelve elementary and middle school science and art teachers from Burch Elementary, Gilbert Middle, Matewan Middle, Williamson Middle, Burch Middle and Mingo Central High School took part in the training, which was funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

The Arts and Bots project integrates technology, robotics and art through the use of familiar arts and crafts supplies, circuit boards, lights, motors and sensors.  Students design, build and program robots that tell stories of literary and historical characters and events while promoting technological literacy and informal learning.  

Arts and Bots is one of several projects implemented by the Harless CREATE Satellite, a branch of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab at the June Harless Center.  The satellite provides robotics and technology initiatives to West Virginia schools including Marshall University Professional Development Schools.

Due to its success Arts and Bots, originally designed to encourage middle school girls’ interest in STEM topics, was expanded to include both genders and a larger age group.  The Harless CREATE Satellite enables educators and rural communities in West Virginia a real-time portal to the flow of cutting edge technologies and programs being developed at the lab in Pittsburgh.

 

Arts and Bots-Barboursville Middle School Math Class

Doug Force's, math teacher at Barboursville Middle School in Barboursville, West Virginia accepted the challenge to inject robotics into his curriculum first semester of the 2012-2013 school year. His students used everyday household items to make robots. Once their robots were created, their challenge was to find what they did that pertained to mathematics. Other questions asked were as follows :

 

1. How do I make something happen on my robot when I get close to it?

2. How do I make a purple strobe light?

3. How do I make something move on my robot?

4.  What is unique about my robot? 

5.  What have I learned from this experience?

 

Students and their parents brought their robots to teachers' Arts and Bots follow- up meeting this week on Marshall's campus to share them with pre-service and in-service teachers. 

Next semester, Doug will continue to use Arts and Bots with a new group of students and we look forward to seeing more creative robots!

Waterbot Installation-2nd Attempt!

The waterbot pilot team of Rick Sharpe (Huntingtin High School) and Brian McNeal (Cabell Midland High School) went out Sunday October 7th, 2012 and installed 2 waterbots along fourpole creek in Huntington.  Fourpole creek is a large creek that runs through the center of Huntington including through Ritter Park. Rick and Brian will be utilizing the data captured by the waterbot and incorporating it into their science classes where they already teach water quality. The waterbot will be a great addition to their curriculum and plans to install a third in Martinsbug, West Virginia with a local science teacher there are in the works. 

Waterbot Pilot at Marshall University- Summer 2012

A summer waterbot pilot was held with two science teachers from Huntington High School and another teacher from Cabell Midland High School on July 24th, 2012. Pat McKee, Rich Sharpe and Brian McNeal already teach about water quality in their classrooms and will be using waterbot throughout the year to monitor local watersheds in several different areas. A blog has been created to record findings and share results with others (http://cabellwaterbot.blogspot.com/).  Once established, future plans include training additional teachers in multiple areas.