In January, President Obama launched a $4 billion initiative to bring more computer science to schools around the country. The President’s initiative, “Computer Science for All,” hopes to widen access to the coding and programming skills that will be necessary for the 21st Century.
In January, Ms. Schibuk attended a STEAM workshop at Boston Arts Academy, where she began to learn some basic computer science activities that she brought back to her classroom at Conservatory Lab. For the past three weeks, Ms. Schibuk’s middle school science students have been learning to program micro-controllers called “Arduinos.”
For the first few weeks, all of their activities were highly structured as they learned how to use various pieces of equipment.
This week, they ventured into a more creative engineering project where there was no simple “recipe” to follow. Students brought their music skills into the science classroom as they designed, built, and programmed LED-light visual metronomes that would blink in tempo with a piece of music that they were rehearsing.
Various El Sistema teachers came and helped them out in adjusting the beats of their metronomes to match the tempo of the musical pieces the students chose.
On Monday, students will perform their pieces and test the accuracy of their metronomes!