The school vacation at Hyde Park Primary School was three weeks long. We were only able to get into the school for the first week of it and so I now had two weeks without teaching. Week 6, was the first of these two weeks.
Week 6 served first to give me a breather to catch up on some items. In fact, it was during the first couple days that I did some blog writing. One day at the internet cafe, I also got to meet a Nigerian mechanical engineer! I was just reading some articles to learn a bit about transmissions, which I was curious about that day, only to have the man sitting next to me tap me on the shoulder. As a mechanical engineer, he was able to explain the concepts quite well and we chatted about engines and transmissions for a few hours! Here he is with a car he designed. :)
Week 6 also served as a time to prepare for the exhibition. It was coming fast and there were still many items to sort out. These would occupy more of my time.
To start, we needed to prepare all the equipment and space in the hall that would be needed for a successful exhibition. Unfortunately, everyone from the school was on break and some had gone on a holiday trip. It seemed I would need to wait for a while to really begin planning with the school.
Thus, the planning would need to begin with the Projects Abroad office. In particular I worked with Aaron, who met with me on Wednesday to discuss the logistics of it all. With some broad ideas for the exhibition, we discussed how we could project a video presentation, seat the audience, and attract local press. It was a productive meeting and I left with some ideas of how to proceed. Aaron also got me in touch with the Projects Abroad Journalism Office, in hopes that they could help get local press.
The exhibition plans also needed to formed, starting with a structure and leading towards a final script. I continued work on this throughout the week and Thursday night finalized the structure. It was exciting to begin envisioning the show!
Along the way, it became apparent that we would need to be able to play sounds from the robots on the big speakers. In this way, the robots would be able to "talk" and actually be heard by the audience. The best way seemed to be connecting all the robots to a computer via Bluetooth. Each robot would then request different sound files to be played by the computer. To accomplish this, I needed to write some small routines and programs for the students. It took a little while, but soon it was done and I was able to show it off to my housemates!
Anyway, it had been a less structured week as I worked on preparing various aspects of the exhibition. It all ended with quite a bang, though, when the first volunteer to stay with Lecia and Leslie joined us for Friday night dinner! He was in town with a friend and to celebrate the occasion Leslie and Lecia's children came as well. It was a wonderful night with family and friends!
Week 6 served first to give me a breather to catch up on some items. In fact, it was during the first couple days that I did some blog writing. One day at the internet cafe, I also got to meet a Nigerian mechanical engineer! I was just reading some articles to learn a bit about transmissions, which I was curious about that day, only to have the man sitting next to me tap me on the shoulder. As a mechanical engineer, he was able to explain the concepts quite well and we chatted about engines and transmissions for a few hours! Here he is with a car he designed. :)
Week 6 also served as a time to prepare for the exhibition. It was coming fast and there were still many items to sort out. These would occupy more of my time.
To start, we needed to prepare all the equipment and space in the hall that would be needed for a successful exhibition. Unfortunately, everyone from the school was on break and some had gone on a holiday trip. It seemed I would need to wait for a while to really begin planning with the school.
Thus, the planning would need to begin with the Projects Abroad office. In particular I worked with Aaron, who met with me on Wednesday to discuss the logistics of it all. With some broad ideas for the exhibition, we discussed how we could project a video presentation, seat the audience, and attract local press. It was a productive meeting and I left with some ideas of how to proceed. Aaron also got me in touch with the Projects Abroad Journalism Office, in hopes that they could help get local press.
The exhibition plans also needed to formed, starting with a structure and leading towards a final script. I continued work on this throughout the week and Thursday night finalized the structure. It was exciting to begin envisioning the show!
Along the way, it became apparent that we would need to be able to play sounds from the robots on the big speakers. In this way, the robots would be able to "talk" and actually be heard by the audience. The best way seemed to be connecting all the robots to a computer via Bluetooth. Each robot would then request different sound files to be played by the computer. To accomplish this, I needed to write some small routines and programs for the students. It took a little while, but soon it was done and I was able to show it off to my housemates!
Anyway, it had been a less structured week as I worked on preparing various aspects of the exhibition. It all ended with quite a bang, though, when the first volunteer to stay with Lecia and Leslie joined us for Friday night dinner! He was in town with a friend and to celebrate the occasion Leslie and Lecia's children came as well. It was a wonderful night with family and friends!
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