Tincan - Technologies at Play!

Welcome

You know what they say - the one thing that never changes is change itself. We've had more changes at Tincan in the past few months. Earlier this year, Justin Marquis, who was co-director, left Tincan to pursue other interests. Tara Neumann became Tincan's sole director. To help out, former Executive Director Karen Michaelson (now Senior Researcher) stayed on to assist in the transition. There will be a few other changes in the next few months as Tincan settles down to a new organizational framework. In the meantime, we welcomed Ryan Arneson as our new graphic artist. He'll be working on the completion of the World of Jobcraft game, as well as helping to update our web site and taking on the many other projects that get generated as Tincan continues to expand its offerings. And don't forget we always appreciate your donations

Minecraft Overnighter Generates Fun and Learning

Last December, Tincan hosted an overnight Minecraft marathon for middle school students. They played for 12 hours and were still going strong when their parents came to pick them up the next morning.

Tincan installed a number of mods to Minecraft, a video game that is engaging and also used in many educational settings. Some of the mods allowed the generation of electricity to power machines, while others added teleportation and parallel worlds. This added both magic and technology to the base functionality of the game. During the night students as well as staff broke off into teams of 2-4 players and worked in units that eventually began trading with each other, renting each other's machines and generally building a simple society. At one point a group decided that they wanted to raid some other groups' bases and see what kind of materials and machines they could steal, which led to some of the other groups forming a coalition to retrieve the ill-gotten goods as well as a trade embargo against the offenders. Thus the night not only included the technical aspects of the game, but also led to players learning to collaborate to achieve results.

This was such a successful event with everyone involved enjoying it and many participants asking when the next one will be held. So we held one on March 29 at the beginning of spring break. We'll report on that overnighter and other spring break activities in the next newsletter.

Film Production Work Experience Could Lead to a Career

As part of Tincan's Microsoft-funded workforce development program, a new in-housing training paid work experience in video production has begun. All of the trainings and skill building takes place in Tincan's Film Production Studio where participants learn hands on with professional video production equipment. The first six participants have just completed their training, which was a paid work experience. Participants learned the pre-production process of brainstorming and script writing to tell a story, had hands on experience with cameras, lights, and sound, and worked with professional editing software to shape their final project. They worked in groups to learn the skills of collaboration and teamwork. The work experience helps young adults develop new job readiness skills, have current work experience on their resume and ultimately increase their employability to achieve permanent employment. In addition to their own video, the group also made promotional videos for two small businesses to provide experience in working with a client and meeting their requirements.

Science Reporters Get Hands-On Experience

As a part of Tincan's Science Journalism Pathways project, middle school girls take controversial, local, science news issues, dissect them, and spend a year after school learning about both sides of the issue as they create a film reporting on what they learned. ,As part of the project, Tincan's Science Education Coordinator, Michelle Grove, spends time with each club implementing hands-on science activities to help students grasp the vocabulary and concepts in their stories in a more meaningful way.

"It was hard to imagine [the DNA modification] when it was just an idea. It's too small to see! Now I get it," said one Bowdish Middle School student last week. The club had just performed a simulation of genetic engineering to learn more about their topic: genetically modified foods. In support of their topic, Bowdish also carried out a DNA fingerprinting lab. Sacajawea Middle School did the same lab, but with a means to a different end: to learn about the process of the gel electrophoresis and DNA fingerprinting needed in the development of vaccines. Sacajawea's topic: the local whooping cough outbreak and the controversy surrounding vaccination.

Medical Lake Middle School Science Reporters took their simulation to a much larger scale, involving their entire 6th grade. Their topic-dam removal and salmon mitigation-lead them to run through a Project WILD simulation of the salmon's life cycle, including all the dangers of trying to navigate a river system. Students were bears, fishermen, young salmon, etc.-and they used the simulation to demonstrate the complexity of the issue to their peers.

With a less biology-related topic, Lakeside Middle School chose to investigate fracking this year. To learn the vocabulary they needed to be able to understand and describe the process, they performed a hands-on experiment in solubility and will be adding to their hands-on experiences with a field trip to Mobius Science Center. While Lakeside explores Spokane's local science center, the other four groups will be traveling to Washington State University again this year to experience a variety of hands-on science, and find more out about STEM careers.

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