Community Weekend featured a variety of activities aimed at bringing the campus together to participate in everything from a skating party to an international food court. One item on the weekend’s itinerary was the i.d. Adventure held in the Worthington Johnson Athletic Center. Though the event did not have quite as high a turnout as hoped for, it nonetheless embodied the spirit of community weekend, as it was frequented not only by students, but by faculty members and their children.
Some of the i.d. Adventure offerings included a robot, which was programmed via the Logo computer language. Mentioned at school meeting, the drone dome was an inflatable arena within which students were able to operate a drone. A spin on the traditional game of parachute that incorporated a ball utilizing a microcontroller and processing sketch to produce different musical notes with each bounce was also available. Dr. Travis Feldman, Director of the i.d. Lab, explained that the idea was to create a parachute game that “was interactive and digitally integrated.” Another highlight of the i.d.Adventure were iPads equipped with structure sensors. This allowed students to create three-dimensional scans of themselves that could later be shared or even printed as action figures on the i.d.Lab 3D printer. “I knew we wanted to do something with cutting edge technology, so VR was an important part of it, but I wanted it to be maker-themed in the sense that I wanted all the activities to have some component that students could be creative with,” said Dr. Feldman.
Dr. Feldman explained how he and others began planning the day over a month ago, saying, “The planning took shape over a few meetings where we just figured out how we would use this space.” The event featured activities clustered about the volleyball and basketball courts of the athletic center. “When it was clear that we might be able to get a drone dome, we knew right away that we wanted to do that, so we had to dedicate part of the space for that,” explained Dr. Feldman.
Among the people who attended the event were Jaymes Dec, Tracy Rudzitis, and Josh Burker. All were Stanford Fablearn Fellows, a group that, as stated on their website, strives to “bring together experienced educators from around the world to create an open-source library of curriculum and contribute to research about the ‘makers’ culture and digital fabrication in education.”
Fifth-former Sarah Gurevitch ’19, who is currently working on a project in the i.d.Lab, participated in the i.d.Adventure activities and said, “I think this is really nice that Choate brought in all these activities.” Gurevitch added that she wished more of the community had come to the event. Sophie Hare ’18 agreed, saying “I’m wondering if they should have done it in a smaller time span, so people would come in a more concentrated manner.”
The event was meant to display the philosophy of the i.d.Lab with its collaborative environment, as well as attract more students to the makerspace. Though Dr. Feldman says he wishes more students would begin projects in the i.d. Lab on their own, he has been pleased with its success since it was introduced with the opening of the Lanphier Center in the winter of 2015. The space offers a great number of fascinating gadgets to the Choate community, but it recently gained a plethora of printed resources, with everything from books on how to fold paper airplanes, to an encyclopedia of Greek mythology.
The space is about creative exploration and collaboration that goes beyond academics. Dr. Feldman explained, “If your project involves computer programming, world history, or global politics—say you’re interested in developing nations—and you’ve got an idea, you’ve read how rechargeable batteries are crucial. So, you start researching that a little bit and start to realize that this is technology that any high school student can understand and can start to use and maybe even improve.” He added, “Well, that’s suddenly exciting; there’s a way in which that’s serving real word issues.”
