Another year gone by and what makes it so amazing is how much can be learned and accomplished in such a short amount of time. While it seems so many complain that time is flying by, I look forward to each day and try to squeeze everything I can out of it. Here’s some of my highlights of the past school year. My first 3D printer! I finally got my hands on one. After begging for years and exploring everything I could I applied for the Printrbot Amabassador Program. They send you a Simple Metal kit fully assembled and ready to go. Unfortunately I had a number of problems getting it to print and had to return two of them. 3D printing is a lot harder than I expected but look forward to introducing it into my curriculum next year.
I was also incredibly busy picking up donations all around the city. Thanks to the Riverdale Country Day School and Dr. Jonathan King, several classrooms throughout Brooklyn will be exploring learning with an enormous Promethean board.
Another interesting donation I was grateful for was from the always generous Churchill School and Director of Technology, Mr. Max Beron. They donated a lighting board, several power packs and various lighting rigs. The challenge now was to improve our existing stage lighting with this windfall.
One of my new clients had a generous monetary donation to improve their library technology. Since we had already been working on a Google Apps for Education rollout, I suggested they invest in some Chromebooks to stretch their dollar while also expanding their device repertoire. We purchased the Toshiba 13.3″ Chromebooks with 1080 HD display. They have really performed well and the students and teachers look forward to using them more in the new school year.
Looking back now one of my proudest moments came when I took a chance on introducing Arduino, basic electronics and basic programming into my Senior Computer Elective Curriculum. It was something I had always wanted to try but kept putting off. A number of students had expressed interest in engineering in college and so I had plenty of incentive to give it a shot. I’m not sure my students had as much fun as I did but I was amazed at the potential of what Arduino can do in a classroom.
Anthony Tricarico 