Today's Future Sound came to the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab last semester to show our students how to make their own beats! Thanks to Marlon, Kevin, Tim, and Chris, the R.O.C.K. Tech students learned about tempo, high hats and snares, were able to experiment with DJ pads and keyboards, and created an awesome finished product in a team -- their own song with their own beats. We hope to work with them again this semester and we hope our new Tech Assistant, Tatyana, will continue teaching our students how to make their own music.
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GooOOoOoooo Bears! The UC Berkeley California Golden Overtones put on an incredible a cappella benefit concert for the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab last semester. They featured other UC Berkeley a cappella groups such as Decadence and the UC Men's Octet, and before the show Yogurtland gave us free frozen yogurt! A huge thank you to the UC Berkley a cappella community for putting on a bomb show for us!
This was one of the coolest workshops the R.O.C.K. Tech Lab has EVER done! Rock Project came back to Vis and taught our students how to play the basics of many instruments including: guitar, bass, ukulele, and the keyboard. Rock Project students and instructors teamed up to teach our students through 1:1 lesson rotations -- 15 minutes per instrument. We got to see how to hold the instruments, how to play some notes, and how to experiment with these instruments! Our students absolutely loved this and we're very much looking forward to having Shark and the Rock Project team back to work with us!
Who is your favorite rock and roll band!? Kiss? Nirvana? Queen? How about The Rolling Stones? These rad 14-17 year old students at Rock Project are playing all sorts of rock and roll! Last semester, they came to put on an incredible rock show for our students. While it was super loud and we needed ear phones, we were blown away by their talent and natural musical abilities!
The Google field trip was fantastic, thanks to Greg, awesome employee at Google! As soon as we got to the campus, we went to the Google Visitor’s Center where we all played and had a "ball" (pun intended!). There were massage chairs, a mini golf hole, a ball pit, and more! After we explored the Visitor’s Center, we built systems with bright LED lights; we used certain wires and learned how important connectivity is for these projects. We also helped each other out when one of us had issues. Afterwards, we walked around the outside of the campus; it was a lovely day at Google!
The average American child spends an average of 7 1/2 hours per DAY consuming media. That includes: TV, movies, books, magazines, phones, etc. In this useful workshop with Reza Harris of 5Elements (and his partner Juana, a community leader in Oakland) we looked at media critically and observed what kinds of messages we are being given. We discussed racism, sexism, ableism, and more; we talked about how these isms exist in media all the time, every day. We need to be wary of the media we see and we need to ask questions -- we need to speak up when something doesn't feel right. Thank you to Reza and Juana for leading this incredible workshop!
Google CS Video Design is a wonderful program filled with coding on Scratch, individual work, writing and sharing shout outs, and working toward a shared goal. In this 8 week long free program (thanks, Google!) we watch videos on how to code on Scratch — a kid-friendly website to learn the building blocks of coding. We also make our own sprites, also known as characters, and make them move, talk, and interact with each other! At the end of each lesson, there are 2 students that get to display their work in the Google CS Showcase. We had a wonderful volunteer at all of our sessions — shout out to Gilbert!
Have you ever thought about how much sugar is in your food? What about the fact that 80% of schools have deals with fast food companies for school lunches? Do you know 3 other names for sugar? In this activity, Tech Lab got put into different teams and had the task of doing research the internet to answer big questions about sugar, diabetes, our government, and lunches in schools. With post-it notes corresponding to their teams, they ran from the computers to the posters to get the most correct answers!
Did you know that there are over 600,000 food items in America? Guess how many of them have added sugar? 80%! Isn't that crazy? That is just one shocking fact that the Tech Lab learned while watching the critically acclaimed "Fed Up". "Fed Up" is a documentary about the childhood obesity epidemic in America and tells us how sugar is ruining our chances of being truly healthy. We highly recommend this film and give it two thumbs up!
Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-BUM-Buuum, Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-BUM-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bumbum ... That’s the sound of Jeopardy! How many glasses of water should you drink a day? How much exercise should kids do every day compared to how much adults should do every day? What are the different kinds of exercises we endure? These are all questions that are answered in the renowned documentary film, “Fed up.” Our Tech students watched this film with a critical eye and tested their knowledge in teams with a little bit of Jeopardy. Next, we will watch "Black Fish" and see how orcas are being poorly treated while living at Sea World.
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