Computation & Design Thinking
“For the same reason everyone should take some history and political science—it’s the style of thinking that’s important. The way of thinking about addressing problems [in computer programming] is an important skill to have.” ~ Charles Isbell, associate dean for academic affairs at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing
Use ANY Object as a Game Controller with Scratch 2.0
How cool is the ability to use ANY real world object (Im using a popsicle stick) as a game controller with Scratch 2.0! Kudos to the @scratchteam
KinderCoder … “Pre-Scratch” for the 1st, & 2nd graders
KinderCoder was built for the 1st & 2nd graders we work with prior to them being introduced to the full Scratch version … feel free to have your 1st & 2nd graders play with it as well !
Mac Version – http://greenbushlabs.com/KinderCodeMAC.zip
Windows Version – http://greenbushlabs.com/KinderCodeWIN.zip
The Future of Online Education is Evolving Quickly
and we are doing our part as well at http://classes.greenbush.us
3D Printing – The Next Fronteir
I have blogged about 3D printing for years now and as imagined the price point is just recently coming to the point that your average school can have their very own modern day FabLab ! I have proposed such a lab on the Greenbush campus over the past years, my hope is that some day we can realize this vision.
SNAP! … Like Scratch in a Web Page
Snap is a project by the University of California at Berkeley with the intend of bringing a Scratch like building interface to the web. Click the image below to try SNAP!
Edusim – The Little Project that Could…. Bring 3D to the Fingerstips of Kids
Many years and long hour have gone into the Edusim project - http://edusim3d.com … a projects who’s goal was to bring deeply engaging, highly visual and “tinkerable” 3D environments to the fingertips of kids through interactive surfaces. It started in 2007 as a simple project, and today the Edusim principals are being broadly adopted by such organizations as SMART Technologies .
I traveled and presented with SMART Technologies back in 2008 & the early days of the Edusim project. We had many conference calls and note taking session together, they were the first to see the potential of Edusim, and very recently they officially released the SMART Technologies 3D tools for their Notebook product. So a hat tip to SMART Technologies and their 3D Tools ! - http://smarttech.com/3dtools
The Future of Touching Tech & 3D Virtual Environments
Ive long suggested 3D and the “immersive touch” UI will follow in the “touchy tech” revolution …. a bit more evolution of the technology and its sure to get there. In the education sector the Edusim & “3D Immerisive Touch” user interface has officially been implemented in Smarttechs Notebook 10.8 software (for their interactive surface “Smartboards”) … I traveled with Smarttech back in 2007 for a bit and presented with them on the future of “Touchable 3D Virtual Environments”, so I am taking particular interest in todays NPR piece on The Touchy-Feely Future Of Technology.
The Need for a STEM Gateways Program
Another good piece regarding STEM and further fuel for an argument for a deeper “STEM Gateways” project
http://www.techi.com/2011/11/can-stem-fix-america/
And the infographic with stats on it:
Created by: Online Engineering Degree
(Dan and I have been stewing over many of these numbers for several years through the Immersive Education work, many of the stats are stunning {O_o})
Programming for Children (Via the New York Times)
A wonderful article on the New York Times covering both Scratch & Alice:
Tools like Scratch and Alice are what Mr. Abrams calls “gateway programming languages” because they offer simple introductions into how to organize the instructions. Older students in middle school or high school can go further and learn the computer languages used by professionals to build Web sites and databases.
Greenbush Labs Turns 6 this Month !
The VERY FIRST Greenbush Labs Blog Post from November 2005 … in January we carry this very first posts concept forward with out Google+ introduction to Greenbush employees !
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Lab Project Objective – What and Why Greenbush Labs
November 15, 2005 Rich White
What is Knowledge Management?
* Organizational Knowledge management (KM) is the creation, organization, sharing and flow of knowledge in organizations.
* Knowledge Management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to an organization, creating new knowledge, increasing awareness and understanding in the process.
* Knowledge Management can also be defined as the capturing, organizing, and storing of knowledge and experiences of individual workers and groups within an organization and making this information available to others in the organization.
Why Greenbush Labs?
Greenbush labs was established to serve as a knowledge management tool to facilitate the idea sharing and innovation process accross organizational units.
One advantage to the “blogging” method for organizational knowledge management
(other than storing lab notes and ideas in one common location and its extremely low cost of initiation) is that each “Lab” blog
has a “Real Simple Syndication” (RSS) link which will allow users or participants of multiple
Lab blogs to aggregate all of the user comments and ideas into one RSS feed reader. An RSS
feed reader allows users not only the ability to aggregate feeds, but it also allows users set up
“hot words” and see trends that span across multiple lab projects
Gateways to STEM & Learning by Creating
The below tools are tools we leverage with the MS students as “Gateways to STEM with Constructivist Learning”
Scratch – http://scratch.MIT.edu
Scriptastic – http://www.greenbushlabs.com/Scriptastic
Arduino Kit for Kids Script Builder - http://www.greenbushlabs.com/kidskit
Edusim – http://edusim3d.com
…. Now to begin the broader thinking of a more fully integrated STEM initiative along with the “STEM Gateways” ideas to improve student self efficacy in the STEM subjects.
3D Printing , Makers, and Kids
The labs here has cover 3D printers over the past few years. But today we bring you Makerbot training for teachers via Makerbot.com (unfortunately this is in New York & not Kansas 
) !
Are you a teacher or educator interested in bringing a MakerBot into the classroom? During this 4 hour session you will be introduced to 3-D printing with the MakerBot Thing-o-Matic. We’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of creating a 3-D computer model and preparing it for printing with the MakerBot. You will be given an overview of various 3-D modeling software tools that are available for free online. In addition, you will be shown a set of lesson plans that you can use with your students over the course of a semester. No prior knowledge of 3-D modeling or 3-D printing is required. Please bring a laptop computer to the workshop.
See the Makerbot in action: