National Tour- Virginia to Nebraska and Then Home
SparkFun Education's National Tour traveled from Virginia, down through Florida, up to Nebraska, back down to Arkansas and then home to Colorado, teaching microcontroller technology all the while. Mini Coopers, Open Source Hardware, LEDs, John B., flamethrowers and balance bikes.... Oh my!
From October 7th to November 11th SparkFun's RV rolled through the "Southern" portion of our National Tour. I'll bet you guys didn't realize that Nebraska was in the South, did you? Ok, I'll admit, I tacked on a couple other stops in order to wrap up the National Tour and get everyone the workshops on (or as close as possible) the dates they chose. Please save your comments about the Traveling Salesman Problem, I heard plenty of them on the road.
This leg of the Tour looked a little different than my other Tour legs. For one thing it lasted six weeks, had two different crews, ended in Colorado and we had a guest at the very beginning! When my crew and I touched down in Washington Dulles Airport we met up with my buddy, Solomon King, from Uganda. Solomon and I had previously taught a bunch of workshops together and he was due some vacation time so we worked out a way he could hang out with us Funions for a couple of days before he headed down to Texas. After collecting various bags we wandered outside and waited for Jeff and his crew to show up with the RV so we could hand off keys, give high fives and head out towards our first workshop.
The cast of character minus the driver (he's taking the picture)
Our first workshop was a collaboration with the University of Virginia Curry School of Education at the Laboratory School for Advanced Manufacturing. Later that day we got a chance to tour the University of Virginia’s Center for Technology and Teacher Education and see what they are up to. We were very impressed with their cross pollination of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, material science and art. The various guitars and basses strewn about the lab were a testament to the combination of logic and creativity.
Continue reading about our journey on the Learn.SparkFun.com Blog!
"we SparkFunions got to hear about the 6 foot chaotic water wheel Nathan and his buddy built in their dorm room; complete with 55 gallons of water" Hey, hey, HEY!! We want to hear (and see) all about that!!!
Nebraska is more of a Midwest state, we're right next to Colorado
Ya, Colorado's actually more down south than we are.