Circuits and Austin Tinkering School field trip! ~Session 3 *week 1

We are back!  Hopefully you all had a wonderful holiday break.

This session we will start introducing the Eagles to the world of electronics.  We believe that this is a basic building block understanding the world that we live in today.  It will be useful for each of the Eagles to be exposed to this subject if they want to be anything from a pioneer in robotics to simply wiring up the holiday lights at home.  Maybe you can have them do it next year :).

We will start with the fundamentals by introducing how electrons flow through a circuit.  Not only will we have the Eagles build basic circuits (with batteries, LEDs, resistors, etc), but we are going to have them stand in a circle and each of them will participate as a part of a circuit where they are going to push (battery), hand over (conductor), slow down (resistor), stop (insulator), or use (LED) electrons.  This will be a nice team building exercise after the holiday break and it will give them a great physical representation of how circuits work.

During this quest they will also be taking a field trip to the Austin Tinkering School where the lessons of the first week will be reinforced outside of our studio.

In the following weeks, they will:

1) Learn more complex circuits by completing challenges (working with sensors, potentiometers, etc.)

2) Be introduced to programming a microcontroller (Arduino Uno) to control sensors and LEDs.

3) Learn the process of using what they have learned to come up with a design, and execute on that design.

Happy New Year!

The Acton West Team

THE HUMAN CIRCUIT GAME!