In the glow of the high tech computer lab, I watched as Henry Swan fiddled with a diode that was giving him trouble. As he pushed it into the appropriate slot his device fulfilled its function and emitted a noise that lasted for a few seconds. “It is based on Han Solo’s blaster,” he told me. He had been working on this device diligently for the past few hours and was one of many students who was working and learning together as a part of the Microcontrollers strand at GIV. The Governor’s Institute of Vermont sponsors Winter Weekends every February. Winter Weekends feature five separate “strands,” or areas of interest, each weekend. They range from Youth Leadership and Activism to Biological Illustration and Neuroscience.

Two students diligently working on their project.

(photo credit: Peter North)

This Winter Weekend is located on the beautiful Goddard College campus in Plainfield, Vermont. The rolling hills and dense forests make you feel like you are in the middle of the Green Mountains. The campus features brightly colored dorms and a brick dining hall that contrast with the muddy ground and bare trees. The lab that the students are working in is tucked away inside the main building, away from the cold and snow.

Winter GIV Goddard College campus.

(photo credit: Liam Morton)

Inside the lab, students are learning how to use a system called Arduino. There is a mix of experience levels as some people had almost no experience and others that are almost pros. Arduino is an open-source platform that combines hardware and software. Perhaps the most important component is the board itself. The boards are very customizable and can perform many functions such as reading inputs, activating sensors or turning on an LED. In order to get the board to complete these tasks, orders are sent via a programing language called IDE. Most importantly there is a massive community that has resulted in an incredible amount of databases and accessible knowledge that can help give you inspiration and guide you past stuck points.

 A student working on his project.

(photo credit: Aiden Pricer-Coan)

With this easy-to-use equipment and support system, the students created many very interesting projects, including multiple crazy contraptions. From a controllable-seven-segment display to an RFID scanner lock system. Others took a more playful approach and added LEDs, motors, and speakers, to create a cacophony of noise, light, and movement. The flexibility to create almost anything lead to no two students creating the same thing.

Two students collaborating.

(photo credit: Liam Morton)

The skills and techniques that the students learned in this strand will be with them for the rest of their life. When asked what he will do with the information he learned in this strand, Issac Alcide said that he would,  “Apply it to my resumé and apply it to my career,” When asked about how the institute had impacted her Julia Light said, “I personally got a different sense of coding through the microcontrollers strand.” Here at the Governor’s Institute Winter Weekend students are being taught valuable skills that they can apply to their professional aspirations or hobbies later on in life.