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Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:
Flickr user Rumtopf built this web-controlled car launcher to allow visitors to his family’s to launch a toy car out of a closet for their son to play with. I like the simple design, which allows up to five cars to be launched using a single motor and light sensor. You can visit their website to launch a car yourself (only during regular toddler business hours). Looks like a fun project!
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This product by Löopa is called the “gyro-bowl,” in spite of the fact that, since it does not exploit conservation of angular momentum, there’s really nothing “gyroscopic” about it. I haven’t purchased, used, been given, been paid to endorse, or otherwise had any first-hand experience of this product, but the idea is certainly clever.
[Thanks, Billy Baque!]
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Join the MAKE team along with Pixar and TechShop for the Young Makers program Saturday (2/27) from 11am to 3pm at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA.
Our “Meet the Makers” session will begin at 11 am in the McBean Theatre. Our goal is to explore the work of a variety of makers and gain insight into the maker mindset. I will ask some questions, but we hope kids will have their own questions to ask these makers. This program will feature smart fabrics, soft circuits, and wearables. We’ll see examples of how electronics is literally being woven into clothing and increasingly incorporated into the world of fashion.
Our featured makers are:
Adrian Freed
Adrian Freed is Research Director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) program at Berkeley. He uses smart materials to teach electronics to kids. He will also talk about how conductive fabrics can enable new ways of making music.
(For more, see Adrian Freed’s web page)
Grace Kim
A graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, Grace Kim will talk about construction techniques in wearable technology (as in the garment shown above). Her work has been displayed at the Future Fashion Event, at Viaggio Telecom in Pisa, Italy, and the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) in San Francisco. (For more, see Grace Kim’s NYU Thesis Project)
Daniela Rosner
A Ph.D student at the I-School at Berkeley, Daniela will talk about recent developments of the Spyn project, which now uses a Nexus One mobile phone to capture the stories people associate with handmade objects. Her work was featured in this article [PDF] from CRAFT magazine. (For more, see Daniela Rosner and Spyn Project).
In the Open MAKE session that follows from 12-3pm, we’ll have several hands-on activities on the Exploratorium floor demonstrating “soft” circuits and working with conductive fabric and thread. (We think that these activities are geared toward ages 12 and above but younger kids can participate but might need some additional support from parents.)
As I’ve mentioned previously, the goal of the Young Makers program is to demonstrate to kids different modes of making and encourage them to make things. We also hope the program will develop young makers who exhibit their own work at Maker Faire. Members of the Maker Faire team will also be present. Come by if you have questions about how you, your school or organization can participate in this year’s Maker Faire.
Gather your kids and their friends and join us at the Exploratorium this Saturday.
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Instructables user wramey writes:
This cheap and easy addition to our dining room chairs prevents kids legs from dangling uncomfortably. It won’t get all their wiggles out, but it will help them sit more comfortably… and now that our kids can sit more comfortably facing the table, they get less food in their laps and on the floor and we all enjoy meals more.
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Last Saturday, we had the first Open MAKE day at the Exploratorium as part of the Young Makers program. The day’s program focused on hands-on activities for building circuits.
The program also featured BlinkyBugs and Bristlebots and welcomed their makers, Ken Murphy of Blinkybug.com, and Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman of Evil Mad Scientists Laboratories.
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Michelle Hlubinka, MAKE’s Education Director, sent us this announcement about the upcoming Open MAKE at the SF Exploratorium:
As part of our ongoing quest to encourage more young people to exercise their innate curiosity and creativity by making things, this Saturday, January 30th, we’re kicking off a four-month collaboration with the Exploratorium’s Learning Studio, TechShop, and Disney-Pixar.
Our calendar of upcoming themes and makers at the Exploratorium:
January 30th: Bristlebots & Blinkybugs — Ken Murphy and Windell Oskay & Lenore Edman
February 27th: Wearables & Soft Circuitry — Adrian Freed
March 27th: Make Your Own Kind of Music — Walter Kitundu and Krys Bobrowski
April 24th: Motors & Mechanisms — Brad Prether and Ernie FosseliusEach Saturday we meet follows a simple schedule:
11:00 Dale Dougherty interviews makers in the McBean Theatre
12:30 Featured makers and hands-on making on the museum floor
3:00 Events endIt’s a first experiment in a new program we call Young Makers, in which we intend to create an infrastructure to nurture kids who want to learn by making, beyond what they can do with construction kits. We hope to fulfill a dire need: satisfying a little bit of what shop classes used to do before they, lamentably, started getting booted out of schools. The idea behind Young Makers is to create a community, both on-line and physical, that brings together like-minded kids, adult mentors, and fabrication facilities — those who love to build and to learn by making. The role of the mentors is to help young people find a project vision if they don’t already have one, and then to help them realize that vision. Along the way mentors will expose the underlying math, science, and engineering principles behind the projects, teach tool usage and safety, and collectively all participants — youth and mentors alike — will create a collaborative culture of innovation and experimentation. The Maker Faire becomes the deadline, and offers a stage for the resulting projects to be exhibited and explained. Monthly meetings will be used to build the kind of collaborative culture we feel is crucial to the program. Namely, a culture that embraces failure, encourages cross-disciplinary projects that meld math, science, technology, and art, and a culture that is both open-ended and open-minded.
We feel the Young Makers program distinguishes itself in several ways from other programs such as robotics competitions and science fairs. In particular, there are no winners and losers, and the projects are open-ended and child driven. Moreover, there are very few boundaries — just like the Maker Faire, anything that is cool is fair game.
(Thanks to Tony DeRose of Pixar for the writeup about the program, from which I’ve borrowed liberally.)
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The folks at Sparkle Labs have put up a cute project on their site. It’s a simple LED circuit on a breadboard (built with their Discover Electronics Kit), with some Turkey papercraft attached, to create a Thanksgiving table decoration. This is a great way to get your kids involved in a basic electronics project that becomes part of the holiday festivities (er… for those of you in the States).
Thanksgiving LED Turkey centerpiece project
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My local library picked up on the festive trend of Cardboard Tube Fighting. The Boston Globe covered the preparations:
The group discovered cardboard tube fighting last summer in time to incorporate a bit of it into a presentation on Greek mythology at a reading program party.
The weapons are cylindrical pieces of thick cardboard about 4 feet long. The appeal, explains young-adult librarian Ellen Snoeyenbos: “It’s totally ridiculous.”
As word of mock combat with reliably harmless weaponry spread among the town’s youthful warriors, Snoeyenbos and the Bookmarks seized on the fund-raiser as a chance to exploit their discovery of the fighting fad made popular by YouTube.
Saturday’s event will feature one-on-one tournaments, guild-on-guild skirmishes (up to 10 fighters per team), “and an all-out battle for possession of the Royal Crown,” according to the club.
They’ve gathered hundreds of tubes, and youth of all ages are uparmoring in a pulpy way.
More:
Cardboard Tube Fighting League
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Mark Frauenfelder and Dan Woods got sent this letter about the latest issue of MAKE, Volume 20. We got the sender’s permission to post it here:
Mark and Dan,
This is Jim Kelly, the freelance tech writer in Atlanta. Hope you guys are doing well.
Just wanted to write and tell you how impressed and inspired I am with issue 20 of MAKE magazine. The interview (and foreword) with Adam Savage was extremely fun to read. As a father of a 2.5 year old, I too am anxious to encourage my son to explore, take apart, design, and enjoy the creative process.
Issue 20 was directed at kids, and I think you hit the bullseye, with force behind it. I hope this issue is one of your bestselling ones, and I for one am encouraging parents I know to pick up a copy. I’m also purchasing a few extra copies for some teachers I know.
My son just got done watching me configure my new CNC machine to mill out some fun designs on wood; his eyes could not have opened any wider. I wish all kids could have access to this level of technology and machinery, but unfortunately, our school systems seem to be cutting shop class and art projects and focusing time and money on standardized test-taking skills… how unfortunate.
To bring this all home, I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is such a demand for material/content that encourages our youth that a void has been created and cannot be filled fast enough. MAKE is in a unique spot to develop something that goes a little beyond the Maker Shed and the quarterly magazine. Maybe it’s a subscription-based activity website, with monthly special projects broken down into categories such as “Do It Yourself” (no parents required), “Dad and Me” (or “Mom and Me” – projects with the parents), and more. Maybe it’s a special magazine (like your Halloween special issue) that focuses on even more kid-friendly content. Or maybe a mixture of projects and inspirational interviews (Dean Kamen comes to mind) in a book format.
I’ll wrap this up by saying that I, Jim Kelly, hate the three month wait between issues of MAKE… I read every issue over and over again. I’m starved for this type of content. And I’m an adult – imagine what those kids who have this creative streak inside them must feel? They’re in need of something… not sure what… and maybe you guys can figure out what to offer them. Issue 20 could easily be just the tip of the iceberg.
Take care,
Jim Kelly
Thanks for your thoughts and kind words, Jim. Reaching the educational market, be it home-schooling parents or teachers in grade school and college, is an increasing focus of ours. We see the new Make: Science Room as part of that effort. We also have the Make: Education social network to reach out to educators and and to create a place where they can network with each other. We’ve also been working on a dynamic new project-based program of making and mentoring designed to raise the next generation of makers. We’re developing this with some very innovative, high-profile partners and are very excited about the prospects. Stay tuned — we’ll be making an announcement about this in the next few months and looking for some kids to participate in a pilot program.
We’d also like to point out that there is something to tide maker parents, kids, and educators over between issues of the magazine: this website, Make: Online! Over the past year, we’ve been adding much more original content, regular columns, weekly projects, guest authors, and special programs. And then there are our regular Weekend Project podcasts, and special videos, like Collin Cunningham’s MAKE Presents series, and Marc de Vinck’s how-to and kit build videos. There’s a lot going on here, so we hope you’re getting your daily dose of MAKE from us. If there’s anything else you’d like to see us do here to satisfy your MAKE fix, please let us know. We’re always looking for ways to expand and improve the site.
From the pages of MAKE:
Want to know how to build a hydrogen rocket? How about a laser light show in a lunchbox? Or a simple remote-controlled videocam car? Or maybe you want to go old-school and build a wooden mini sailboat or toy car launcher? All this and tons more, plus revealing photos of Adam Savage’s maker childhood, can all be found in MAKE, Volume 20, “For Kids of All Ages.” Get your individual copy in the Maker Shed, or subscribe now.
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Nice collection for the kiddos…
Happy Halloween! October 31st is one of the best days of the year. Not only do you get to devour candy all day, you also get to be anything while doing it!!! Forget about the thrills and chills, there is no trickery here. This year we are setting out to get you as much candy as possible, so check out these sweet costumes
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