Teachers Teaching
08.05.2018
The West Virginia Governor's STEM Institute'
While we were here, so were about 60 selected 9th graders because of their interest in Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math (STEM) subjects. We were commissioned to teach a class on Signal Processing. We had to try to take what we had learned and bring it down to an introductory level for these kids. This is what we do, so I think we all gave them a good experience.
We had to come up with 5 hours of activities for groups of 20. We did it over two days per group, thus 6 days in all. Tues-Tues.
Day 1
Alexis - Check understanding of Electromagnetic Spectrum and Introduction of getting information from a different line of communication (Signal) and avoiding distractions (Noise) They had to see if they could rebuild a shown structure with some talking and seeing restrictions.
Tad- I created a Signal to Noise activity to build on the first. It was closely associated with how pixels in a digital camera work, and how we assign "color" to numerical information/Intesity strength. Could they find the signal through the noise?
New John - Created a nifty little machine for simulating mixing signals to carry information across a distance (AM radio and/or Morse Code analogy)
Day 2
Old John - Created a more realistic "radio astronomer type" signal to noise wave and used nicely created filters to find information in the noise.
Howard - Used the Gnu Radio program we worked with to create a wave maker for the kids to manipulate on the computers.
Alexis and Tad -Scavenger Hunt
Dan - His class was done outside our slotted timeline, but he made a stack full of horn panels and can antennae and had the kids assemble and test their horn scopes...all within an hour. He had 15 students sign up to take his class!
Scavenger Hunt- We developed and overall scavenger hunt which weaved clues through the mini lessons above and culminated with the students breaking up into smaller teams to find clues around the whole science center facility and ultimately find a ticket for the final prize... a pack of Milky Way bars (Of course!). All kids were winners and all got candy.
Because I was busy through many of the activities, especially setting up the scavenger hunt while the kids were preoccupied, there aren't a lot of pictures. Just enjoy...
Ok class, Are you ready to learn about Signal Processing
Can you rebuild this
...Not So Easy...
...Pretty Close!
Signal No Noise
Signal With Noise
Analog to Digital Signal...Mr. Morse
Building Square Waves
A typical clue to reveals words from the Grid.
The Letter-Number answer combo led them to find the word at that grid space that was the next word in the riddle
The Scavenger Hunt Grid
One of the riddles was M7 R9 U2 X6 M5 V4 U3 G9 I0 R3. Can you figure out to which astronomical object the riddle is referring?
