iPhone 8 to have major updates





The Elementary Musical




Bluetooth robots inspire creativity

Sphero is a bluetooth controlled sphere, that weighs just under half a pound and is about 4 inches in diameter. The little ball was first developed in 2010 by two friends, who created the company Orbotix, now known simply as Sphero. Since then, the company has grown tremendously. In 2013 they developed Sphero 2.0, a better, faster, and smarter version of their original robot. In 2014 they released a more cylindrical version of Sphero that runs on two rubber wheels, which launched as “Ollie”. Later in 2014 the company launched SPRK, a ball almost identical to Sphero, but designed for the classroom, to help students learn about programming. Towards the end of 2015 to go along with the movie “The Force Awakens”, the company released a Sphero toy designed to look just like the Star Wars droid BB-8.

I was lucky enough to get to play with one of the 5 Sphero’s the school has during my help desk time one day. Mr. Ashley simply picked one up from its inductive charging base (a curved holder that starts charging your Sphero as soon as you place it in it, no cords needed), tapped it twice to turn it on, handed me and a friend one of the schools iPad mini’s, and let us drive it down the hallway. Since Sphero is a perfect cylinder, you can’t tell which way is forward and which is backward. One of the first things Mr. Ashley taught me was how to adjust the “tail” to face you, so you could easily calibrate and control it. The other thing he taught us was how to easily adjust the speed in 10% intervals (reaching a max speed of over 4.5 mph), simply by tapping the hare, for faster, or the turtle, for slower. The rest we figured out on our own.

While Sphero can pretty easily do figure-eights around desks, it sometimes has trouble getting through doors, and that proved to be one of the first challenges for us. We had lots of fun racing it down the hallways and seeing how fast it could go, but the real fun started when we realized Sphero do so much more. Sphero is as much a device as it is a game. By simply fooling around with the iPads we discovered that it had a feature called quests. We didn’t look too much at this feature. We only looked at the first 3 quests it displayed for us. These quests allowed us to have more fun but also taught us some new things about Sphero. One of the first quests required us to bump into three objects within 10 seconds, teaching us that Sphero was very durable. I was very intrigued by the toy and asked Mr. Ashley if we could take them into the elementary MakerSpace. I knew Sphero could go fast and roll around, but I wanted to see what else we could make it do. Armed with cardboard shoe boxes and paper cups I had the goal of creating a bridge for Sphero to walk across. Creating the bridge was almost as challenging as getting Sphero to cross it, which was my original goal. The first problem we ran into was Sphero crashing into the paper cup support system. We fixed that by taping the cups to the cardboard platform in the middle which served as our main bridge structure. The next problem we ran into was the cardboard not being strong enough to support the Sphero. We also found that I had made the ramp too steep for Sphero to climb. We managed to fix both of these problems by changing the height at which the ramps were angled. After attempting to successfully cross the bridge dozens of times and only succeeding once I realized I had achieved my goal of creating a pretty impossible bridge. Having this goal completed I wanted to move on and see what other obstacles we could make. I wanted to create a complex maze for the Sphero to travel through. We didn’t exactly have access to materials capable of constructing the maze I had in mind, so I use pompoms to make an outline of a maze. Very quickly I discovered that this would take a lot longer then I had originally thought it would, so I quit. After cleaning up the pompoms I looked around the elementary library where we were working and saw we already had a maze. I noticed we could use the row of 3 bookshelves as obstacles in a race course. I challenged one of my other classmates and the Sphero they were using, to a race, but this also had unforeseen problems. The bookshelves served as great obstacles to maneuver around, but they made it hard to see where your Sphero was going. The easiest solution to this problem was to follow your Sphero around, but that created more problems of blocking your opponent and their Sphero. 

Ever since Mr. Ashley first showed me Sphero I’ve been deeply fascinated by this little toy. I’ve never been super interested in engineering or robots, but this guy has got me hooked, and I can’t wait to continue designed obstacle courses and completing quests, all while learning more about technology!

A Brief HERstory of Computer Science


Women have been in computer science since before computers were invented. But sometimes they get overshadowed by their male counterparts, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. However, it is estimated that by 2020 there will be 1.4 computer related jobs, but that women will fill only 3%. That just makes the achievements of women in computer science all the more important.

Ada Lovelace: (December 10 1815 – November 27 1852). Lovelace was born in London and expressed an interest in maths from a young age. When she was just 18 she met Charles Babbage, known now as “the father of computers”. Her most well known work was on his analytical machine, which is now seen as a prototype for the first computer. She wrote the first ever algorithms for this machine and was very devoted to improving it.Because of this she is known as the first female programmer.

Grace Hopper: (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992). Hopper was born in New York City.In 1934 she earned a Ph.D in maths from Yale and during World War II, she enlisted in the US Navy despite being 15 pounds underweight. In 1952 she created the first compiler, which is a program used to turn programming languages into computer languages, so the computer can read your code. Many people doubted that she actually created one. Two years later she was named director of automatic programming at her company. She finally retired from the military at age 80 after being promoted to Rear Admiral. To commemorate her retirement she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat award. Just last month, 24 years after her death, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

Margaret Hamilton: (August 17, 1936-). Hamilton was born in Indiana, and received a bachelors degree in maths from the University of Michigan and later moved to Boston with the intention of getting her masters in abstract maths and during that time she started developing software for MIT. Later Hamilton joined the Charles Stark Draper Lab at MIT. The lab was working on the Apollo space missions, and her team was responsible for developing in-flight software. Hamilton herself wrote thousands of lines of code by hand in what she described as a “male-dominated” industry. Hamilton also coined the term “software engineering”. Along with Grace Hopper and several others, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.





Drones Saving Lives in Rwanda


Rwanda is a country in central Africa known as “the land of a thousand hills.” The troublesome topography combined with the heavy rainy season from March to May makes any travel, even by car, nearly impossible. So how do people across the country get access to basic healthcare? Lots of countries in Africa and across the world organize healthcare facilities into three basic tiers: hospitals, healthcare centers, and rural outposts. Few people regularly have access to hospitals since most of the population lives in rural areas. So what’s happening to improve Rwandan healthcare?

The government of Rwanda recently partnered with Zipline, a drone company which now allows them to easily deliver blood and other medicines, such as rabies vaccines, from medical warehouses to rural health outposts. Continue reading “Drones Saving Lives in Rwanda”

Will Robots Replace Your Job?


Factory workers in the early 1900’s feared their jobs would be replaced when Ford invented the assembly line, and a lot of them did. Many factory jobs are now becoming obsolete. Few people work in factories except for the people who fix the machines and the drivers who transport the finished goods. But now that machines are becoming more and more advanced and Google is developing a self-driving car, will those jobs exist in 50 years?

Lots of other jobs are being replaced by machines all over the world, such as the ATM you get your money from, vending machines, or the machine answering customer calls for a big company. Robots are now being used in hospitals to transport goods and run errands. Nurses and staff now working in hospitals with the TUG robots report that they now have more time to work with patients and that having more time results in better patient care.

How can robots replace people if they can’t act exactly like people? As of now at least robots are made to follow a specific set of instructions. They can’t recognize facial expressions, detect sarcasm, or be creative. Will people want to watch robots act in plays and movies or have machines clean their teeth? Many people are opposed to change and wouldn’t want to support a robot-based future. Will big companies like Honda and Google still want to make robots accessible to everyone if they think there is a market that wont buy them?

It’s safe to say that for now your job is probably safe. However, looking several years into the future, some might gain popularity among robots and machines. When thinking about what you might want to do for the rest of your life, consider looking into something technology related if you want a steady income.