Maker Market 2022

 This week Maker Market returned to the Secondary school after a 2-year Covid-19 induced hiatus. 

This was a scaled-down version of the prior Maker Market events.  That said, there were product contributions at stalls run by the 10th grade, 6th grade, the Maker Space Club, Sewing Club, and Mr. Martinez. 

A great many students and staff were involved in the planning and preparation of Maker Market 2022 which took place during both breaks on December 14th.  This event is one of the many opportunities for our students to engage in entrepreneurship through learning and in doing so find ways to engage in service learning. All profits from Maker Market sales are bound for the various grade-level charities where they are sure to make a positive difference. 

The event was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Here is a short video as well as the link to our Flickr Album so you too can enjoy this wonderful event from home. 

MAKER MARKET 2022 by the LRC

Diplomado en Servicios Innovadores para Bibliotecas

Written by the LRC Team

Spanish 

(Scroll down for the English version.)

El equipo de trabajo del LRC desarrolló e impartió un diplomado de 5 semanas, en coordinación con el Ministerio de Cultura, denominado "Servicios Innovadores para Bibliotecas". El objetivo de éste diplomado  fue dar a conocer y manejar herramientas tecnologicas que le permitan al bibliotecario o educador buscar medios eficaces para realizar su labor, que pueden ser utilizados a través de estrategias análogas y digitales. Como resultado, los profesionales locales tuvieron la oportunidad de explorar una variedad de herramientas fundamentadas en las mejores prácticas pedagógicas e implementadas utilizando experiencias cuidadosamente planificadas, que empoderan al bibliotecario o educador a mejorar el impacto de las experiencias de aprendizaje positivo en su labor diaria con las comunidades.

Este fue un primer paso en abordar con profesionales de todas partes del país, conceptos y temáticas novedosas en dichas áreas, de una manera holística y creativa, suscitando en la persona un interés renovado en el conocimiento de técnicas o tecnologías que a su vez den sentido a su implementación en bibliotecas de todo tipo, con costos relativamente bajos.

El diplomado fue impartido a bibliotecarios, estudiantes y personas interesadas provenientes de distintos ámbitos, como centros educativos, culturales o de investigación, ya sean éstos públicos o privados.

Estos son algunos de los temas impartidos:

• El rol de las emociones en el aprendizaje
• Interacción virtual: cómo hacerla y herramientas necesarias
• Qué es el pensamiento creativo
• Estrategias y metodologías para facilitar el pensamiento creativo, en el contexto de la biblioteca
• Herramientas digitales para desarrollar y aprovechar el pensamiento creativo
• Estrategias de fomento a la lectura apoyadas por tecnología
• Creando proyectos y actividades utilizando la metodología STEAM
• Redes de apoyo para el fomento de la lectura (clubes de lectura, arte, música, robótica, etc.
• Automatización en bibliotecas
• Plataformas en la nube como soporte a la labor del personal de biblioteca
• Los centros de recursos para el aprendizaje,
• Inteligencia artificial,  
• Realidad Virtual (RV), Realidad aumentada (RA) y Realidad mixta (RM). 

La sesión final se realizó en persona en el LRC. Esta experiencia dió la oportunidad a todos los participantes de practicar lo aprendido durante el curso y les permitió realizar las conexiones importantes entre la teoría y las tecnologías exploradas en el curso en línea, con experiencias temáticas de aprendizaje práctico.

Exploracion con:

• Robotica
• Programacion
• RV/RA/RM
• Diseño
• Desarollo y uso Juegos, entre otros.
  Diplomado Servicios innovadores para bibliotecas by the LRC

Los asistentes se mostraron muy satisfechos con la tematica y la metodología, demostrando su motivación a replicar lo aprendido en sus áreas de trabajo. 

Fotos en Flicker

English

The LRC team recently developed and taught a 5-week online diploma program in coordination with the Salvadoran Ministry of Culture, entitled Innovative Services for Libraries. The objective of this diploma program was to update and teach local librarians and educational professionals about current pedagogical practices, which can be employed through analog and digital strategies. In doing so local professionals were provided opportunities to explore a variety of tools cemented in best pedagogical practices, and implemented through carefully planned experiences, empowering the librarian or educator to extend and increase the positive learning impacts of their daily work within communities. 

This was the first step in working with professionals around the country to explore novel concepts and themes in said areas, through a holistic and creative approach, aimed at sparking a renewed interest in the knowledge and application of techniques and technologies for implementation in libraries of all kinds, at a relatively low cost.

The diploma was undertaken by librarians, students, and interested people from different fields, such as educational, cultural, or research centers, both public and private.

These experiences focused on the following topics:

• The role of emotions in learning
• Virtual interaction: how to and tools
• Creative thinking
• Strategies and methodologies to facilitate creative thinking, in the context of the library
• Digital tools to develop and harness creative thinking
• Technology strategies to promote reading
• Creating projects and activities through STEAM 
• Support networks for the promotion of reading (reading clubs, art, music, robotics, etc.)
• Automation in libraries
• Cloud platforms for library staff
• The learning resource centres
• Artificial intelligence  
• Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (XR)

Diplomado Servicios innovadores para bibliotecas by the LRC

The final session was carried out in person in the LRC. This experience provided everyone the opportunity to practice what they learned during the course and allowed attendees to make important connections between the theory and technologies explored in the online course with practical thematic learning experiences.

In-Person Exploration:

• robotics
• programming
• VR/RA/RM
• design
• and Gamification.. among others.

The attendees were highly motivated by the theme and the methodology, which was demonstrated by the creative manner in which they applied their learning across these areas. 

Photos on Flicker

WRO International Finals 2022

Dortmund, Germany,

17 - 19 Nov 2022

The international final of the World Robot Olympiad summoned children and young people between the ages of 8 and 19 in Dortmund, Germany, from November 17 to 19, with the theme “My robot, my friend”.

It has been 3 arduous days in which the participants of the different categories and age ranges worked fine-tuning their robots, either to compete in the challenges or to prepare for the evaluations of the judges and to show the audience their proposals.

This year, the international final had the participation of 365 teams from 73 countries, each one made up of 2 or 3 participants, for a total of more than a thousand competitors, not counting their coaches, national representatives and special guests.

The ambient

The International Final was held in an authentic party atmosphere. Before the opening ceremony on the first day, the participants made a surprise visit to the Signal Iduna Stadium, home of Borussia Dortmund, which then continued at the Messe Dortmund facilities, the city's convention and fair center. After the opening ceremony, the flags of all the participating countries were presented and the competition began.


For the second day, the organizing team prepared a Friendship Night, with the theme of a Christmas Market, a very German tradition during this time of the year in Germany. The kids took the opportunity to enjoy the activities and games prepared for them, strengthening their friendship with the other delegations.


On the third day, the last scored tests for all categories and teams took place, to later lead to the closing event and the award ceremony.

Regarding the Award Ceremony, Elena Atanacio, from the ABC Bulldogs team and recipient, together with Jeannette Mejía, of the award for the best technical solution, shared the following with us:

“When I saw all the projects participating, I got a little worried and amazed. I couldn't even imagine how advanced some projects would be. Then, the 1st round of judges came and they were really "judgy" but I got the hang of it and got better with time at explaining to them my robot.

The last round of judges were really nice. We talked to people from a lot of different places from around the world.It was all a great adventure and a really great experience. I got to meet kids from all around the world.Then, it all came to an end, and we started to take down our stand and put our robot away to get ready to go home. We went to the auditorium where the award ceremony was going to take place and my category was the first. They turned in 8 awards and we were not in that list. Even Though I did not get a prize I was satisfied by our participation and about all of the things I saw and learned with this experience.Bit then, they were more special and more specific awards coming. And suddenly, i heard them say "mr. Bin" And I was like "whattt?!?!?! Is that us???" I couldn't believe it. They started talking about the technical solution award and that it was being granted to a team that had a "simple and yet efficient" solutionAnd we started walking towards the stage and we received an award. I was suuuper excited and couldn't believe it.”

Challenges and results

The challenges were divided for the first time into 4 categories, two related to solutions based on LEGO pieces and 2 new free categories, which allow the incorporation of other technological solutions.

Each category has 3 age groups: Elementary (8 - 12 years), Junior (11 - 15 years) and Senior (14 - 19 years).

The "Robo" categories compete with LEGO elements and parts and the "Future" categories with any element selected or manufactured by the competitors.

El Salvador participated with 3 teams: Robomission Elementary (Hikerbots, made up of Santiago Moreno and Diego Valencia), Robomission Senior (ABC Robotics club, made up of José Andrés Miguel, Marcos Narváez and Arturo Sánchez) and Future Innovators Junior (ABC Bulldogs, made up of Jeannette Mejía and Elena Atanacio).

The categories present at the event were:

Future innovators: Teams were tasked with building a model that represents the robot as a friend and helper in one of these topics: Robots at home, robots in rescue, and robots in healthcare. Various technical and presentation aspects of the solutions were evaluated, with the following teams being the winners:

Elementary: 1st place 2030 - KSA from Saudi Arabia, 2nd place THE REHAB TRIO from Malaysia, 3rd place Fantasy from Chinese Taipei.
Junior: 1st place Otemon Quest from Japan, 2nd place HK-UCCKE from Hong Kong, 3rd place DYCI Primes from the Philippines.

Senior: 1st place Robolectro Kinesist from India, 2nd place Robocores from Greece, 3rd place Platon Tech from Azerbaijan.

Special prizes were also awarded to those teams that demonstrated truly outstanding characteristics

and abilities in the following sections:

• LEGO Education Creativity Award - Katatronic Wildcats - Mexico
• Best Team Spirit (Elementary) - Triple Tech - South Africa
• Best Technical Solution (Junior) - ABC Bulldogs - El Salvador
• Best Team (All Ages) - AGSG - Portugal

Future engineers: The autonomous car challenge this time was a race against the clock with no other competitors on the track at the same time. Instead, each autonomous vehicle tried to set the fastest time around a circuit, complete with road signs and lanes that the vehicle must use.

Overall winners were: 1st place Firing on all cylinders from Chinese Taipei, 2nd place Team Spark from USA, and 3rd place Team Lazy-go from Bangladesh

Robomission: The traditional challenges of the past years, each team builds and programs a robot that accomplishes missions on a challenge board in which the robots must perform certain specific tasks, in a defined period of time and scoring points per task accomplished. The robots are completely autonomous and are not allowed to be controlled remotely. On this occasion, each age range has a different challenge: Elementary: the garden robot; Junior: the rescue robot; Senior: The care robot.

Elementary: 1st place Curious Robot from Chinese Taipei, 2nd place AREA5 from Hungary, 3rd place TC TEAM 1 from Malaysia.

Junior: 1st place Greenbots from India, 2nd place RoboTecnia Danonino from Mexico, 3rd place Robotic Boys from Germany.

Senior: 1st place ThaiHerbGood from Thailand, 2nd place RoboPark from Kazakhstan, 3rd place NERDVANA MENSA from Romania.

Robosports: Teams design two robots that compete against other teams' head-to-heads in a tag team tennis match. The winning team is the one that places the most balls in the opponent's field, following a knockout format until the winning team is obtained.
The overall winners were: 1st place PanyaRobot from Thailand, 2nd place UP UP CHM 10 from Malaysia and 3rd place CHAN-PON from Japan.

All categories have shown an extraordinary competitive and technological level, demonstrating not only effective, innovative and technically viable proposals, but also aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), within a specific budget.

Digital Society and Drones

 In the 11th grade Digital Society class, the students have been exploring the future of work through an extended inquiry project.

One of the technologies that arose from research,  which became a focus of discussion when presenting ideas, was that of drone technologies as interventions and how the use of drones might become more common as the future of work evolves. 

Through inquiry, the students explored how drones can be used for transport and delivery across multiple contexts, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of using drones for these jobs. Some of the contexts they looked at were employment and training, governments and policies as well as potential environmental impacts. 

At the end of one lesson students got to experience drone piloting firsthand with our LRC Mini drones. We have some great pilots in the class!

During another lesson, Mr. Alfaro brought out the new LRC/ICT drone and we flew it up to the top of the LRC to explore the school weather station. 

Below is the link to a short video from the second experience with our new DJI Mini 2. 

Digital Society/Drone Video

 by Hilda Gomez

Student Agency in Service Learning for Global Citizenship

By Hilda Gomez

Students from the ReciLectura Club visited Jardines de La Sabana school for the first time this year. During the visit, they discussed the importance of respecting the environment and social welfare with a focus on sustainability.

Our students taught the children at the Jardines de la Sabana school how to sow seeds in plastic bottles and how to take care of plants.

Catherine and Pablo who are members of the Recilectura club have shared with us their experiences with us.

Visiting Escuela Jardines de la Sabana was an amazing experience. Not only did we interact with other students but also had the opportunities to share our knowledge about sustainability and spread the word. It was an exciting experience to work with different communities and get to know each other as part of ReciLectura and the LRC team. As a team, we really look forward to sharing our experiences and knowledge and cannot wait for the next adventure! 

by Catherine.

We enjoyed the visit a lot! It was a great opportunity to have an open discussion about sustainability in our schools and communities. We are really excited about all the future opportunities to collaborate with public schools in initiatives like these. ReciLectura and the LRC are fueling our passion for service, and education, and becoming the future leaders of our community! 

by Pablo.

Here is a short video from the visit.

Tema: Sostenibilidad-Club ReciLectura by Hilda Gomez

Do click here to view our photo gallery from the trip.

Space Grand Challenge Competition 2022

  Written by Silvia Serrano

A group of ABC students: Daniella Jerez, Sebastián Ortíz, Isabella Portillo

and Alejandra Jerez, participated in the Space Grand Challenge 2022

competition, which took place online, on October 8th, 2022. After seven hours of competition the students placed first in the international beginner category!

The challenge which was for middle/high school students from across the globe

was a gamified satellite/space-based cybercrime challenge scenario developed

by the California Cybersecurity Institute at Cal Poly . 

The ABC has a special relationship with Cal Poly, through the Cyber to Schools Program, in which several ABC students are enrolled and earn a series of

micro-credentials in cybersecurity. The program is supported by the following

organisations: Fortinet, LMNTRIX, Lockheed Martin, Secureworks, AWS,

Foundation of the Future, NSSA, JPL NASA, and United States Space Force.

The cybersecurity space-themed Esports game is intended for

beginner-level/intermediate-level participants. It is composed of a

multi-layered cybercrime plot written by students who work and study

at Cal Poly. The game comes complete with complex characters,

physical and digital forensic evidence chains, and puzzles that challenge

participants who are required to search through the evidence and analyse

it in order to solve a satellite/space hacking crime. In doing so they engage

in gamification and esports for space and cybersecurity skill development,

using specialized tools across cybersecurity, space, satellites, deep pace

networking, and forensics.

During the two months, they spent preparing for this challenge, the students

learned an amazing number of skills which focus on cybersecurity. These skills

include:

• The skills Basic-Social-Engineering-Tactics

• Denial of Service Attack

• Malware

• Ping of Death Script

• Satellite-Jamming/Spoofing

• OSI-Model

• Indicators-of-attack-(IOA)

• Deep-Space-Networks

• Logic-Bombs

• Cloud-based computing

• Remote Desktop Protocol

• VPN, Virtual Private Network

• Basic-Linux-Skills

• PowerShell

• The-National-Cybersecurity-Workforce-Framework-NICE

• Wireshark-&-PCAP-Analysis

• Web-Server-Exploitation

• Digital-Forensics

• Software Defined Radios

• Basic-awareness-of-the-InterPlanetary-Networking-Special-Interest-Group

• AutoRuns

• Domain-Generation-Algorithm-(DGA)

• Cryptocurrencies

• Common-Vulnerabilities-and-Exposures-(CVE)

• Collaboration-Skills

• Cybersecurity-Ethics

• Orbital-Mechanics

• Blockchain

Gameplay Stats

# of total Players: 332 

# of Teams: 72

# # of Participating High Schools: 35

Gender Distribution: 

Males: 225

Females: 96

Did Not Disclose: 11

World Robot Olympiad, El Salvador

Our robotics club achieved a significant milestone this past weekend: Two teams classified for the World Robot Olympiad Finals in Dortmund, Germany!

Six ABC Robotics teams took part in the WRO El Salvador competition, in the following categories:

The Robomission category, a Lego-based challenge, required participants to build robots to complete missions on a map. The teams were divided into three age groups each with different maps and challenges, namely: Elementary (8 - 12 years old), Junior (11-15 years old) an Senior (14 - 19 years old).

The ABC participated with 2 teams in the Junior age group: 

• Don Kamaron Technologies (Eduardo Urrutia, José Santiago Casanovas, Ricardo Baires)

• ABC EVO (Moisés Mejía, Mateo Guzmán, Daniel Chévez). 

In the senior age group we participated with  3 teams: 

• Los Cuidadores (André Mejía, Néstor Cáceres, Enrique López), 

• ABC Robotics Club (Marcos Narváez, Juan Andrés Miguel, Arturo Sánchez), 

• 24 Tech (Christian Vásquez, Rafael Menéndez, Diego Arévalo)

The Future Innovators category allowed participants to choose from a range of technologies to design and build a robotic solution. They chose a subcategory from Robots in rescue missions, Robots in Healthcare and Robots at Home.

The ABC Bulldogs Team (Elena Atanacio and Jeanette Mejía) competed in this category under the elementary age group (8 - 12 year old), in the Robots at Home subcategory.

  

ABC Came Out on Top!

• The ABC Robotics Club team won first place in the Robomission - Senior category. 

• The ABC Bulldogs team won first place in the Future Innovators - Robots at home category. 

Both teams qualified for the WRO Finals in Dortmund, Germany, as national champions in their categories. The Finals will take place from the 14th to the 19th of November 2022.

• The ABC Don Kamaron Technologies team also won second place in the Robomission Junior category wrapping up an astonishing performance from all the teams. 

If you want to take a look at the complete album, please click here. We are still uploading images from all the cameras, so please check back soon for more.

The link to the WRO 2022 Finals website is here.

The World Robot Olympiad association was founded in 2004 with one mission in mind:  

“To bring together young people all over the world to develop their creativity, design and problem-solving skills through challenging and educational robot competitions and activities” (WRO). They decided that each member would host a national competition and the winners would attend the annual WRO® international final hosted by a different country each year.

This year, WRO® El Salvador in collaboration with Colegio Highlands hosted the national event, with the theme "My Robot My Friend", outlining that "the combination of robotics and artificial intelligence can change the world and especially the environment of humans. The season challenges are connected to the ways that robots can help humans. How can we make robot-human interaction helpful and safe?" (WRO).

Congratulations to all participants, who offered their best effort and made all this possible in a very short time.