Doing my part for STEM: Demonstrating Agile concepts using fidget spinners

Fidget spinners and Agile

Now agile and fidget spinners are probably words you don't hear regularly in the same sentence. Well, me neither until I was forced to up my game.

Career Talk in 3rd Grade

My son's 3rd grade teacher asked parents come in to talk about their careers to the class. My son Liam raved about this one parent in particular. A neurologist who not only spent about an hour talking cool brain stuff but gave out swag (a brain stress ball) and to top it off, brought tuning forks for the kids to put on their heads!

Well shit! How was I going to beat that? (My husband: "You know it is not a competition, right?" Ignore.)

Liam's teacher asked me about coming in to talk...about writing. Hmmm, writing vs tuning forks? BORING. I opted instead to do my part to promote women in STEM and decided to talk about my other career - as a computer engineer. Maybe I can work in video games in there somewhere! Get the kids excited!

Some parents work in chip production, but noone had spoken about software development, so I thought I'd introduce the idea of agile or iterative development to the class. I got super excited, but when I told Liam and my husband the idea. My husband looked at me like I'd lost my mind AND grew horns and my son had no clue what I was talking about.

Clearly my topic was not going to beat the tuning fork.

How to beat the tuning fork?

I had to figure out some strategy. What could I do to one-up that parent? Well, obviously there was only one answer - fidget spinners.

How could I force a fidget spinner into a conversation about agile? Well, I did my best. My son very helpfully told me that if I wanted to do better than the good doctor, I should get 2 tuning forks they could put on their heads, in addition to fidget spinners.

Yes, well, back to fidget spinners.

Agile concepts using a fidget spinner

I prepared an activity where the class divided into teams and had to create a fidget spinner:

They had a fixed time (15-min sprint) to do it
They could choose to decorate it or not,
They could make a 2-armed spinner or a 3-armed one. (I was desperately trying to get them to think about what makes a fidget spinner a fidget spinner without the words "minimum viable product")
One person was assigned from the team to make those decisions (the product owner) as well as to accept the finished product from the 'builders'. That person had to demo the spinner to the class.

What's needed to make a fidget spinner at home

I did try to use words like "iterative development" and "rapid feedback", "product owner" (this they got excited about because in their minds that person kept the spinner!), but I fear all they heard was "blah, blah, blah, fidget spinner, blah blah, glue, blah, blah, blah, pennies, blah blah, toothpick.

How to make a fidget spinner at home crafts

Finished fidget spinner

Well, at the end, at least they got excited about the activity, some even asked for extras to make their own spinners at home. I've included a picture of the items and my hand-drawn instructions.

I considered this a success even if they have no clue what I actually talked about!

Instructions for home-made fidget spinner

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