Year 1. Session 6. Week 5

Week 5 marked another busy week of Distance Learning at Ascent! As Eagles shattered Core Skills time records, built Rube Goldberg Machines, and continued to work and play hard in PD, the focus began to shift to “finishing strong.”

With just a couple weeks left this session, Eagles powered through their Core Skills goals. By the end of the week, over 15 badges were submitted! They have been using e-mail to offer feedback to each other and supporting their fellow travelers through Squad Meetings on Zoom. This week Squads focused on asking the right questions. They paused at the beginning of the week to make time for questions and answers, addressing any confusion their fellow squad members had.

In the interest of maintaining a strong tribe from a distance, this week the Eagles participated in a virtual Town Hall Meeting. The topic of the day? Participation.

Some Eagles had expressed concern about how to maintain participation over Zoom and how to make sure Eagles were staying up to date on email communication. They agreed to new boundaries for Zoom calls and reminded each other to continue to be engaged online via email and on badge approvals. They also decided that a weekly Town Hall Meeting would help, much like they normally have in the studio. The next one will be the last Wednesday of the session.

In the Rube Goldberg Quest this week, Eagles were challenged to get creative and to stick with it! The discussions this week were focused on creativity, innovation, and persevering through failure. Mid week, Eagles learned about a hero in engineering who took an animated idea and brought it to life: Russell Aldridge and then discussed the following questions:

  • Which is a more impressive accomplishment: imagining and drawing out the original idea or creating the prototype that works in real life? 
  • Which has been the greater challenge for you so far: imagining and drawing out your plans or building the working version? 
  • Are you leaning more on your own creative innovation to create the steps in your machine, or finding inspiration from others the way Russell did? 

During Quest in the middle of the week, Eagles shifted collaboration by using Zoom in small groups. They shared ideas and worked on their Rube Goldbergs with the support of friends on computers in their various work stations.

With dojo Stream this week, the Eagles made their film’s introduction as they work towards finishing this project strong!

Next week marks the end of Session 6! Onward!