Download - S˚ng ˚n me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that ... · Fine and a classmate built a Rube Goldberg machine representing Dante’s Inferno. Says Fine, “For this project,

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Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending . . . —THE ODYSSEY, TRANSLATED BY ROBERT

FITZGERALD ’29

or generations, Choate third formers have been assigned The Odyssey,

a core text of the English curriculum. Now imagine a current freshman reading the text and using software to draw a map of Odysseus’ voyage; or using a 3-D printer to create a model of the boat that Odysseus builds after he is stranded on Calypso’s island; or using an Arduino Piezo buzzer to evoke the music of the Sirens. While the pedagogical goals of a class – whether it is a required English course or an elective in another department – have di�erent priorities, they can all be enhanced by the Muse of project-based learning, the type of learning that is at the heart of Choate’s Lin i.d.Lab.

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BULLETIN | FALL 2017 19


THE MAKER MOVEMENT COMES TO CHOATEIn 2015, Dr. Travis Feldman, an adjunct professor in the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University, was hired as director of the i.d.Lab. Feldman, who has taught at the K-12 and university levels, is also founder and CEO of Molecule Synth, funded through a Kickstarter campaign he began before his arrival at Choate. With Lego-like hexes and physical sensors, Molecule Synth allows one to build a stand-alone musical instrument that is easy to hack and modify, and that is D.I.Y. to the core. Feldman, a bona fide member of the Maker community, hopes that the i.d.Lab, with its ever-evolving curriculum that encourages project-based learning and practical application, can be an incubator for future student projects.

With its wide array of tools and resources, including woodcutters, 3-D printers, sewing

machines, circuit boards, and laser cutters, the i.d.Lab empowers students to make these

kinds of open-ended explorations and discoveries. In the two years since the i.d.Lab opened

in the Cameron and Edward Lanphier Center for Mathematics and Computer Science, it has

become a catalyst for Choate’s 21st-century curriculum, taking students beyond the traditional

STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – and equipping them

with the necessary skills to contend with a rapidly changing world. Like Odysseus, today’s

students will need both a cunning intelligence and a sense of invention to succeed in the

throes of a new economy.

Sabrina Xie ’17 designed her

own ergonomic keyboard at

the Lin i.d.Lab.



“The i.d.Lab is preeminently a place where everyone in the Choate community (students and faculty) is invited to learn by doing and by thinking about what is done,” says Feldman. He is emphatic that “learning-by-doing involves making things as well as the telling of the story of what is made, which is making meaning.”

Last June, the White House held its second Maker Faire, a testament to the fact that despite bitter partisan-ship, our nation’s leaders are committed to American ingenuity and the revolution that is taking place in American manufacturing. “A revolution,” President Obama acknowledged last year, “that can help us create new jobs and industries for decades to come.” Choate is doing its part to celebrate the innovation, ingenuity, and creativity of its Makers. Last October, 25 students and four faculty members traveled to New York City to participate in the World Maker Faire held at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing. Design projects from Choate’s i.d.Lab were featured at the event. Says Feldman, “The Maker Faire trip was a two-day opportunity for Choate students to grow into a mindset of creative confidence and to forge their own identities as makers. Students were inspired, discovered new things, and stretched their understanding of the world and themselves in just the way I had hoped they would. All of our participants were energetic and positive spokespersons for Choate academics, and each of them led dozens of walk-up soldering tutorials at our booth.”

The White House held its second Maker Faire, a testament to the fact that our nation’s leaders

are committed to American ingenuity and the revolution that is taking place in

American manufacturing.

Kristen Andonie ’17 of Miami, Fla., says, “Each of us had a small station equipped with a soldering iron, and we guided visitors through the process step-by-step. While our target audience was children, there were a lot of adults who were eager to learn how to solder, too.” A member of Choate’s robotics team, Andonie was attending her first Maker Faire. “I didn’t know what to expect,” she says, “but I found it refreshing to see people using science just for the sake of having fun, like holding drone races or building robots that make perfect grilled cheese sandwiches.”

Andonie hopes to ply her new skills this fall as an engineering major at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She notes, “I definitely think making connections with people and learning cool new skills is far more significant than the actual physical project. In Robotics Team, for example, the best part isn’t winning a bunch of awards; the mean-ingful parts are interacting with students and coaches who share a common interest, learning how to work in a group, and gaining knowledge about how robots work and how one can program them.”

For Huong Pham ’19, a rising junior from Hanoi, last fall’s event was also her first Maker Faire. She notes, “I find engineering fascinating, especially in terms of maxi-mizing the product’s functions and simplicity at the same time. I would definitely want to learn more about circuit boards, Arduino, and how to make elegant, modern industrial design.”


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MAKING THINGS – SUNDAYS AT THE I.D.LABSunday afternoons have a more relaxed feel on campus. It is a welcome respite from the hectic week of scheduled classes, and the perfect time for thumb-typing to give way to hands-on tinkering. These lazy afternoons in the i.d.Lab bring all sorts of students together for all sorts of proj-ects. Several clubs use the space, such as electronics, and computer programming groups, including Start-Up Club, Comic Book Club, and Games and Change.

Besides being a meeting and study space, the Lin i.d.Lab is a creative hub for students. Max Nobel ’17, now at Yale University, invented a pulley system with pencils, zip ties, wood scraps, duct tape, and rubber bands. Says Feldman, “It was all about the process; he embraced a ‘thinking with materials’ approach that is at the heart of the i.d.Lab.” Mckynzie Romer ’17, who is studying at Harvard, spon-taneously decided to make a Pink Floyd–inspired design on the side of her eyeglasses with an X-ACTO blade and aluminum tape. Watch out, Kate Spade!

Sabrina Xie ’17, who headed to Skidmore College after Choate, decided to make her own ergonomic keyboard. She bought a standard PC board online, and soldered the electronic components together in the i.d.Lab. Says Feldman, “Not only did she manage an impressively sophisticated design and build process on her own, but she showed remarkable patience and dexterity in soldering the more than 70 micro-scopically small SMT diodes that the keyboard required.” Another student, Alan Luo ’18, who is doing a directed study with Dr. Feldman, is learning to make his own CAD design for circuits that will be included in a prototype for a robot swarm that will enable students to study and experiment with programming emergent behaviors.

Kate Doak assigned her English 100 class a radio project in connection with Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See. Says Doak, “Students loved the project. At first, it was initially going to be an extra credit project, but so many kids wanted to do it that I let them all do it. The only problem was the radios, made from not much more than wire and the cardboard of paper towel rolls, didn’t really work. So, we ended up talking about the nature of scientific discovery and failure as a part of that process, and we gained an understanding of how amazing Werner, the main character, was as a radio technician.” Says Sam Curtis ’20, “This project helped us

get into the mindset of Werner and experience the set-backs and hardships he might have had when assembling his own radio; it made us see why he was so excited when he got his own radio working. The overall idea of being connected by all the light we cannot see – which includes radio waves – held greater meaning for me after getting a better understanding of the inner workings of a radio.”

Notes Doak, “Werner’s struggle was part of his maturation process and it was certainly part of our radio projects as well.”

Feldman agrees, “There is a new way of feeling time in the learning process that is not necessarily product-oriented. There are built-in moments when we stop and think, ‘Why would we want to do that?’”

Fundamental to the i.d.Lab’s mission is to make education more powerful. Max Fine ’17, now a freshman at Claremont McKenna, built a Model T for his U.S. History class in Virtual Reality using the HTC Vive and Google Tilt Brush. He reflects, “The addition of the i.d.Lab gives students more interesting options to utilize when faced with an assignment.”

For another project, in his Classical Tradition course, Fine and a classmate built a Rube Goldberg machine representing Dante’s Inferno. Says Fine, “For this project, we looked deeply at freedom within the Inferno, and how that could translate into kinetic motion. For example, the first real ring of the Inferno is a whirlwind, while in the last ring, everything is frozen. Within each intermediate ring, there is also some sort of movement associated with it. Each machine that we built represented that kinetic movement. One challenge in particular was figuring out how to fit it all together. One key to the beauty of Dante’s book is how each circle connects to one another. To be successful in our minds, we needed to replicate this. To do it, we had to analyze the Inferno with incredible scrutiny.”

Fine admits there were issues with this project, mainly due to time constraints, but adds, “the process was more fun than writing a paper on kinetic motion. I will say that I consider it one of my best projects at Choate because it caused me to truly understand more about Dante’s Inferno than I would have otherwise. That is the huge thing the i.d.Lab brings to Choate: not only does it provide another way for students to learn, but it provides an opportunity to explore topics that students might have shied away from.”

”Learning-by-doing involves making things as well as the telling of the story of what is made, which is making meaning.” —DR. TRAVIS FELDMAN



TOP LEFT Charlie Schlager ’19 reaches into virtual reality using the Oculus Ri� DK-2 with Leap Motion sensors that track his hand move-ments.

TOP RIGHT Sebi Barquin Sanchez ‘18, Tess Friedman ’18, and Michael Li ’18 tinker with electronic circuits and create interactive devices in Dr. Feldman’s Introduction to Design class.

BOTTOM Dr. Travis Feldman presented a paper at the second annual International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces (ISAM-2017) held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in late September. His topic: “Towards an Epistemology of Making: 21st-Century ‘Hands-On’ Projects in Engineering and Humanities Classrooms.”


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For many years, a staple of a Choate education included

the basics of engineering.

Today, students are regaining a physical sense

of life and tinkering is encouraged.

TOP A woodworking class at the Dodge Shops, circa 1950s.

BOTTOM Mathematics & Computer Science teacher Kyle Di Tieri observes student projects in the Shattuck Robotics Laboratory.



BACK TO THE FUTUREFor years, classes in the Dodge Shops were a staple of a Choate education, where young boys were taught the art of wood-making and older boys the art of auto (and motor-cycle) maintenance and the basics of engineering. Recalls Henry McNulty ’65: “I took woodworking and still have two small tables I made under the instruction of Stanley Lyndes. I enjoyed it ... it was the only time I have ever used a lathe!” By the 1970s, however, the Dodge Shops were torn down to make way for the Paul Mellon Arts Center and a Mechanics Prize was no longer given at Prize Day.

The loss of manual skills has been a major blow to the nation’s collective knowledge base, according to Jack Beuth, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In a 2014 inter-view with The Christian Science Monitor, he observed that even engineering students do not have the same level of physical reasoning that their predecessors once had, partly because they have less opportunity for hands-on learning in schools, and also because kids are less likely to spend their free time tinkering on their own. “Twenty years ago, engineering students would have naturally worked on their cars, rebuilt things, and just had a very good physical sense of life,” he says. “They just don’t have that anymore.”

Today’s curriculum is taking steps to redress this lack of knowledge with the introduction of such courses as Intro to Design: How to Make Almost Anything; Reverse Engineering: How Things Work; and Intro to Robotics. In these courses especially, students are regaining a physical sense of life and tinkering is encouraged. According to Dr. Katharine Jewett, Director of Curricular Initiatives, 21st-century education means “not just showing what you know, but showing what you can do with what you know. That’s where making comes in to o�er a way for students to better know themselves. They, too, are learning to define themselves by what they can do.”

Mathematics, physics, and robotics teacher Kyle Di Tieri has a ringside seat to students flexing their intellectual muscle in the Shattuck Robotics Laboratory, where students work openly using creative and inventive methods to solve any given challenge. He says, “Students learn from each other through group work and reflect on both their growth and frustrations.” One example was having students build a robot within a two-hour period.

There are opportunities beyond the classroom for students to show what they can do with what they know. During a robotics team event, recalls Di Tieri, “One of our members was given an arduous task to write several versions of autonomous code for a robot slated for the VEX Worlds Tournament. This achievement was especially heartbreaking since the team made changes to the robot which rendered her programs inoperable. But she was not fazed by this decision since she knew it was the best choice for the team.”

That lesson is invaluable preparation for the real world. In her present job, Shanti Mathew ’05, Strategy Director for Public Policy Lab, helps government design programs and policies from the bottom-up – no small task given the complexity of systems. Trial and error is key to her work. She notes, “We employ as many methods as we can, especially those of human-centered design. At its core, my work is a constant exercise of making meaning out of constraints.” She adds, “Our world needs people who can navigate the intricacies of new technology, as well as the massive scale of our institutions. The skills that Choate students are learning in the i.d.Lab – those of reframing problems, experimentation as a discovery-process, and seeking acceptable solutions rather than absolute right answers – are the skills that will not only fuel innovation at personal and organizational levels, but they are also the skills that will disrupt industries and stimulate national economies.”

MAKING MEANINGBecause the very act of making draws its inspiration from like-minded communities, Dr. Feldman was eager to take a group of Choate students to an open house last April at the Yale Social Robotics Lab. Students met the lab’s director, Dr. Brian Scassellati, as well as several grad students and post-doctoral students who were enthusiastic about sharing their research on how socially interactive robots can a�ect the study of human behavior. They were introduced to Nao, a robot tutor, and Maki, a robot assistant for autistic children. Says Feldman, “Our trip’s theme might be summarized by the question, ‘What is social?’”

Feldman wants students to think about the social impli-cations beyond what they code or create. After an hour at the Robotics Lab, experiencing some of the new ways robots are being used as tools for observing or engaging human social and psychological behaviors, the group then viewed two Gutenberg Bibles on display at the Beinecke Library. The introduction of movable type in the 15th century was the precursor of a mass production process that centuries later became the model for the Industrial Revolution.

Says Feldman, “While standing in the ambience of these two monuments of human civilization, we discussed the historical details, technological processes, and social significance of the first European letter-press book, and wondered at the construction of the Library itself.”

Back at the i.d.Lab, Choate students and faculty have the opportunity to make new meaning at the cusp of yet another revolution. Says Shanti Mathew, “Just like the invention of the printing press and the computer chip, the future will be invented by those who are willing to see the world di�erently and push forward for a new way. I have no doubt those individuals are sitting in the i.d.Lab right now.”
