Finding what works

OTHELLO — The team was working on the second phase of its project, trying to get the little electric engine that would propel a self-driving vehicle to respond to commands. Othello High School principal Alejandro Vergara typed in a command.

“Nothing’s happening,” said Tami Baxter, who works in the Othello School District office and was part of Vergara’s team.

“Wait for it,” Vergara said. And they waited. “Okay, nothing’s happening,” Vergara said.

Well, that’s how experimentation goes – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The first phase of the project was successful; the team built a vehicle from sticks and wooden wheels. “We’re just shocked and amazed we put something together that goes,” said Denise Colley, instructional coach at McFarland Middle School.

The team was participating in the Thinkabit Lab at McFarland Thursday morning, a program that’s designed to teach kids at all grade levels to think about technology and experimentation in new ways. The curriculum will be available to Othello teachers for the 2017-18 school year.

Participants were asked to combine a bunch of “fairly random” objects into whatever they wanted, said Jessica Schenck, the district’s STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) coordinator. The objects included everything from wooden dowels to pipe cleaners to glitter. (Glitter glue, so controlled glitter, Schenck said.)

“As I purchased these things I had no idea how people would use them,” she said.

Rigo Ozuna and the team started with pipe cleaners, those little wire things covered with chenille. The pipe cleaners and wooden sticks were turned into glasses designed to support a video camera that could record conversations and make the information available to the wearer. That idea morphed into a camera with facial recognition.

Alas, pipe-cleaner glasses couldn’t support a camera. So Ozuna, who’s the IT director for the city of Othello, attached them to his prescription glasses. “Do you a have a spare, in case it goes really bad?” asked Dave Rehaume, assistant chief for the Othello Police Department.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t go really bad,” Ozuna said.

It didn’t. The camera actually worked.

Jobs of the future will require people to communicate and work together effectively, Schenck said. “We want kids to think about the problems and needs in this world, and how to solve them,” she said.

The goal was to show participants how to encourage children to use their skills in new ways. “That is really the point of today,” Schenck said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.