Last Wednesday, I travelled with several members of the Bridging the Digital Divide research team to the community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, located on the Labrador coast about thirty-five-minute flight north-east of Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The community lead numerous research projects that span health and environment and more, and I’ve been fortunate to work with and learn from them for the past number of years.
With seven days to work, our plan was to get as much development and testing of tools completed so that we could eventually begin measuring connectivity in the community in several different ways1. For example, Nic Durish, MSc student in the School of Computer Science, has been working on setting up a series of Raspberry Pis loaded with scripts to collect internet speed and bandwidth measurements on a twenty-minute cycle. These will then be uploaded to the cloud for pattern analysis at a later date.
Dr. Jason Ersnt has been testing and updating an Android app that can be used to measure the different types of signals (BlueTooth, WiFi, and WiFi Direct) and their strengths – something that will be important for measuring the potential of a wireless mobile mesh network in a given community. And Frazer Seymour, who will likely begin his graduate work in the School of Computer Science this fall, has spent much of his time working on the underlying code for the mobile wireless mesh network itself.
In addition to this work, we had planned to run a couple of open houses, and a visit to Northern Lights Academy to speak with the kids about Computer Science and STEM in general. While we had to cancel the open houses because of illness, Nic, Jason, and Frazer were, fortunately, able to spend several hours with the kids on Tuesday morning.
The team began by chatting with the students in Ms. Morris’ tech class on what it means to be a computer scientist. Often, I find, high school students assume that Computer Science is nothing more than programming. While this is indeed one side of being a computer scientist, it seems to me that it often overshadows the people and problem-solving sides that make Computer Science more than just endless lines of code.
Following this, Nic spent some time with the class introducing them to hardware, and in particular working with micro-controllers. After learning about electrical components (e.g. resistors, capacitors, transistors), sensors (e.g. accelerometers, microphones, potentiometers), and peripherals such as motors and LEDs, students were given the opportunity to experiment with Micro:bits. They spent time building digital dice, a digital compass, and a digital music box. The class also had the opportunity to learn from Frazer how websites are accessed through the internet, and to see some examples of how dynamic websites can be built using Python and the Flask framework.
When class ended, Nic, Jason, and Frazer then met with the kindergarten class for a sing-a-long and jam session. Of course, this soon spread and before long the entire school was gathered in the halls singing along with the team. Judging by the posts on social media, I think the day was a success.
A huge thanks to the Northern Lights Academy Principal, Ms. Sherry Maher, and the teachers (especially Ms. Chelsea Morris) for inviting us into your classrooms and hallways. It was a privilege to meet the students and share our passion for science and tech with them. Hopefully, they enjoyed it as much as we did. We can’t wait to visit again!
1 Sadly, I have accomplished nothing since I spent the bulk of the week in bed sick. Cover photo courtesy of Nic Durish.
Dr. Daniel Gillis (he/him) 🏳️🌈 