7th grade

Technology Careers Assembly

Mimi Onuoha and Surya Mattu present in the Meetinghouse.

Mimi Onuoha and Surya Mattu present in the Meetinghouse.

This week the Middle School was honored to host a panel of amazing technology entrepreneurs, programmers, and artists who spoke with our students about the wide variety of ways they solve problems, create products, and use computer programming to redefine our relationship to our phones and social media streams.

Many of the panel members were Friends Seminary parents who work in technology fields, and several amazing parents inspired the idea for the assembly and worked with me to plan the panel and find contacts in the industry.  We saw a photo of the birth of Twitter (before it was known as Twitter) and viewed maps of GPS phone data, visualizations of Instagram health-related hashtags, and devices invented to re-power cell phones during Hurricane Sandy.

Our students impressed me by asking questions about the privacy of their information online, preferences for programming languages (Java or Python, anyone?), and how wireless networks work.  Based on the resulting conversations this week, many students walked away with a broader idea of how technology might be used in their future lives, and more questions about how it is changing the world around them.

7th Grade Skyscrapers

7th grade skyscraper design project

7th grade skyscraper design project

Last year, on the hunt for an interdisciplinary Middle School project, one of the 7th grade math teachers and I collaborated on a new curricular idea.  We developed a skyscraper design project, where we asked students to choose an existing skyscraper, calculate its dimensions using a set scale, and build a 3-D model using the 3-D design program Tinkercad.

With the help of a Collaboration Grant from the school, which funded the purchase of a new 3-D printer, and the generous support of the other 7th grade math teachers, this year every 7th grade student had the opportunity to participate.  Our skyscraper design project went from being in “beta” to a more established part of the curriculum.  Last week we put together a display case of all the 7th grade skyscraper projects.  The work and effort of the students was evident, and it has been particularly satisfying watching the project grow.  It’s fantastic watching students apply the abstract concepts of scale and proportion to a practical design problem.