Curiosity Machine Design Challenges

At Iridescent, I make curriculum for Curiosity Machine. Curiosity Machine is a hands-on STEAM program for children, families and educators.

Design Challenges

The main feature of Curiosity Machine is its design challenges, which are hands-on STEAM activities that are developed based on the work of scientists and engineers. All design challenges are designed to use use simple household materials, scale up or down for students K-12, be open ended, and connect to real applications of science and engineering. Some of the topics I’ve developed these hands-on challenges around include:

Artificial Intelligence
Nanoscience
Genetics
Aerospace
Biomimicry
Mechanical Engineering
Electrical Engineering

In addition to developing challenges, I also develop many supporting materials to accompany them such as, videos, lesson plans, teacher guides, and more.

Artificial Intelligence

During the Spring of 2017, my team and I developed three hands-on challenges to teach children and their families about artificial intelligence. The three challenges are listed below:

Parallel Processing Machine	Neural Network	Self Driving Car Game

The three challenges were tested out with a group of high schoolers at conference by NVIDIA. Afterwards they were incorporated in outreach events by NVIDIA and into the AI Family Challenge curriculum.

Nanoscience

In the Fall of 2017, I created two videos to accompany design challenges developed with the help of undergraduate students at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). These videos will explain important concepts in nanoscience and help students get starting building the design challenges.

Quantum Dots	Nanopipe

Genetics

In the fall of 2015, I worked with Elliot Meyerowitz, a scientist at California Institute of Technology, and the Iridescent video team to develop two videos and a hands on building project that teaches children about plant genetics. I developed the design for the project, several different prototypes, and two videos that all work together to deliver the concepts to a young audience.

Design a Set of Mechanical Genes

Aerospace

In a partnership with Boeing, I worked with engineers to develop hands on projects around what they work on at Boeing. In total, my team developed 21 design challenges and three videos to accompany each one. Below are three of challenges that I worked to develop.