May 3
Projects are winding down and I think many of the Tech Students wish the semester were going to continue as they have really hit their stride and made great progress in recent weeks. The Discrete math course is winding down and tests are coming up.
The Nutri Climb game and Salty Iguana games looks outstanding the students are in the documentation and debugging phases but still learning a ton as this process is often overlooked in other environments. The Innovation Celebration team had their culminating gala and really enjoyed the positive reinforcement they received at the event. Propoganda 3 gave the Animal Escape development team lots of accolades for everything that they have learned in programming in the difficult Apple (xcode) environment. I am also looking forward to delivering the Quantrills Raid app and loading it on the devices for Harmony Middle School.
We had a great site visit to Garmin which included a great conversation with members of their development teams. The student learned a ton about developing software on embedded machines and got a great tour and demonstration of the facility and a look at the aircraft navigation system that Garmin developed.
March 15
We have had an amazingly productive couple of weeks with our Technology Solutions students. The projects have made amazing progress and really starting to look great. We have gotten our 2D nutrition rock wall game loaded on a device and it is playable and fun to boot. The Salty Iguana video game is looking amazing and nearing completion and hope to have it exported to xbox and be playing it in the restaurant by mid-April. The App for the Innovation Celebration is nearing completion and will be released for use just after the 1st of the month.
We had two amazing visitors this week who have helped us tremendously as we begin to explore software involving significant databases. Ryan Dunn from Blue Valley and Keith Entzeroth from Instin of Homework Helper fame were of tremendous value to the class in creating the user interfaces and learning about the interaction between machines when working with databases.
In future issues I will continue to keep you updated on the progress of the amazing projects we are working on and the future visits we have to Garmin and Cerner.
March 1
Technology Solutions is continuing a dynamic and opportunity filled semester. As our circle of Technology mentors and business partners grows, so do the opportunities for our students to excel including some amazing internship openings. Working with companies like Garmin, Rarewire, Mersoft, VolunteerMark, C3 and others it has never been better to be in the technology industry.
We had an amazing visit with our friends from Rarewire. The two developers who joined us for a day were instrumental in the building of some apps for market on both the IOS (Apple) and Android platform. The one-on-one work with our developers is instrumental in the goals of releasing these apps on schedule for our clients.
We are looking forward to starting a new program called developer days where we bring in experts in the software development industry to work one on one with each team to help them directly with challenges on their projects. This teamwork is vital in an environment where we are programming in so many different languages and platforms. We are also experimenting with Minecraft’s video game system where users can do some of their own programming to teach some of the Discrete Mathematics material. The CAPS student are excited to use this platform to explore these logic circuits which before were strictly taught with paper and pencil.
February 8
Technology Solutions is having an amazing semester. We are working on some very diverse and dynamic projects including some 3D animation, as well as two different 2D video games. We are also creating some very cool applications for both the android and Apple platforms. The cross functional teams are working better than ever promoting a camaraderie and teamwork that grows every day.
We had an amazing visit to Perceptive Software which included a great Q and A session called “Lean Coffee” which organized and prioritized the questions based on the group’s desires. It was extremely fun and informative. We also got to tour the facility with our partners from Interactive Design and finished up with a spirited game of Dodgeball.
We have had several visitors to our space including groups from Iowa, University of Central Missouri, RadeEccles Software, Project Lead the Way and others. We are excited about the opportunity to work with RadeEccles as they develop IOS (apple) applications in the native language and are willing to provide some technical help in this complex project field.
January 25
Technology associates have started their initial project work. This week we had guest presenter, Chris Locke, who is a software engineer at Garmin. He presented on the design engineering process and potential internships at Garmin.
Our new students continue their career prep modules. On Friday we had a great site visit at Perceptive Software in collaboration with CAPS Interactive Design students.
January 18
Technology Solutions has had a great start to the semester. This week we have had a tremendously insightful workshop presented by the folks from Perceptive Software. The latest iteration of the iterative design process called Agile which emphasizes a cross functional team, customer oriented agile project management platform. The method they teach is called Scrum and the workshop was informative and interactive including a competitive marble run challenge activity which was fun and challenging for the students and their teams.
We also began the career prep portion of the student’s soft skills development and the new students have begun work on their professional resume and had a great opportunity to interact with students from other strands.
Next week the plan has us starting projects, continuing with career preparation and a guest lecture with a business partner and CAPS friend from Garmin teaching us about the Design process and potential internships available for high school students at Garmin.
January 14
The Technology Solutions class second semester has gotten off to an amazing start. We have many new students with great ideas and drive and already see in their work potential for a superb semester.
We began the semester with some coding challenges including building pong and asteroid video games for more advanced students. I am extremely excited because even the new students were motivated and jumped right into coding some of these more advanced concepts.
We are trying a few new things this semester. Next week we are having a two day Agile workshop in collaboration with the Design students given by some developers from Perceptive Software. I am also having the students commit to creating something on their own, whether it be a game, an app or even committing to working on learning a new programming language. This personal project will be in conjunction with being a team member on a client driven project. I look forward to keeping everyone updated on a great semester.