Personal Retrospective

This has been an amazing and challenging adventure. While this is not, by any means, my first experience with making, circuit building or coding, it was still different because I chose to approach it with a different goal in mind. In past experiences, I have approach these things with either an attitude of: I have to do this because it is part of my requirements for degree or certificate I’m working on; or, I have to figure this out to make it work for this other project I am working on. This time, I approached it with the attitude of: This will be something fun and that I want to learn because it interests me. And, of course, along the way, I developed an idea for a project that I intend to try to build, in which I will use some of the skills I further developed during this adventure.

What was the build you are most proud of and why?

This is a tough call. The dice project was a pretty proud moment because I was not able to make it work the last time I tried to build it. However, I think I would ultimately have to choose the potentiometer controlled electric motor as my proudest build. I would choose this one because it is one that I will actually be able to implement into the project that I am wanting to build in the next few weeks.

Where were you when you started and where did you end up?

When I started this adventure, I was already somewhat familiar with making and the Arduino from having gone through this adventure once before. Also, I was somewhat comfortable with circuit building from other courses I have taken in the past and from working on the electrical systems of houses, as well as repairing small electrical and electronic devices. But, it had been a while since I had done much with any of that, so I was in need of a bit of brushing up. As the weeks progressed, I became more comfortable with my skills and finally was able to develop a few items on my own without having to look up stuff on reference sites and maker shares. Of course, none of what I was able to do independently was any of what we were asked to do for the class. After all, if that were the case, I would not have been working in the ZPD.

What did you learn that you didn’t know before?

I learned that there are some things that I know, but don’t recall without pointed reminders.

How did you actually come to learn this new knowledge?

When we were working on the last build, in which I used a photo resistor to control a servo, I knew that the servo had the ability to move to specific points very precisely but the fact would not come to mind when I was trying to decide what to build for this challenge. I kept asking myself what are servos used for? Instead of simply Googling an answer to my question, I searched for video clips of servos in action to see for myself what kinds of functions servos have been tasked with. As soon as I saw a build of the “Useless Box” project, I recalled how a servo works.

What did you learn about yourself?

This wasn’t so much of a learning, rather a reminding: I love working with my hands, building things and making them work. I had gotten so academic in recent years that I had lost sight of those things and was getting into a rut of constantly doing “book work” and not doing anything in these areas that interest me so much. In fact, I recalled that there are times that I enjoy making something that doesn’t serve any purpose other than to allow me to build, thereby relieving some stress. I will definitely be doing more building and making.

In Reviewing My Blog Posts

Given that most of my students have not been very good writers, I would have loved to get such posts from them. There were things I would have corrected on them, simply because I am a “grammar nazi,” at least according to my students and several friends. But, those are things that had to do with the writing, not the presentations of facts and journeys.

Where did you say your challenges were?

My challenges each week were different. I feel like this is a good sign because it says that I didn’t get stuck in the same struggle each week. Rather, I resolved that struggle and leaned from it so that I could attack and conquer the next challenge that came along. It tells me that I was actually learning and growing in my making circuit building and coding skills.

Moving Forward

This has been an awesome adventure. When it started, I was thinking that I might eventually work toward coding apps for phones and tablets. And, I may still do that. However, for the immediate future, I am looking forward to building a “boosted board” project for my son. If I have the materials, I will even try to build two of them. These will not be the usual powered skate boards with remote controls. Rather, I want something that we can ride off-road, in rough terrain. So, these will be built with large tires and rugged components. Also, they will have handle bars to hold on to for stability. I will use my Arduino kit to build and program the controls for the boards. I will incorporate LEDs for power level indication, potentiometers for speed control and possibly even an audio circuit for fun sound effects. That last is still up for debate. I am old enough to enjoy being goofy. But, my son is about to be 11 years old and may soon be moving out of the stage of wanting to be goofy. Oh well, something to be pondered! I hope to have this project completed within the next 2-3 months. Ideally, it would be ready for his birthday, which will be my first goal date. I will try to share some of the build on here as it progresses.