[TriEmbed] Middle school presentation

[Pete Soper]

If we have a theme for the February meeting I've forgotten it. Why don't 
we take a crack at this topic? Up to this point, as a group, we've been 
mostly focused on our own personal interests and/or the interests of 
other meeting attendees (and I count Brian in this, although his 
interests have been aimed at creating things and teaching children at 
his museum in Wilson). It might be fun to spend some energy exploring 
what might be of interest "out there", or specifically to a batch of 
children.

I would like to point out there's a huge difference between activities 
appropriate and effective for different age groups. I think it's equally 
true that kids can totally amaze and go far beyond what one might expect 
and it's deeply frustrating to put something in front of them that's 
either completely over their heads or too simple to maintain there 
interest for more than 20 seconds. I'd also like to make a pitch for the 
"show them just enough to get started and then stand back and 
watch/help" approach vs "showing/lecturing" something. (And on this 
topic, we should at some point explore changes that might attract more 
NCSU students, while reminding us that we meet at NCSU for a place to 
meet, not with explicit obligations to any particular group of attendees.)

-Pete
PS  I haven't forgotten the video from this month's meeting, but I 
messed up the first couple of HandBrake processing steps and haven't 
been able to get back to that yet.