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GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at Île-de-Bréhat, France

GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at Île-de-Bréhat, France

The first presenter at last Thursday’s Dorkbot Austin was a gentleman named Mikal Hart, who described his “Reverse Geocaching Puzzle.” Designed and built as a wedding gift for an old friend moving to France, the box incorporates an Arduino with a custom shield. A prominent button on the lid, when pressed, returns a distance, in kilometers, on the LCD display (if a GPS signal can be acquired), and counts button-presses up to 50 atttempts. No directional information is provided, so the box must be moved about in order to triangulate the location it wants. Mikal also included a cunningly-disguised back door to allow it to be opened in the event of battery failures or bugs.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan9
MassTEC Conference

MassTEC Conference

Last week, at the annual MassTEC conference an interesting collection of science and technology teachers gathered to share experiences and information. Here are some highlights:

Johanna Bunn of the Boston Museum of Science introduced the Engineering the Future curriculum, with interactive demonstrations of hands-on projects introducing students to structures, fluids and electricity.

The forum on the Massachusetts state science and technology curriculum frameworks introduced a series of strand maps that show how the concepts and possible activities in the various STEM subjects interrelate. Their hope is that existing and new courses could be designed so that they step students through learning ideas within courses and how the courses could build upon each other. Right now the maps are static PDFs, but their goal is to have them be more interactive in the way they connect projects and concepts.

Continue Reading Chris Connors4