After so many delays and scrubbed launches the High Hopes Project balloon successfully launched at (and in) Lake Tahoe on Wednesday, June 3, 2015, at about 8:40 AM from DL Bliss State Park in California.                         The balloon payloads included 5 GoPro cameras (3 shooting video and 2 shooting stills), a student designed payload that contained a reel system that would reel the 2…

Um, it’s not the third graders that are decomposing … it’s the experiment they are performing: The “High Hopes Project” got it’s name originally when we brainstormed the idea to have students compose their high hopes for their education, community and the world, and then actually send their “High Hopes” up really high (30,500 meters, 100,000 feet). Eventually we decided to release the “hopes” so they could filter down to the ground, decay and become one with the Earth. One concern has always been that…

I spent the whole day at Cottonwood Elementary School in Fernley, Nevada, today meeting with the teachers in the blog class I’m teaching there, and then every grade level of students in the school (K-4) to explain their role in the High Hopes Project. It was great working with students again (it always is).   Remember, everyone can participate in this project from anywhere in the world. Your students can tackle the various science, engineering and math problems we’ve already posted, and then the creative…

Arduinos will be utilized in, at the very least, two of the payloads students are designing and building to do everything from releasing the High Hopes of the world – to monitoring solar energy output and more. So before the Sparks Middle School students that are designing how to open the High Hopes payload their colleagues at Sparks High School are designing, they have to know what Arduinos are and how to program them. We delivered 6 copies of Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Project Book: Super-Simple Arduino, a couple…

We have a math problem we need help solving. And the first problem we need help with is what is the exact problem we need to solve. We want to figure out the average speed our balloon travels on its way up to about 30,500 meters or 100,000 feet, either in Kilometers Per Hour (KPH) or Miles Per Hour (MPH). What data do we need to collect and share so you (and we) can solve this problem? Oh, and there is no speedometer on the…