We’re excited to offer seven hands-on, completely interactive workshops for ChickTech: High School! Throughout the workshops, we will emphasize themes of entrepreneurship, leadership and confidence. Participants in ChickTech: High School will choose one workshop for the weekend, and, including the follow-up series for each, they will work on their project for a total of about 20 hours!
Led by local industry professionals, each workshop will allow participants to be in a hands-on environment producing a creation of the tech variety to take home, and to showcase in the Tech Show on Jan. 27, which is open to friends, family and the public! Be sure to invite people to the Tech Show! All the details are on the ChickTech Facebook page: Facebook.com/ChickTech/Events.
Robotics
Leadership: Jennifer Goldman, Nahid Alam, Willam Bowers, Bill Den Beste, Rachel Rigg, Rachel Sakry, Sonia Connolly
Take Home Item: A robot you’ve built and programmed!
Overview: In this workshop, you’ll learn how a sophisticated robot is built and programmed … while building and programming your own at your own pace! And after the workshop, it doesn’t stay with us … you get to take it home!
We’ll begin with a brief discussion of what makes a robot, then each of you will assemble your own basic robot framework. We’ll have a bunch of experts available to teach you how to use simple tools and to solder (a cool skill that you’ll use all the time once you know how to do it). Then, we’ll move on to custom bodies and decoration. You’ll cut and fit plastic body pieces, decorate with paint, stickers, and even colored LEDs to make your robot look unique and super cool!
Then, you’ll get to program your robot! You’ll learn how to write a program to make your robot move in simple or complex patterns, to sense and avoid obstacles, to flash LEDs either at random, in sequences, or as an indication of the control process.
Finally, we’ll take a look at some things you can investigate on your own. You’ll take home some sensors, additional LEDs, and other hardware so you can continue to enhance your robot on your own.
Microcontrollers
Leadership: Catherine Poole, (Cacophonous Creations) Libbey White, Cameron Adamez, Tamara DePue, Tom Hudson, Manuel Muro, Jason Plumb
Take Home Item: Microcontroller project you’ve customized!
Overview: In this workshop you will get to work with your own microcontroller and experience first hand what it’s truly capable of doing! We’ll connect different kinds of sensors, indicators, and LEDs to it to make an interactive and completely custom project.
We’re developing three project ideas for you to choose from and customize:
1.) Musical Instrument: Create a new kind of touch-based musical instrument that anyone can play with little or no practice!
2.) Security Box: Build a box that has a security component…put in the right code or an alarm (sound or light!) will go off. It could play a cool song when you put in the right one, set off an awesome pattern of flashing LEDs…whatever you want!
3.) Programmed Stuffed Animal: “Retrofit” a stuffed animal (either your own or one of a few that we’ll bring) to make it interactive. Press a paw, foot, tummy to make it flap its wings, purr, wag a tail…give it a command to make LEDs light up…the possibilities are limitless!
Computer Games
Leadership: Rachel Zakariasen (Zakelro), Corvus Elrod (Zakelro), David Galiel (Elbowfish), Leana Galiel (Elbowfish), Yori Kvitchko (CounterHack Challenges), Jeffrey Sens (PixelArt)
Take Home Item: A copy of the game your team designed!
Overview: Whether it’s Angry Birds, the Sims, or even Monopoly, everyone plays games on their computers and mobile devices. But what goes into designing and building games like these? In the Computer Games workshop, professionals will guide you through working with a small team to design and paper prototype a game on the first day, and through building your game using GameMaker on the second day. You’ll go home with a copy of your team’s awesome game and the tools you need to make it even bigger and better!
Computer Construction
Leadership: Staff of Free Geek, www.freegeek.org
Take Home Item: A desktop computer you’ve built!
Overview: Build your own desktop computer … for free! In partnership with Free Geek, a Portland nonprofit that refurbishes technology, you get to take apart a computer, learn what the components do, how they work together, and how to tell why one component might be better and faster than another, and then build your own working computer!
Website Design and Creation
Leadership: Jessica Wilson, Tom Martin, Caleb Tucker-Raymond, Patti Hill
Take Home Item: A website dedicated to your favorite music that you built and designed!
Overview: The sky’s the limit when it comes to the appearance of a website and its features. Come let your creative side loose! Create a website all your own in our workshop designed to introduce you to website design and creation, and to Drupal, an open source web development software.
Our theme is music, with you creating a site on Drupal Gardens about your favorite musician or band. Each site will include 3 to 5 main features and a custom look and feel, made with Drupal Garden’s ThemeBuilder feature. This introductory workshop will lay the foundation for those interested in website creation and possibly inspire some towards a future as developers and coders!
Smartphone App
Leadership: Pranava Alekal, Nazneen Gandhi, Anna Mansour, David Shaw
Take Home Item: Two smartphone apps you created!
Overview: There really is an app for everything! Apps to help you buy your groceries, check Facebook, read the news, play games, listen to music, and an endless amount of other things. Apps are really simple to make, and you can use your own creative idea to even come up with the next big thing! We’ll will help you learn App Inventor, which is a program to create apps for Android phones, create two apps, and have a really fun weekend!
Designing Experiences
Leadership: Amelia Abreu, Lenka Cechova, Jennifer Davidson, Barb Holmes, Kate O’Brien
Take Home Item: A new web experience you’ve designed for a Portland nonprofit!
Overview: Do you love Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter? Are you fascinated by the online world, and think you could make it better? Do you love drama, art, writing, and design? In the Designing Experiences workshop, we will work hands on, setting the stage for building better, cooler, easier to use websites for nonprofits here in Portland. We’ll work with real people to learn how we can improve user experience and design new ways for people to discover and connect online. You’ll collaborate with awesome mentors, meet other young women just like you, and by the end of the weekend, you’ll have designed a great product for your nonprofit “client”!