NICK CHAN GUO RUI

Background information on the project:

My group was tasked to develop a workshop for 160 adults to build a musical experience in 2 hours using Makey Makey. The participants should work in teams of 3-4 people and make their musical instruments. They have laptops and Scratch but no internet connection, and the success of the workshop is measured by the diversity of outcomes. We were supposed to come up with the workshop from scratch with only these aforementioned guidelines, and were provided with all the resources they had from their storeroom, which included all types of materials. We had the help with another intern, Nicholas, an undergraduate from NUS. The department also told us that they would provide us the budget for all the expenses for making the workshop. They had provided a lab for us to work in and develop our workshop. Our mentors also provided us a timeline for the development of the project. By the first week, we have to finish experimenting with the programs and complete prototyping of the instruments. By the second week, we had to complete preparing the materials, worksheets, and slides for the workshop. By the end of the third week, we have to present the final product of our workshop to our mentors and let our friends test out the workshop. We also had to write a scrum email at the end of the day to report to our mentors about the things we have done throughout the day, the progress of the project, things we intend to do the next day and also any challenges /showstoppers that we face if there are any.

Records of the activities:

Throughout the first week, we experimented with the Makey Makey board and prototype. We had to play around with the Makey Makey to thoroughly understand the board and how it works. We then moved on to play around with the Scratch program to learn how to control the Makey Makey Board with Scratch programming. Our mentors were also kind enough to provide us with videos of other people making their instruments from the Makey Makey board. This gave us inspiration on what we could create with it. With a rough idea in mind, we set out to brainstorm all the possible instruments we could make during the prototyping phase. We made a list we wanted to prototype and aimed to finish all of them by the end of the week. The instruments we made during prototyping were the guitar, piano, trumpet, cymbals, and a random sound generator. We split up the instruments amongst the group members such that we could each finish a musical instrument in a day. We also had to figure out the code on Scratch to make the instrument function the way it is intended to. On the designing side of things, we got some help from the other intern, he gave us suggestions on how to wire the instruments efficiently and make the design of the instrument more “clean” and neat.

In the second week, we got our friends to test out our prototypes to see if it works and if there are any problems. If a problem arises, like say the piano notes do not play when pressed, we would seek out the problem and rectify it quickly. After making sure that our prototypes are working completely fault-free, we then filmed our friends using them to be put into our slides for the workshop to show the participants what are the instruments they could create and give them some inspiration. We then brainstormed how are we going to convert the prototype materials into boxes for the participants to use and make an inventory list for 6 different kinds of boxes.

This is our final plan for the variations of boxes

There were 90 boxes of 6 variation and also 28 packs of toolboxes which included all the tools that the participants would need.

After this, we raided the storeroom for the materials we needed to pack into the boxes. We took all the materials that we could find and that we needed first, the remaining materials that we lack, we had to purchase them. We packed all of the materials we had on hand into 90 boxes of 6 variation and 28 toolboxes. After getting all the materials sorted out, we asked our mentors for an allowance of $150 (based on our estimation and calculations) to purchase the rest of the items and materials we lack. Shopping and sourcing for material took us a whole day as some materials were much more difficult to find, for example, 8B pencils, which we had to take a trip to Clementi to get them. When we got all the materials we needed, we headed back to our lab and finished packing the remaining boxes. For any workshop, there has to be a word prompt and a set of slides to brief the participants on what they had to do, and after completing the preparations of the materials, we set out to complete the slides and the word prompt. The slides include the challenges that the participants were about to embark on, examples of the instruments that they could make and tutorials on how to make them. The word prompt shows the basic instructions on how to use the Makey Makey through visual aids.

In the third week, we tested the lesson with our friends and got some feedback on the workshop. We then tweaked it appropriately to perfect it. After which we submitted all the deliverables to our mentors, to which they looked through and reviewed and gave their feedback. Upon receiving the feedback from our mentors, we made more changes to our lesson, like re-taking the videos against a white background and making some of the instructions more clear and concise. By the end of the week, we have our final product of the workshop.

Elaboration on the results and deliverables:

These are some of the images that showcase our final products.

3 Content knowledge/skills learnt:

1. Coding

I learned a very basic form of coding. On Scratch, the programs are in the form of blocks, which makes it very easy for new programmers like some of my friends to learn. There are endless possibilities that you can create with Scratch programming, like creating a very basic game, to a random number/integer generator to making music like what we did. Instead of coding out chains and chains of code, all that we had to do was to find the correct function block that we wanted and stack them together such that they create a functional code. It was an eye-opener to know that with simple block coding you could still do so much.

2. Prototyping

Prototyping consists of multiple processes like brainstorming, getting the materials we need and then creating the prototype itself. So in our case, we came out with a list of instruments that we wanted to make as a prototype and raided the storeroom for materials to use for prototyping like cardboard, copper tape, copper wires, play-doh, and paper. We then split up the different instruments to different group members such that the process would be much more efficient. I was in charge of prototyping the trumpet and thought of how it would look and how the wires would fit around the trumpet and how the earth would be connected to the trumpet. After much consideration and drawings, I finally came up with the design of the trumpet and head on to create it. After this, I had to come up with the code to program the trumpet. This is the final product.

3. Creating an inventory list

I also learned that when the activity requires a lot of items, it would be smarter to create an inventory list to keep track of all the things. During the packing of the materials, we had to deal with large quantities of various materials, and without a list to keep tabs on all these resources, we would not know what we’re short off. With an inventory list, we not only could sort out the mess of all the items we had, but it also made it easier for us to pack the boxes as we would know which boxes had what and which boxes didn’t have what.

2 interesting aspects of your learning:

In Science Center, I found that the mentors have a very hands-off approach when it comes to learning. On the first few days of work attachment there, they told us to play around with the Makey Makey boards and the Scratch program to familiarize ourselves with it. They believe that by letting us play around with the materials, it would spark or creativity and spur us in the next stage of planning and prototyping.
Behind every successful workshop, there are many hours of hard-work put in to make sure that it runs smoothly. My group got the privilege to tag along with our mentors during one of the workshops that they conducted this month, we saw how the workshop was run as well as the backstage work that they had to put in. After the workshop, the team came round together to provide their reflections and feedback on how the workshop went. From there, they decided to tweak the lesson plans and the materials to better suit the new workshop plan. We also helped the re-pack all of the kits for the workshop and it took us many long laborious hours to finish packing them. From this experience, we realize that running a workshop was not as easy as we thought it was, many hours go behind the planning of it such that it would be able to run smoothly.

1 takeaway for life:

If there is one thing I took away from this one-month attachment, it would be the work ethics of my mentors. They would always give their all when working, there would be no goofing around and no breaks in between. But when there is a team lunch or a team event, they would also go all out and have fun. One example is when we were helping them facilitate a workshop. During the workshop, our mentors, gave all their dedication to the kids, looking out for every one of them, answering all of the inquiries they had and darting around the hall to help students who faced any trouble throughout the workshop. But after the workshop ended, there was a team lunch and everyone’s mood lighten up and everyone was cracking a joke and mingling with each other. This showed their non-stop dedication to their work while at the same time, also giving time to know their colleagues more and bond together as a whole team, which was a very heartwarming image.

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