Wear and tear is one of the things built into our workbenches. Students will cut without mats, scraping-up hot glue damages the work surfaces. In other words: School happens. So the tops of our workbenches are sacrificial. Every year or two, we rip them off (they're attached with a minimum of silicone glue) and replace them with new tops.
Old bench top about to be replaced. New surface is visible in the rear.
Our original tabletops were a thin white plastic designed to be attached to a wall. But it was so thin, that when the temperature in the room changed, the material warped and made for an uneven work surface. The second version was whiteboard paneling, but the white surface was too thin to withstand day-to-day punishment (see photo above.)
Our current version is fused laminate board, designed for custom cabinets. It's actually donated scrap from a local company, which they generously cut to the exact size for us. As of this writing, it's been in use for five months and is standing up very well.
We rely a great deal on the kindness of strangers. Sort-of strangers, actually. Much of our material is donated by our families or by businesses with ties to our staff and others. We were recently gifted with three gently used hot glue guns. The problem was that they were switchable between low temperature (105C) and high temperature (165C.) While 105C is hot enough to get your attention and even cause tears in a student, the burns are typically minor and painless after less than an hour. High-temp hot glue guns can quickly cause serious burns and scarring if not treated quickly.
So I broke them. Well, not exactly broke. I disabled the temperature switch after setting it to low temperature by putting a drop of hot glue into it.
Thank you, strangers. (The stranger in this case was Mrs. Mark, who finally decided to part with our in-home elementary arts and crafts tools. Our youngest kids are now in college.)
Last Spring, our campus became a construction site. Portable classrooms were trucked in, regular classrooms were emptied, concrete broken up and poured, all while school continued. Our administration building, including the staff' lounge, was closed down with the main office moving into a portable. This meant that CREATE would be temporarily repurposed as a combination of the staff lunch room, copy room and, for good measure, we moved the staff mailboxes in. All of the makerspace stuff was packed into boxes and stored.
When the students returned in August, there was a lot of residual campus makerspace culture that had lacked a central place of expression. I constantly fielded questions from frustrated makers who wanted to know when CREATE would reopen.
But our maker culture has more momentum than anything that could be overcome by the temporary closure of CREATE. As I've said many times, all of De Vargas is a makerspace. Making continued in classrooms in concert with our Project Based Learning ethos. But, that tinker time itch of free making was still not getting scratched.
On Halloween, that ended...
The storage containers disgorged their contents of boxes marked "Room 8," (CREATE's "real" name.) Over two weeks I unpacked and restored the room to our friendly, comfortable, making environment. I was able to revisit some of our storage and removed almost all of the remaining cabinet doors. The only ones left cover dangerous tools or materials, cleaning supplies, and sink plumbing. Everything else is now wide open with much more in the students' reach.
I just thought I'd post a list of the things that we purchase to keep CREATE moving. These are non-"junk" consumables. Typically purchased, not donated.
Tools can be engaging, making can inspire agency, but all of it needs to support education.
I saw a Lego wall at a friend's Fab Lab. It was a section of square Lego tiles mounted vertically on a wall. Students could build projects or, (and this was cool) marble runs. But a Lego wall isn't just fun. It's a sophisticated educational tool that connects to a variety of education skills across the grade levels. I had to have one.
My high school and college-aged kids Legos were now disused. I could donate them to the project, but we only had one of the 64 7x7-inch Lego tiles needed for the project. A DonorsChoose campaign languished for a while until an anonymous donor swooped in and paid for nearly the whole thing.
Our sister middle school provided a massive plywood substrate upon which to mount the tiles. The whole things easily weighs more than 300 pounds. So make sure your mounting system is substantial. We used an interlocking wooden cleat system that runs the full width of the plywood.
We followed Dana Rendina's excellent plan for How to build a Lego Wall. If you build one, read Dana's page. She will keep you from making some of the most common mistakes.
So now what do we do with it?
I created a brief video showing a simple marble run and a short document describing the wall and listing a number of relevant NGSS and CCSS standards that could be addressed via projects and exercises using it.
Schools resumes in six weeks. There's no doubt that the students will create ways of using this new tool that I cannot imagine.
I implemented Mrs. Dickson's unintended inspiration. If you recall from "Mrs. Dickson's Protein Sprayer," I took a misunderstood phrase and came up with the idea of taking random nouns and verbs to make a prompt to build a physical device. Builders not only have to understand the words they get, but then they would have to build a thing that logically tied-into those words.
As always, the the students exceed expectations. One selected the words "house" and "deliver." I would have thought that a "house deliverer" would be something that delivered houses. But that is not what she thought. Her house deliverer was a house that delivered things.
The next step is going to be making a story, in any form, based upon the thing they build.
Here's a cool Python tool to play around with. Change the variables and press the play button. If you mess-up, click on the three horizontal lines and select Reset.
After a while you just run out of room for memorabilia. I know that I cannot keep every project. Some of them contain expensive components that have to be re-used. Others are simply too big or too fragile. Still others are team efforts and, lets' face it, you can't win 'em all.
But recording and sharing projects is an important part of the design cycle and of the Maker ethos.
I recently completed a project at the Design, Do, Discover Conference in Palo Alto, Calif. I worked with a tremendous team of educators on a sound-visualization project based on Charlotte's Web. The project used farm-animal audio files, triggered by a Scratch-controlled Makey Makey along with a plastic membrane suspended over a speaker causing sugar to visibly vibrate with each sound. The trigger buttons were cartoon animals including the actual sound waveform, laser-engraved into plywood. This allowed users to also feel a representation of the sound.
I shot video and still images all along the design and construction process.
After the project was disassembled and the Makey Makey and speaker returned to the Bourn Lab at host Castilleja School, I grabbed the part of the project that I worked the most on: the vibrating membrane that showed sugar moving in concert with the animal sounds.
What I didn't think about was that the interior temperature of my car exceeded the point where the cup, under pressure of electrical tape and a rubber band, could hold its structural integrity.
Bear with me on this. I promise that I'll get to a very cool tinker-time tool.
During the last school year, CREATE shared duties as our school's art room, so I had a lot of contact with our fabulous art teacher, Mrs. Dickson. One day, she and I were talking and she made reference to a "protein sprayer." Since Mrs. Dickson grew up in her native Japan, and "protein sprayer" was such an unusual reference, after I stopped my silly giggling, I asked her to repeat herself. As it turned out, she had said "pro tennis player,' which actually did make contextual sense. And it got me thinking...
What was a protein sprayer? What if somebody tried to build one? What if students were given random nouns and verbs and asked to build the object suggested by that combination?
It was just an afterschool 1st-grade tinker time session. But they came rushing in with a goal. It was a classmate's birthday and they were making a "cake." Their sense of mission was breathtaking. They were a well-oiled project management team.
They didn't have time to finish the cake, so they took the components away with them. I do know that they left just a bit more practiced in collaborating, solving problems and with more confidence in themselves.
It started with a plan to make a "rattle." Rather than accept a plan to throw some hard stuff into a bottle and call it done. I asked, "what kind of rattle?" "What will it sound like?" The student said, offhandedly, ""Like a rattlesnake." I pressed him to identify what a real rattlesnake sounded like so he could gauge the effectiveness of his build. We used my laptop to search for rattlesnake sounds.
After choosing a sound he liked, he then chose just the right mix of rice and beans to match the recording.
Of course, his buddy's unopened box of Nerds candy also sounded exactly right.
An exploration of non-Newtonian fluids with cornstarch and just the right amount of water. When it's mixed just right, it will pour, but if it is subjected to a sudden pressure, it will act like a solid. Plus it feels really good!
It's interesting to see the students gain knowledge and confidence. They've got measuring down and now I've introduced laying out multiple cuts on a single piece of wood to minimize waste. I suggested that they measure the stock in both directions to see if that made any difference in how many finished pieces they could get out of it.
They've independently developed a system of cooperative production and quality control. An eraser is a favored tool. They now understand the level of precision required in what they're doing.
When an afterschool tinker time regular asked me if we had a caulking gun, I didn't now how to answer. Nothing we had done in CREATE called for that sort of tool. Besides, how would a fifth grader even know about caulking guns?
I did have one squirreled away from the workbench construction in 2014 and I told her we did. It was the end of the session and she went home before I was able to ask her why she wanted it.
She arrived for the next session carrying a brown shopping bag. Inside was a ziplock bag, a cake decorating tip and a cartridge of white silicone. I handed her the caulking gun and showed her how to use it.
The cartridge had been previously opened and the tip was irretrievably clogged. But a couple of quick slices with a box cutter exposed the gooey white insides. Using a couple of popsicle sticks, she gooped the silicone into the bag, squished it down toward the decorating tip and proceeded to create permanent cake decoration.
The most satisfying events in CREATE are those that originate from the students without prompting from me. This student created her project in her mind and then proceeded to meet each challenge and eliminate each obstacle. It doesn't get much better for any educator.
If the kinder and 1st graders are building leprechaun traps, it must be St. Patrick's Day. But in CREATE, it's analyze, plan, build, and modify. Even the youngest students follow the design cycle.
As much as we concentrate on tape, glue and batteries, none of these are necessary for a makerspace. 3-D printers are what we might show-off to visitors, but ours is easily the least used item in CREATE. I'm infamous in my family for turning coffeeshop tables into workshops with salt shakers, sugar packets and straws. A makerspace is a creature of imagination.
A catered-space makerspace
Recently, we were asked to demonstrate what we're doing in CREATE at our district's first State of the District presentation. Out of the two-hour ceremony, we were allotted 30 minutes. We brought 30 "design challenge boxes" packed with tape, scissors, box cutters and more, two two-student video crews and five members of our Mouse Squad to show the local movers and shakers how it's done. Oh yes, and a first-grader to serve as our emcee.
The Design Challenge boxes, stacked and ready to go. (Note the blue tape Sphero track on the floor.)
As soon as the boxes hit the tables, the energy in the room skyrocketed. The attendees went from listening to speeches to building "dogbone" shooters on their linen-covered tables.
I could see that he wasn't participating with his group. They were gathered around the final assembly of their cardboard cubby prototype (see Cubbies: From Need To Knowledge Part I.) They were fitting scale-model shelves into scale-model uprights. He was hunched over what looked like a tiny piece of scrap cardboard.
Without questioning his seeming self-imposed isolation, I asked him what he was working on. Silently, he showed me the most amazing thing. A tiny car, perhaps two inches long, with a tiny steering wheel, impossibly tiny foot pedals and working doors with millimeter-sized handles.
I oohed and ahhed and asked him about it. What I did not do was question his choices. There was no way to know for sure what he was thinking without embarrassing him in front of his group. Perhaps he felt that he didn't fit-in as the only boy in his group. Perhaps he was simply bored with the prototyping process. But I could be sure of one thing. What he did not feel was disapproved of.
One of the activities we offer in CREATE is deconstructing decommissioned technology such as old computers, printers or other items that might be donated to us. The only rule is that students disassemble – not destroy. The object is for them to observe and analyze the item, try to figure out how it was assembled and then select the appropriate tool for disassembly. When they first experience this, often their choice is the biggest hammer they can find. That's when they start learning about different screw heads, Torx drivers, torque and analytical thinking.
"...the biggest hammer they can find."
The usual end result is a pile of components and chassis that are stripped bare and some recovered motors and magnets. But sometimes, the end result is something else entirely.
What just happened?
The sound from outside the door was reminiscent of street scenes from Santa Cruz or from Haight Ashbury in the 1960s. Instead, it was technology repurposed in ways never intended by their manufacturers. Leave it to our kids to put the A in STEAM.
I've been trying to push my advanced 4th-grade 3-D design student (See 3-D Prodigy: A good problem) to up his game. His current challenge is to design something in multiple parts and assemble after printing.
His latest design is a satellite with a separate ball-pin piece that fits into a hole on the body of the spacecraft. I suspect that he made the hole exactly the same size as the pin, which will make it difficult or impossible to insert the pin. The design also has a lot of overhang on fragile pieces, which will make it difficult to remove the printing support.
The design and the toolpath visualization, including the overhang supports.
After printing it, I blue-taped the piece to a hard-copy assignment: Assignment: Remove the supports and assemble the object. Return the assembled object and report to me about how well the assembly worked. Be prepared to answer the following question:
How could the object be improved? My goal is to open his consciousness to the limitations of the medium (you can't print on air) and the material (it's difficult to remove supports from tiny parts) and to the math of fitting parts together. I hope that this will motivate him to be more analytical and bring his design chops to the next level.
