On Saturday, we had our first Central Squared Challenge in collaboration with The Community Art Center and supported by Microsoft. The challenge was an interactive and team-based technology design competition that involved high school students from Area 4 in Cambridge and winners from around the world of the “Do It Your Damn Self!!” National Youth Video and Film Festival. During the challenge, teams learned about, and worked hands on with, this year’s featured technology, the Microsoft Kinect, to solve an important community issue of their choice. Participants got a taste of various NuVu projects that put sensor technology to use in an imaginative way, explored and played with the Kinect, and then put their brains together to design a product that uses sensor technology to solve an important issue.

The projects included sensor-based devices for the blind, emergency medical bracelets, and anti-bullying devices. All teams presented their designs at the end of the challenge to a panel of judges and peers who then chose a winner. The Pink Team won the challenge having the most creative, implementable and practical idea which was then showcased at the DIYDS!! Premiere Screening which was held at the Microsoft New England R&D Center later that evening. The five winners of the challenge got Xbox 360 consoles with games and Kinects!

Getting to know how sensors work by playing some games powered by the Kinect

Teams brainstorming ideas for their sensor-based projects

Students filming their commercials for their designed products

The whole group at the end of the challenge

We had our biggest exhibit this past Saturday for the Cambridge Science Festival. Around 400 people attended the exhibit, including many kids who had tons of energy and were jumping around the space playing with all the interactive toys, games and gadgets our students had produced. It was great to see how the young kids engaged with the projects. Overall it was an action-packed Saturday afternoon of showcasing food robots, synesthesia-inspired projects, an interactive body-painting screen and much more.

Kids playing with the iMat – an interactive soccer and drawing game

A boy tests out the Personal Painter – a Kinect-based live digital painter

Kids playing with Catch Me-bot!

Father and son examining the robotic Wall Printer

A boy inspired by the shifting rays of colors drawn based on users’ movements in the iMat game

A girl testing the Personal Painter

On display is the Plant-bot, a mobile light-following plant with a water trailer

NuVu invites you to our Winter 2012 Exhibit that will be held at our new space in Cambridge. The event will showcase students’ projects from the Winter “BRAIN” trimester. Come listen to the sound of your brain, play games with your brain, test our products that will help you focus, and witness the debut of our viral video.

On display will be a mind pod, games, interactive installations, a virtual puppet show, a cute robot with a mind of its own, a robotic tripod, a plant holder that looks for the most light, a smart toilet seat, and many more.
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Fair Trade has been a growing social movement involving individuals, growers, organizations and companies worldwide based on a diverse set of interests and aims. Within this complex landscape, the primary aim is to help producers in developing countries make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. At the Fair Trade Boston Symposium taking place this Saturday, October 15, 2011 at MIT, students from NuVu Studio will be interviewing producers, speakers, and organizational and company leaders to highlight the different voices in this rich movement. Students will showcase these varied perspectives in a single film that will serve as en educational outreach piece to a broader audience and will include the past, current and future story of Fair Trade.

Here is more info on the Fair Trade Boston Symposium: Read the rest of this entry »

During a recent Faculty Workshop we organized at Beaver Country Day, we asked the question, “How would you assess your students if there were no grades?” We organized Beaver teachers into six groups to think about how their classrooms and studios would be different and how they would assess or evaluate their students given this grade-free environment. Teachers had varied responses and came up with propositions from combined student-teacher assessment, to an ongoing, online student-teacher matrix of skills/content/process/product assessment, to self-reflection audio/video/writing journals, to road tests, to progress in learning methods. Read the rest of this entry »

The students put the newly acquired robotic arm to good use during our Spring 2011 Exhibit. NuVu students Mark and Noah transformed the Arm into a receptionist who hands out brochures to Exhibit guests. Mark and Noah spent a lot of time designing the Arm’s choreography, so the movement appears fluid and responsive to the guest’s arrival. The Arm is equipped with a proximity sensor which triggers a sequence of coordinated movements when a guest approaches it: The robotic receptionist picks up a brochure and hands it to the guest, and as the guest takes the brochure, the Arm waves “good-bye”!

Our Spring student, Emmy Kuperschmid, did a fantastic job creating this poster for our Spring 2011 Exhibit. She used her freshly developed cartooning skills learned from Raghava KK’s Blueprint studio to make a collage of all the Spring NuVu students. The poster got much attention at the Exhibit and showcased Emmy’s versatile abilities to create an iconic artistic piece for the Exhibit introduction.

NuVu Studio has been selected to participate in Microsoft’s U.S. Innovative Education Forum taking place in July in Redmond, WA. We will be presenting our creative technology projects alongside other schools’ projects from around the US. Here’s a blurb from the press release sent out by Microsoft on June 6, 2011 announcing the finalists:

Microsoft Announces Second-Round Finalists for U.S. Innovative Education Forum

One hundred of the nation’s top educators will compete to represent the U.S. at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in November.

REDMOND, Wash. — June 8, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the selection of 72 additional educators to attend the 2011 Microsoft U.S. Innovative Education Forum (IEF). These second-round finalists will join the previously announced finalists traveling to the Microsoft campus in Redmond in July to showcase the creative ways they are using technology in the classroom. This year, Microsoft Partners in Learning saw a record number of submissions from teachers transforming their classroom curriculum using technology. Read the rest of this entry »

NuVu invites you to our Spring Exhibit at Beaver Country Day School. The event will showcase student projects from the “Design for Development” Spring trimester. Come explore students’ projects that addressed various challenges and opportunities facing communities all around the world, such as in Kenya, Nevis, India, El Salvador and Malawi.

On display will be low-cost products, documentary films, an energy computer, and much more. Make smoothies with the pedal-powered blender, test out the pedal-powered water filtration system, and perhaps wash your clothes!
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Things have been quite busy the past few weeks preparing for our winter exhibit. Some students wanted to improve older projects and others decided to work on new projects rather than improve on older ones. Another group has been creating a film about the students’ experience at NuVu this winter. Some also have been working on the dancing robots stage. So much creativity!!!!!!!!


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