Explo Maker and Explo 360 Programs

In my first year of Explo a lot of new ideas were introduced to me. some of the ideas were living for a long time without my family, having a room mate and many more. I liked the fact that almost all of the people did not know me, so i got a clean slate. another thing a also liked about being at Explo was the fact that there were a lot of new things to try, new activities, lots of new things. Me and many of my friends got home sick within the first week and Explo helped us with our homesickness. Even though we got home sick, every one had fun classes.

For my classes I chose lego robotics, and building a medieval empire. In lego robotics, you get to build a robot with lego parts and then program it to do what you want, usually people would program them to ram into each other. In Mediaeval castle building you design your own village and then defend against other villages, every week you can unlock a new part of the map.

You also get work-shops, they are like classes, but they are on a Wednesdays and they are normally more physical than normal classes. My work shops were, swimming and model rocketry and they were really fun. In Swimming they teach beginners swimming, the basic strokes. In Model rocketry you create model rockets, first a bottle rocket, then another bottle rocket this time on a skate board using cola and candy, and the third being a sulfur and electricity rocket. All my classes were fun,

In the first year, we got to go to the Canobie Lake, the water park, a Boston Paw-Sox baseball game, The Boston Aquarium, and a few other fun places.

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This is the explo maker focus group

To the class room

We are walking down the hall to the class room where the maker group will be working

Instructions

reading the ins ructions is important, without them you can't do the project in front of you

Maker Request - 7 of 23

Laying out the materials

there is a PCB board, 3 LED's, 2 diodes, 2 switches, 8 resistors, 1 battery, 1 batter holder, 1 motor, 1 battery pack, 1 capacitor, 2 shrink tubes, and one charger port

learning what each piece does

the class got to learn what each piece was me and a couple other people already knew, but the people who didn't know had fun learning

Guid helping solder

some of the maker class, including me needed a little help with pieces of the board

Preparing Resistors

to prepare the resistors you have to bend the leads connected to the resistors down in a way to will fit the board

Resistors

The Resistors will prevent over charge to the board so it doesn't over heat

Soldering capacitor

This capacitor will prevent under charge to the board and the components

re reading instructions

Time to make sure i did all the instructions right

one last little problem

I connected the charger port to the wrong contacts

Testing

I went to a different table to test my "skitter bot"

It works

My skitter bot works, it docent go forward, but i can adjust the legs

My Final product

My final "skitter bot" project was very fun to use, its like a hex bug, but not as smart

In my second year at explo I was more familiar with the campus, but i was doing something new I was going to do a focus for my first time, focus is like a class, but you focus on it all periods of the day I was doing maker focus. I had read the website of the maker focus and i was convinced that I wanted to go. I read that there would be fun challenges and a explo Maker Faire at the end where you get to show off the stuff you have learned through out the time you were there. For my second session this year I did the 360 program.

I took different classes than last year, the classes i took were DIY and photography. In DIY you do fun experiments, it is like explo maker, but more controlled, and in Photagraghy you can take photos and then play around with them in photo shop, at the end you can choose pictures you want to be on display at a special night.

My workshops for the second year was canoeing and kayaking, and street lough. In kayaking and canoeing, it is pretty self explanatory, you kayaking and canoe, but it is the only workshop that goes off campus, the reason being that they go out to a pond to kayak there on the second and third day. I also took street luge. If you don’t know is kind of like a sport where it is a big skate board thing that you lie down on and ride down a hill.

My second year trips, I got to go to the Canobie Lake and Water Park again, twice, and I also got to go to MIT and Harvard museums, I drove the Duck Boat, I saw the Blue Man Group, an MIT Soldering trip just for makers, and many others.

It was good to see some of the same people from my first year, but I also made a lot of new friends. I really miss some of my friends from the first year who did not return.

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I'm back at Explo

hall meeting

In the first hall meeting you establish the hall rules and meet every one

setting up my room

setting up your explo room is fun because you get to set up a home away from home

done setting up my room

I put up the poster and my bed blankets and i am ready for My first evening activities

first evening activities

I choose paper plate Frisbees for my first activity and i made a Frisbee that splits into multiple Frisbees

Choosing our ball trophy

i picked a ball at random and it turned out to be the explo ball, so me and my team had to come up with a trophy to represent what you can play with this ball

Planing for the ball trophy

We talked about what you can play with the explo ball and we decided that the main things were

hold your stuff project

The hod your stuff project was designing a stool that can hold your friends stuff how they like it, but you design it

Learning how to 3D print

When i heard that Explo maker had a 3D printer i thought it would be hard to learn, but explo made it easy

3D printing

Explo did a good job explaining the 3D printing, but the application was hard to use

Learning how to use a sowing machine

I din't use the sowing machine that much, but i

Learning about little bits

I have seen little bits in places before, they are easy, but fun to play with

preparing advertisement for the explo maker faire

we designed some flyers and they were fun to make, but the most fun part of it was making the

Trivia night

Trivia night was fun, but some one who made the trivia night got answers wrong

Planing our maker faire project

When i heard that there would be an explo maker faire i got to work trying to get my project excepted in to the faire 3 days in i got it excepted

making a magnet powered ferris wheel

This project did not work, but that was fine because failing is not bad in the end we just made it a hand crank wheel and kept working on other things

Preparing the little bits for the ski ball machine

Little bits were easy, but

The making of the ski ball machine

Making the ski ball machine was fun and we had some trouble finding what we would use as a ball, but in the end, we 3D printed

completing the ski ball machine

It's finally done, the final ski gal machine, it work, but sometimes there are some pipe problems

mail whale prototype

This project is very important because mail whale is explo Wheatons's mascot as of 2016 my friend Robert made it and entered it into a mascot competition in explo, and it won Robert let me keep the prototype of mail whale, i still have it

guess what these were

These use to be my ski ball machines, they had trouble durning the explo maker faire and fell apart soon after the faire, they were still fun to make though