Author: nlewkowitz

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LED Boxes

Our sophomore students are working towards creating their LED light boxes. I’ve been impressed with creativity in which the students are going about designing their boxes. These boxes are actually more complex than just 6 sides that fit together. It requires interior structure to hold circuitry, panel mount openings for sensors and controls, and means to open and fix in case it breaks. Here are a few pics I snapped today of their work.

Additionally, after school today I took a taxi to the airport for a flight to Phoenix. I’m speaking at an event tomorrow. Will write about that in a later post.

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New Frosh

Today was the first day of new freshmen for our shop. The way vocational schools work is to have freshmen do ‘rotations’ for the first part of the school year. Each school handles this differently, but our school has students interested in the vocational school do a rotation (a 4 day introduction to a shop) for each of the 15 shops we have at our school. After that students then choose which shop they would like to join for the rest of the year and hopefully for the rest of their time in high school.

Last year the Robotics & Engineering shop had a huge freshmen class, about 19 students, although that has dwindled to 16 currently. Our new group of freshmen is another group of 19. It’s great news, but a lot of students for us and will mean we are going to be bursting at the seams next year. We only have 20 works stations in the shop, so we will need to be creative as to how we enable all students to work on projects each day. Still, this is great news for the shop, and show how popular the new space we built is for the program. I will post some images of our new baby engineers over the next few weeks.

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Snow Day

Today was a snow day since the school was unable to clear enough snow for students to safely move around campus. Teachers hate snow days because they are added onto the end of the year, but I tried to make this one count. Was up early and worked out on the treadmill. Worked on some school related projects and then got started on our taxes for the year. Spent the rest of the day on the couch with the chihuahuas. Ash still had to go into work.

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Thundersnow Removal

As must happen after a snowstorm, we have to dig out our cars and sidewalk. Ash and I spent about 3 hours total digging out both of our cars and making sure our sidewalk is safe. We piled up snow beyond the bottom of the windows on the front of our house. Pretty incredible how much snow came down in the blizzard yesterday. In fact, towards the end of the day I learned that my school had not been able to remove enough snow to make it safe for students to come to school on Monday – so no school for me tomorrow. No need to work out today, my arms are going to be sore from all the shoveling. Made a potato soup, and Ash made some soda bread.

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Thundersnow

I have never heard the term before, thundersnow. Apparently, it’s real and it’s predicted to take place with today’s blizzard. Have not heard any thunder yet, but it is definitely windy, cold, and blizzard conditions. Photos and videos don’t do it much justice, but I will post a few below. We spent the day staying warm inside.