Continued from Part 1
Week 3:
The following week, another familiar face joined me at Cody. Sean Lynn (DE Consultant) came with me to Detroit to teach the students something he learned to do in Iraq—make network cables.
We brought CAT 5 cable, ends, a crimping tool, scissors, and a test kit to show the kids how to make their own Ethernet cable. It is a pretty complicated process that consists of getting 8 very small wires into the plastic tip exactly how you want them before you clamp the tip onto the wire.
Sean used to do this task daily running Ethernet cable between base tents in Iraq for the US Marine Corps. In his demonstration, he made it look simple, but I can attest, it’s extremely tricky. At first, students took turns, but eventually they worked on their wires simultaneously as Sean helped them get it right. In the end, two students built successful cables with no assistance, in the allotted class period. A few students stayed after and kept trying until they got it right.
Week 4:
The next class, I brought a newcomer with me to Cody. Brian Kohls (DE Consultant) made the trip for the first time. Brian’s lesson was less hands-on as he talked about the cloud and showed the students how to download and use Evernote and Dropbox.
Volunteers took turns controlling Brian’s laptop as they downloaded and used the two pieces of software. At the end, we split the group up on opposite sides of the class and had them share music between my laptop and Brian’s using Dropbox. Then, we also showed them how to access the same music files on a phone.
Initially, she wanted to get the kids out to see the U of M students exhibit their capstone projects, but that ended up being just a small part of the trip. After some networking, Deb organized a visit to the Nano Technology Lab for 12 students.
Mr. Smith brought the students out on a bus and met Deb and me at the Lurie Nano Lab. Once we got there, some great U of M faculty pretty much took over the show. The group was split into two: half followed Nadine into the Nano Lab, while half joined Brenden on an interesting tour.
Brendan showed us the inner workings behind the lab; from the ridiculous air filtration system, to the underground boilers, to outside views of all the different “clean rooms”. The kids listened intently as Brenden heaped massive amounts of information their way. It was fascinating to get a peek inside such a technologically advanced world. Something you truly won’t see every day.
After lunch, our group joined Nadine to enter one of the clean rooms and work on a nano-scaled project. Nadine told the kids they would get their own little piece of Nano Technology to take home with them. Each student would be designing a silicon wafer with a freehand pattern, and then altering it on a molecular level.
When the experimenting was done, their designs showed up in a nano thin layer of gold. It was pretty neat, and DE and Cody can’t thank Nadine, Brenden, Debra, and the U of M Nanofabrication team enough for providing this experience for the students.
Week 6:
The field trip was a tough act to follow, but Rhys (DE Consultant) stepped up and gave the students a lesson they had been requesting for weeks. For the last class of the year, Rhys showed the students how to clean some nasty viruses off their computers.
Rhys did a lot of leg work before we made the trip. He put together disks with about 5 different pieces of software the students could take home and use on their home PC’s. The disks contained the same tools the guys at DE use to clean up customer computers.
Rhys also infected a loaner machine with a nasty “Root Kit” virus (the worst kind; very tough to remove). To begin the lesson, we had students take turns volunteering to install all the software Rhys gave them on my (clean) laptop so they would know how to use these programs when they went home.
With the tools installed, Rhys broke out the infected laptop and a tutorial he created for how to remove this particularly tricky virus. He gave the tutorial to a volunteer and 4 or 5 students gathered around the laptop for this challenge. They worked past the bell, but when they were done, the computer was cleaned. Rhys and I just sat back and watched as they removed a virus that would give most IT guys headaches. It was truly impressive.
That’s it for 2011! I’ll keep you updated on what happens in 2012.
~Bryan
