We Survive a Swarm of Teenagers or Give Me Girls Every Time

An adjunct instructor was contacted about creating a field trip for a summer camp for disadvantaged middle and high school students.  Before you could say, "Whoa!" I was up to my eyeballs recruiting faculty to participate and then introducing the faculty to the adjunct so they'd read her (the adjunct's email) or put a face to a voice.

My bit of business was a piece of cake: show them how to create a program in Alice to do the following:

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Not terribly exciting, but it would be the first programming experience for a lot of the kids.  The program could be used to explain how making intelligent decisions concerning logic would enable the same code to work regardless of how the bunny was positioned relative to the chicken.

What could go wrong?  Well for starters, a power outage a few weeks before made about half the PCs unable to login.  The software wasn't working on half the remaining PCs.  And, ever the good sole I had the Computer Center create special single use accounts in the room I was going to use and the computer lab for another presenter.  (The special accounts allowed the students to login, access the web, but not create files on network drives.)

Two former students agreed to demonstrate resonant frequencies.  We were pretty sure that the kids had never heard of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and they'd be impressed to learn that engineers had to design buildings so that the structures didn't shake apart.  One later had her work schedule changed so it was down to one student.

I tried to use a web cam to allow a whole room to see what was happening on a shaker table.  I needed a long video cable, but the cable sent over didn't have the right pinning, but we managed to survive.  I was told the students were impressed that their minders were impressed.

I did my due diligence: checking out PCs in my room and the room used by another presenter and filing more than 2 dozen help desk tickets.  Because it was summer and the usual tech guy was on vacation, the Computer Center was in some turmoil as the Center's least favorite director was canned earlier in the week, I was rescued by some daring-do not described here lest some unnamed forces react badly.  (Murky I know, but, trust me, it's better that way.)

On the day of I got a shock when I found an instructor reading his Wall Street Journal in the room where I expected to make a presentation to about 40 kids 3 times.   It went like this:

"Hey Mike, what are you doing here?"
"What do you mean what am I doing here?  This is where I teach my class."

Uh-oh!  Scheduling conflict.  I don't think it was my doing, but definitely now my problem.  After some consultation, pleading, and abasement.  Mike agreed to hold his class next door and I would be out of his usually scheduled room in time for his students to use the computers.

It was an interesting experience because the kids showed up late because they'd walked over instead of coming over by bus.

The girls were great.  The followed instructions, raised hands when they had questions, and responded to questions.  The guys?  The ability to make the chicken cackle seemed irresistible to many.

It was gratifying.  One young woman wanted to know if she could have me as her teacher if she came to my college.  I should have said, "I'd love to have you."  I'm not used to dealing with kids.  What I said instead was, "If you come here you'd have to register for my course."  Bureaucratic.  I should be ashamed of myself.

On the other hand, a couple, including one of their minders, asked how they could get the software.  I gave all the info to the adjunct who got me into this and let her pass it along.

All students survived.  All equipment remained intact and in place.  From my point of view: Success!

I imagine that it might become a yearly summer event.  If so I'd be boring the students if I reused the same demonstration.  It might be cool though to have students send a signal over the web to activate a a piston to push something over an edge.  Shouldn't that appeal to the nihilism of grade school kids?