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EdCamp Still Rules

  Looking Back at 10 years of EdCamps Oh how the time flies, EdCamp Madison is turning 10 this year!  It will be held Saturday, February 3rd at Sun Prairie West High School. Which can be found at 2850 Ironwood Drive in Sun Prairie Wisconsin from 8:30 am - 3:00 pm.  Get more information and register here: https://sites.google.com/sunprairieschools.org/edcampmadwi/home   I will always remember sitting in my first EdCamp opening session at the very first EdCamp Madison and having no clue what I was in for. So, I’d like to take this space to go over some of the basic rules of EdCamp. No One Will Pitch It for You EdCamps are unconferences. By this I mean that they have a blank slate of sessions for the day. There may be a few predetermined sessions, but ultimately the session topics are determined by attendees during the pitch & plan session that opens the day. If an idea gets pitched there will be a session on it. If a topic doesn’t get pitched, there won’t be a session on it. So, it i

Sphero Chariots 2019: Design, Fabricate, & Program to Race

Last year we took a big risk in our physics classroom and decided to take on a huge project in which students fabricated chariots for Spheros. The project incorporates science and engineering standards as a part of the process and the project required students to have a chariot which had a piece that was fabricated using a 3D printer and one piece that was laser cut. Last year students collaborated on their designs with a Project Lead the Way engineering class so they weren’t required to build the 3D digital models that would be printed. This year, we didn’t partner with an engineering class and groups had to do all the work on their own from design through fabrication. Now that this 10 day project is finished, I am able to look back on the successes and challenges of the project in hopes of building on it when I have a new group of physics students in 3 months. Here’s the overall scheduling of the project.  On days 4-6, groups rotated through the print and cut process. Those not pr