New Blog Features

Hey Everyone -

Using the free tracking software from Google Analytics we have been monitoring the traffic on our blog since its inception at the start of the project. Using this data we have been able to watch as visitors rushed to our site after seeing us on the news or reading about us on the paper and now that we have reached over 250 visitors to our site we are happy to offer a new way to keep up on whats going on with the Saratoga Springs High School InvenTeam.

As you will notice if you scroll down the page we now have two new features. Google users can now add a feed to their iGoogle Home Page where they can get up to the minute updates through our posts or if your feeling really adventurous you can even sign up for our e-mail feed which will e-mail you with every new blog post. All of these new services and more to come are offered for free from FeedBurner, a media distribution and audience engagement service which was recently purchased by Google.

Using products such as those listed above to inform our audience as well as communicate within our group are just some of the awesome new experiences the InvenTeam Project is allowing us to do. Through this project we have been exposed to tons of awesome new technologies that we will with no doubt use in our post-graduate future. Through this grant we are lucky enough to have the opportunity to use these cool technologies today.

Thanks -
Elliott

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First Visit with Leigh Estabrooks

Today we had our first visit from MIT. Leigh Estabrooks, a grant officer for the Lemelson-MIT Program's InvenTeams came to class to check in on our progress and update us on how the InvenTeam process works. After reviewing Ms. Estabrooks' PowerPoint presentation on the InvenTeam as a whole, each group leader from our three inter-project research groups presented a progress report for their individual groups.

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Web Site

I invite you to take a look at our web site:

SaratogaEDD.googlepages.com

The site features information about our project, an overview of Saratoga Springs High School's Project Lead the Way program, and projects previously completed in the Engineering Design and Development class. Check back for updates as our project continues.

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In The News: Saratogian Article

Grant Enables Invention Project

By Ann Marie French, The Saratogian
10/31/2007

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Some seniors at Saratoga Springs High School have been given an opportunity to develop an invention that could change the way people plant gardens and crops on both a local and global level. The group, Saratoga Springs InvenTeam, is made up of 14 seniors enrolled in Michael Gallagher's Engineering, Design and Development course. They were recently awarded a Lemelson-MIT grant which will provide up to $10,000 in funding to develop a device which will evaluate soil and match it against a database to provide a list of the plants and flowers which are most likely to successfully grow in it."Rather than you changing the garden environment to suit the plants, you find the perfect plants for your environment," said student Elliott Poppel who is serving as the project director. Poppel and his peers, in compliance with grant requirements, will be responsible for developing the device over the next eight months and presenting it in the spring at the InvenTeam Odyssey at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thousands are expected to attend the event, which will be part of the larger Lemelson-MIT Program's Eureka-Fest. "I just think this is so exciting," said Juliana Wakeman, one of only two girls on the team. "The fact that we have these opportunities at the high school level is exciting." With her best subject being math and her father an engineer, Wakeman's interest in the topic is not surprising. She took the required half year of technology in middle school like the rest of her peers. Those classes piqued her interest and when she moved on to high school she looked for additional opportunities with the technology department. "All the teachers are great," she said. "Mr. Gallagher will never tell you you can't do something. He may tell you how difficult it might be, but he let's us know the sky is the limit and encourages us the whole way." Wakeman, who expects to study aeronautical and astronautical engineering in college, serves as leader for one of three research groups within the larger group. She said one of her jobs is to simply keep others on task and focused on the research. "Everyone gets an equal opportunity," she said. "Everyone gets to take ownership of the project." That teamwork and level of communication rank high on Poppel's interest in the group.Unlike most of the other group members, Poppel views his involvement as great training for business management. "This gives me real work experience in helping me learn how to communicate with people," he said. Gallagher said the team members are committed to the project, which requires them to not only work on it during the scheduled class, but also several days each week after school for a few hours at a time. Although the course typically facilitates smaller projects in small group settings, this year's project would not have been possible without the grant said Gallagher. "Without the money it's hard to be innovative and creative," he said. For her part, Wakeman said she is working on encouraging an increased awareness at the middle school level about the high school technology program and its involvement with Project Lead the Way. She and several other students will be speaking to middle school students later this year.The team has been keeping a blog which includes a video they submitted as part of their application package. The blog can be accessed by logging on to http://saratogainveteam.blogspot.com.

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In the News: An Article at CNet News

I was wandering around the internet today and guess what I found. An article about the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams Program on the CNet News Web-Site. It does not specifically mention our team but as you will see we are mentioned in the comments. Hopefully this article will bring world-wide attention to the InvenTeams as well as world-wide attention to our group. Check it out.

- Elliott

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Tom White's Enlightening Visit

This Wednesday, Tom White visited our Inventeam group in order to give us a basic preview of LabVIEW's capabilities. It was very enlightening!
First, Mr. White showed us a video of a LabVIEW-powered robot that, with feedback, could sustain a bipedal walking motion; it did so by obtaining and analyzing data from accelerometers in real time. We then discussed LabVIEW's ability to create logic circuits and integrate with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This verified LabVIEW's potential as a very powerful software package.
He then showed us a piece of hardware named sensorDAQ that serves as a "middle-man" between sensors and a computer. This piece of hardware will serve as a great asset in our project, allowing us to either use sensors that have already been certified by Vernier or convert our own sensors into a recognizeable voltage. We are currently researching other DAQ hardware, and Tom White has certainly led us in the right direction.

-Duncan

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