Time for a change?

Spring session of after-school classes has begun. In the first class, we challenged our squad to redesign the watch. Why would we pick an endangered object for a makeover? These days, if we want to know the time, most of us whip out our cell phones. Since, tweens are our guide to future trends, we are intrigued to see how they think we'll tell the time…

So, what makes a watch a watch? Clearly our students don't think a watch needs to be limited to wrists. Whilst some of them made variations on the wrist watch, many of the kids came up with wearable devices: watch goggles, a watch on a nose clip, one for a leg.

This watch straps to the head and has an external dialling system which rotates the screen displays.

Some watches do more than just telling the time. The green device (on the right) clips to the nose. Stay up past your bedtime and you'll be squirted with an ice cold bubble mix stored in the pouch. This time piece sounds good for teen mornings too!

There are variations on the display, ranging from triangular and conical watches to a watch that has a completely different timescale (indicating the year and millennium, rather than minutes and hours).

And then of course, there's technology…

This watch includes a head piece and a digital readout on a snake draped around the neck!

This top secret design uses wireless transmitters to beam the time directly into your brain. No visual display necessary (although brain implants may be!) Brain-computer interfaces are being intensely researched and may be a closer reality than we realize.

Tech Night Workshop

Thanks to all the participants of Invention Squad's Tech Night. It was great to learn how our teachers at Niagara Street are integrating the use of technological tools into their classes. We saw demonstrations of a Smartboard, Podcasts, Student Blogs and Wikis, iTouches and a pico-projector. Thanks to Principal Angela Marsh (who is a member of the Principals’ Technology Advisory Committee), Teacher-Librarian Kim Delamere and Grade 5/6 teacher Sophy Wong (who is a demonstration teacher for the TDSB for her use of MacBooks). Sephra Khan and the Niagara Eco Club made an excellent environmental display on the pros and cons of technology.

Some of you enjoyed Hands-on Activities provided (for free) by:

Howard Goldbach at our local Music Lesson Centre: the Toronto Institute for the Enjoyment of Music.
The Children’s Technology Workshop who run afterschool programs and summer icamps at the JCC.

Robot-Building was facilitated by Brian Cartwright-who is just a friendly bloke that I recruited to help at the last minute.

John Willis and Jacob Pickup-who presented circuit building.

Mikael and Chloe Sandblom demonstrated the web-based design program SketchUp, Floorplanner and GoogleEarth. You can see what our kids came up with above (check out the grand addition on the School).

Other help was provided by Jalen Patel (who turns out to be a computer whizz), Marcus and Lily Mazzulla, Dianne Smith, Kathleen Pellow-Harris, Shaniq, Betty Stewart and Kimberly Sorokiwsky.

The Parent portion of this event, including the cyberbullyGot2Go talk, was funded by a Pro Grant from the Ontario Covernment. The School Council funded the Mad Science Show.