Taught by Anna and Fablab Lima's Christian, with help from Maddie on 2011-08-13.
Taught in A mini-Fab7 conference in Peru for 27 kids age 7-13 (mostly), with the goal of teaching something about energy and digital fabrication, and having students take home something cool. This was a one-off lesson without pre-reqs for a random group of kids. All materials were prepared in advance. We had about 7 teaching assistants, and most kids had their parents to help them with challenging parts.
Evaluation written by Anna.

Tell us about the lesson! What happened? Do you have any funny stories?
The kids were great– they were all very pleased to see their LEDs light up, and generally liked following directions. And they made cardboard alien lamps, and answered questions at the end to win giant cardboard bunnies! There was no student design element whatsoever, but hopefully they learned something about energy.

What aspect of the lesson do you think worked best?
Few of the kids had played with PVs before, so they were thrilled to pass around the solar panels and multimeters and see things to themselves. This opened up a whole new world of engineering, even though most didn't understand the explanations. They also liked having all the materials prepared for them, and were surprisingly good at figuring out how the circuit fit together. Most of the kids brought their parents, who helped a lot with the circuitry. We also had tons of teaching assistants!

What worked the least?
I presumed too much knowledge– most of the kids didn't know anything about electrons, and went completely blank when talking about electromagnetic fields. There was a serious lack of design, which couldn't entirely be helped given the time constraint and the wide range of ages. We tried leaving a few things un-soldered for older kids, but didn't have time/space to teach people so we did it ourselves.

Do you think that there is anything in the lesson, as it is written now, that should be changed before it is taught again?
We should definitely split up this lesson into smaller lessons with more design components!

What advice do you have for the next person to teach this lesson?
Start from scratch when explaining energy concepts. Prepare in advance. If you're hosting a workshop that's advertised in newspapers, it's pretty much guaranteed that more people will show up than you're expecting!

Were there any aspects of the material the students struggled with? If so, tell us why you think this was the case. (e.g. were demos ineffective? Did the students lack the background knowledge required for the lesson? Was there a language barrier?)
The demos were good, but everything needed to be simplified for this audience. Since this was a design workshop, the design was much more exciting than the lecture–so kids didn't pay quite as much attention. Also, I'm not perfect in Spanish!

Tell us how you overcame this lack of understanding, either by how you helped the students understand the concepts or how you worked the lesson around it:
Our Fablab host taught the class with me, so he could explain concepts better in Spanish. He also simplified a lot of what we discussed. Although students didn't understand the electric field idea, the idea of magnets repelling and the LED-lighting shake dynamo helped illustrate these concepts.

At the end of the lesson, were the students able to recall many of the basic concepts taught in the lesson?
Some; we quizzed the class, and a number of students remembered about electrons flowing. But a few students couldn't explain what we had talked about– even for a cardboard bunny.

Do you think the students were excited/interested in the lesson content?
Most of them were, thanks to our demos.

Were students comfortable with design work? Were they confident in putting forward their own designs and ideas?
N/a, unfortunately

Were students comfortable with practical work, such as experiments or building work? Were they able to work independently after being given a demonstration, or did they need teacher/assistant help?
The younger students needed a lot of help, but I was surprised at many of the older students.

How well did the students work in groups/pairs together? Did every student have a chance to contribute to the work?
n/a, everyone made their own lamps

Do you think the right amount of time was given to each of the activities?
yes: about 45 min for the lecture/demos, 2 hrs for the building

Do you think the right amount of materials and equipment was available? (specify both not enough and too much!)
We planned for 21 students, and about 27 showed up. So we had to improvise a bit.

Do you think there were enough/too many teachers and teaching assistants?
We had just enough!

Anything else you’d like to say?
Please see the PowerPoint uploaded in the illustrations section of this lesson, if you want a better sense of things.