This course has been extremely influential on my growth as it has helped me develop new making skills as well as improve my computational thinking and problem-solving abilities. To start, prior to taking this course, I had barely any knowledge of how electrical components or circuits worked to make a piece of technology function. However, through taking this course, I was able to learn about the basics of electronic hardware and software through breaking down and analyzing electronic components in addition to creating electrical circuits that would produce light, sound, motion, and more. Besides that, I also obtained more experience with the creative process of developing prototypes (both with paper and plastic materials), and I learned how to solder for the first time. Through each lab assignment, I gained a better understanding of and utilized computational thinking skills such as decomposition, pattern recognition, and algorithms.

During this course, I experienced some setbacks. One setback that was particularly challenging for me came while working on the second lab assignment in which students had to break an electronic into its individual electrical pieces. Although my electronics did not have many electronic components to it, I initially found it extremely difficult to identify each part. This was partially due to my previous lack of knowledge regarding electronics. On the other hand, it was also because I struggled with recognizing the pieces based on pictures from the Internet. In order to overcome this, I tried to employ better pattern recognition. I used this skill to better focus on the similarities that I found between my parts and those I found while researching the Internet. I also used this skill to focus on how the components were arranged in relation to each other to see if there were any patterns I saw elsewhere. When I needed extra help, I asked my instructor for assistance, which she gave. Overall, although I wasn’t successful in coming up with detailed identifications for each component, I was able to put a name to each one.

In addition to setbacks, I also experienced several triumphs. The best triumph I experienced came while working on my final project. Upon deciding a basic idea I had for solving my design problem based on previous projects, I seriously struggled with figuring out how I could go about setting up the electronic hardware and software. I wasn’t sure what electronic components were necessary to use and how I could code them to do what I wanted. Using decomposition, I first broke down the different types of tasks I needed to do to accomplish my goals. The first task I needed to do was to identify how I specifically wanted my project to function. I used algorithms to create a very specific set of chronological tasks that I needed to complete to accomplish each of my project functions (such as first getting my lights to turn on/off and then trying to get them to blink and more). I then went about conducting research on which electronic components I needed and how I could code my electronics using Arduino. I particularly struggled with finding out how I could code push buttons with LEDs to toggle between “on” and “off” states. I used pattern recognition to notice the similarities between different web pages of information I viewed, which helped me to better tailor my searches for exactly what I needed help learning about. Eventually, I was able to find a page that gave me information on what hardware I would need and some example code for the basic functionality of my project. Using decomposition, I realized that I needed to buy my hardware first so then I could set it up to program, which I ended up doing. I meshed the code I saw before and forums relating to Arduino code to get my project to toggle light states by pressing the LED-infused push buttons. This was a huge triumph because I spent several weeks worrying over whether I could correctly program these electronic components and arrange them in a working circuit. From there, I felt more confident in implementing the rest of my project.