In this project, our goal is to produce an interactive activity which will educate 6th grade children about the life and work of  Hedy Lamarr, and in particular, how codes are made and decrypted.  In order to make the activity engaging, we have decided on a few things which must occur:

  • The activity must include NO lecturing

  • Any teaching that goes on should be accompanied by a demonstration of the principal involved

  • Most of the lesson should be hand-on  in order that the kids don't get bored 

We are now developing the following activities that will be used during and after (in the take-home portion) the presentation.

  • A demonstration of spread-spectrum technology, using 4 lengths of garden hose and a rapid-prototyped "jammer".  One child will talk alternately into each of a set of 4 funnels.  The sound will travel through the hose, and then, into the "jammer".  Another child will attempt to jam the sound by lowering a foam baffle into a slot in the tube.  The child will not be able to jam too much of the signal, since the signal keeps moving, and the child has only one foam jammer.  The sound will be heard at the other end by a kid and written down.  It can then be shown that the original message can be re-constructed with relative accuracy.  The same setup will be used again, but only talking through one hose.  This will allow the jammer to jam the entire conversation.

  • A de-coding contest.  The children will break into teams.  A code will be shown and partially explained to them, then they will be turned loose to de-code it.  Which ever team finishes first will be named Supreme Code Breaker. A simple Translation Alpha-alpha or alpha-numeric code will be used, since 6th graders do not have the training in probability needed to solve a more difficult code

  • Other codes will be discussed-the dancing men cipher, a "mesh" or "sieve" cipher, and  code wheel cipher

  • A take-home activity where kids make a code wheel, and other mechanical code mechanisms, such as a spiral cypher

Meeting Information:

        Thursday March 22:
            Discussed:
                -Discussed what we wanted to accomplish with the project
                -Researched different kinds of codes to teach kids
                -Developed Spread-Spectrum demonstration       
           
            To do:
                -Check feasability of different sound transmittors-string, pipe, hose
                -Research more types of fun codes, and think of ways to integrate them into activities

Final Results:

  • The Spread Spectrum Hose assembly proved too hard to make work, especially the jamming capability that we had hoped to make. We also decided that all of our hand-outs were very geared toward sighted children; Blind children would have a hard time playing with our games. So, we made a morse code handout that could be printed in braille.

  • The morse code also allowed us to make a rapid prototyped part; the Telegraph Key shown below was modeled in Ironcad and FDM printed. Electrical contacts and a buzzer were added to the assembly, as well as a light, so that both blind and deaf children would be able to participate equally.

  • Some of out hand-outs are shown below, including our teacher's handout, which describes the way in which this activity should be presented to the class, and some web and book resources that they can give to their kids.

What I Learned:

  • It is really important to set the tone for a group at the begining of the work time-especially for a long term project like this one. I think our group started off a little too relaxed-which is probably mostly my fault-and this made it pretty difficult to do the bigger peices of the project toward the end.

  • I also learned that the segmentation of the work is infinitely important. There is no way we could have gotten done with all of the peices of this project if we had to meet for every one.
  • I think that one of the most important things I learned was that if your group is not motivated to do a project, it will not get done. This makes a positive attitude and jubilliant spirit two of the most important work skills for a good team environment.