BBBSLI – Raspberry Pi and Sphero Workshop

BBBSLI – Raspberry Pi and Sphero Workshop

With great success at our STEM workshop at BBBSLI this past saturday, Bigs’ and Littles were able to learn about Raspberry Pi circuits and work with Sphero kits. We all worked as a team and had fun while we were learning how to program. It was a great experience to share our knowledge of SpringBoard incubators Inc. Shoutout to our corporate and event partners for making events like this possible.

Thanks to Instructor Will King for giving us great insight on how to conduct a Raspberry Pi Circuit. Thanks to instructors Tuly Reyes and Marilyn Castro for helping our Bigs’ and Littles learn how to code and program a Sphero. More importantly special thanks to BBBSLI for having us.

Big Brother Big Sisters STEM Workshop and Mentoring – Part II

The second part of our workshop with BBBSLI will include the Raspberry PI. Here is another preview of the type of projects you can do with SpringBoard. If your organization is interested, please contact us at 516.414.2000. We (SpringBoard) put the fun in STEM Learning.

The Raspberry PI is a pocket computer. Yes, a really cool computer about the size of a credit card. For this project we will use the serial ports and a breadboard. Think of this as Engineering 101.

Raspberry Pi has a GPIO “General Purpose Input/Output” serial interface, that is composed of two parallel rows of metal pins. The GPIO provides an interface between the software and the physical world.

With these pins we can program the Raspberry Pi to interact with physical objects in the real world. We can receive signals from external sources such as a button or a device for measuring wind speed. We can also use it to control physical objects such as turning a light on and off or even operating a 3D printer. In this case The project you see in the photo below is the traffic light simulator.

After you learn how to connect the circuits on the breadboard, you will learn how to program the traffic light simulator in python. Pretty cool if you ask me. – By Tuly Reyes


Big Bother Big Sisters STEM Workshop and Mentoring

Big Brother Big Sisters of Long Island’s mission is to “create and support one-on-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth.”

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island provides children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported, one-on-one relationships that change their lives for the better, forever. To this end, BBBSLI has many different mentoring programs.

SpringBoard will be doing a STEM workshop for Bigs’ and Littles’ on September 25, 2021. I am very excited to be part of the team that will be teaching the workshops. So what will we be doing? Here is a preview.

My workshop is a gentle introduction to robotics. I will introduce the concept of autonomous robotics using the SPRK + robot. What can Bigs and Littles expect? They will work together to program our robot to do simple tasks, hence, autonomous robotics. It will be a great learning experience and I cannot wait. – by Tuly Reyes

Click Here to Learn more About BBBSLI: BBBSLI

Torneo de Innovación Estudiantil

Un torneo de innovación es una competencia por equipos donde los estudiantes se reúnen para enfocarse en un problema específico. Nuestro torneo de innovación fue organizado por SpringBoard Incubators Inc en asociación con Sean John del 4 al 5 de junio de 2021.

El tema fue Justicia Social, y se nos pidió que brindemos soluciones desde nuestra perspectiva a problemas como:

  • La discriminación racial
  • Sesgo de sexualidad y género
  • Brecha salarial
  • Bienestar infantil
  • Trabajo infantil forzoso
  • Abuso y negligencia infantil
  • Pobreza e injusticia económica
  • Falta de recursos
  • Calidad de vida Sistema educativo
  • Cuidado de la salud

A la competencia asistimos estudiantes de las escuelas: Hempstead High School, Roosevelt Middle School, West Hempstead y Sewanhaka High School.

La competición duró dos días. El primer día fuimos juzgados por nuestras ideas y nuestros bocetos. El segundo día tuvimos que proporcionar un “prototipo en el que se puede hacer clic” y justificar nuestra solución.

Como incubadoras SpringBoard, los estudiantes tuvieron el privilegio de poder participar y trabajar con otros estudiantes. Aprendimos de nuestros entrenadores y mentores a medida que interactuamos con expertos de la industria y recibimos el aliento de los jueces. Fue una experiencia técnica interesante, informativa y práctica. ¡Sobre todo nos divertimos! Divertido aprendiendo cosas nuevas como crear un prototipo de aplicación, colaborar en equipo y crear soluciones en iniciativas educativas, compromiso cívico y liderazgo. ¡Todos deberíamos innovar, colaborar y crear!

Alissa Tokumoto primer lugar (centro), Irma Salmeron (Izquierda) tercero lugar, y Tuly Reyes (Derecha) tercero lugar

Muchas Gracias a Dr. Steven Lindo y todos los que participaron en este torneo, fue experiencia grandiosa porque aprendimos a innovacion sobre problemas que estan pasando actualmente.

SpringBoard se encuentra con el Instituto de Tecnología de Nueva York E.R.R.S.E.L.A

“Club de Computación” de las escuelas secundarias de Hempstead aprovechando al máximo su verano

Las primeras semanas de las vacaciones de verano para los adolescentes se pasan idealmente de compras, yendo a la playa y con la familia. Sin embargo, este no es el caso del “Computer Club” de Hempstead High School. El Computer Club se enfrentó al desafío de codificar la tecnología E.R.R.S.E.L.A. de el Instituto de Tecnología de Nueva York. (Robot de investigación ETIC para actividades de aprendizaje y participación de los estudiantes). A pesar de no tener experiencia en codificación, el grupo de jóvenes tuvo que afrontar la abrumadora tarea de forma remota a través de ZOOM.

E.R.R.S.E.L.A. es un robot desarrollado por el Instituto de Tecnología de Nueva York con el único propósito de desarrollar las habilidades y la disciplina para poder colaborar y participar en E.R.R.S.E.L.A. ‘ funcionalidad y diseño. Trabajando con E.R.R.S.E.L.A. el Computer Club adquirió conocimientos del mundo real sobre áreas relacionadas con la ingeniería y la ciencia de la computación.

SpringBoard meets the New York Institute of Technologies E.R.R.S.E.L.A.

Hempstead High Schools “Computer Club” Making the Most of Their Summer

The initiating weeks of summer vacation for teenagers is ideally spent shopping, going to beaches, and or with family. However this is not the case for the Hempstead High School “Computer Club”. The Computer Club was met with the challenge of coding New York Techs E.R.R.S.E.L.A. (ETIC Research Robot for Student Engagement & Learning Activities). Despite having no coding experience the group of young individuals had to face the daunting task remotely over ZOOM.

E.R.R.S.E.L.A. is a robot developed by the New York Institute of Technology with the sole purpose of developing the skills and discipline to be able to collaborate and take part in E.R.R.S.E.L.A.’ functionality and design. Through working with E.R.R.S.E.L.A. the Computer Club gained real world knowledge of areas surrounding computer engineering and science.

Computer Club members, Chelsea Prudencio and Alissa Tokomoto participating in one of the various zooms.

This 10 day program was consisted of putting the Computer Club through a crash course of critical thinking, problem solving, and innovative designing. Attending the program here at the SpringBoard Innovation Hub the Computer Club was able to control E.R.R.S.E.L.A. autonomously. Considering E.R.R.S.E.L.A. is located at the NYIT location in Old Westbury, witnessing E.R.R.S.E.L.A. being controlled miles away was a marvel to experience. Through trial and error the Computer Club was able to persist and was able to put E.R.R.S.E.L.A. through various motions by the use of JavaScript. To creating figure eights through stop motion to creating multiple strings of code, the Computer Club was able to do it all.

Computer Club member (Chelsea Prudencio) and her work to program E.R.R.S.E.L.A.

Big thank you to Michael Nizich, Ph.D, director of New York Tech’s Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovation Center (ETIC), who created E.R.R.S.E.L.A. (ETIC Research Robot for Student Engagement and Learning Activities), for giving our eager students a chance to work with E.R.R.S.E.L.A. and exposing them to potential careers in Computer Sciences and Engineering. To learn more about E.R.R.S.E.L.A. click here