MAKER DAY Blog post! DrAw BoTs!

1. What moments stand out?  When did a child surprise you, by doing something unexpected?

I think the moments that mostly stood out to me is the children’s faces at the end as soon as they got the draw bot to draw. Their faces were so bright and happy. Something that I was unexpected was when one of the boys made a really cool interknit design of a bug on his robot. It had a lot of detail. One other moment that stood out to me was when this one girl made a really amazing draw bot, it represented a jelly fish. She put so much time int the design of it. Unfortunately It kept falling but I spent 25 minutes with her to balance the weight of the bot until she got it.

2. What did you observe about the interactions between the children and their adults?

I noticed that some of the parents full on did their kids projects for them, others helped, and some didn’t help at all and let the child do the whole thing by their self. It was really nice seeing the families together. Some kids would also get mad at their parents for helping also which I thought was interesting. Some of the grown ups wanted to make a draw bot too because they were so excited.

3. What worked particularly well?

I think overall the success of every single draw bot worked which was really amazing.  There was one girl who had trouble with her draw bot and I was nervous that it was not going to work but eventually after helping her for 25 minutes we got it. Over all I was surprised that more students did not have trouble because even in class it took a little while to trouble shoot when us college students made one.

3. What might you do differently next time?

I honestly am not exactly sure. Maybe some of the stations were a little close as the end the last 3 stations were all 1 big station. Maybe I would have added more tables for a little more room but I do not think it bothered anyone but could have made it slightly more organized.

4. How well did your group function?  What worked and what might have been frustrating in the collaborative process? I think over all our group worked pretty well together.  I was nervous at one point that we were not going to have all the materials especially for the robot bodies. But we collected containers to use. This was also sustainable way for our draw bot.

5. How satisfied are you with your own participation in your Maker Day Group?  What did you contribute? What might you do differently next time around, in terms of the group process?

Over all everyone contributed very evenly, I did not feel like anyone did not put effort in.

I contributed with the signs, some set up and some clean up too. I also stayed with the hardest station which was getting the markers to stand on the bot which were the legs.

6. Please add any other reflections or feedback on Maker Day.

I think maybe I would have been cool if we all made different flyers for the event as a grade and used Photoshop which would give some cool experience with photoshop. Over all every went pretty smoothly.

Some Photos 🙂