Allen’s Car
Here is a great example of how a visitor can really come prepared to MAKESHOP. Allen visits the Museum a lot and although there are lots of things to play with at the Museum he sometimes brings his own toys as well. During this particular visit his toys completely inspired him to create something in MAKSHOP. He wanted to make…
Mobile MAKESHOP: Building Circuit Blocks
When I visited the Children’s Museum of the Ohio Valley for my first site visit there was a day camp at the Museum full of kids from the same school. The kids were used to doing crafts and using materials like glue and tape. I decided to build a bunch of circuit blocks with these kids. I got out most of…
MAKESHOP MAKEover Edition 2: Millvale Community Library
Mobile MAKESHOP is a program that hopes to expand our ideas and teaching practices to outside sites and community partners. One of those partners is the recently opened Millvale Community Library. This space was built from the ground up by the residents of Millvale, a small suburb of Pittsburgh. The library is incredible and is a great community space for…
The Importance of Prompts
MAKESHOP is not just for kids, adults are allowed to have fun too. Every year the Museum hosts an event for the Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. There has always been some kind of building challenge during this event. This year we prompted the groups to build bridges out of recycled materials. The bridges did not…
A Miniature MAKESHOP
We recently explored scale and perspective as a theme in MAKESHOP. One of our activities was to create a tiny version of the MAKESHOP exhibit. I built a small diorama of the room and then let other educators and visitors add to the space. There are some very recognizable objects in MAKESHOP. It was a real challenge building tiny, tiny…
A Month of Tape
The month of September was full of tape. Our newest exhibit, TapeScape was under construction. The structure is made out of a lot of packing tape. You’d be surprised how sturdy the material actually is. It was able to support several grown exhibit technicians at one time. The exhibit is part climbing structure, part art piece. It is a sight to see….
Melt the Night Away
We hosted yet another Adult MAKEnight this October. We offered hand sewing and machine sewing as an activity along with circuit blocks and stop-motion animation. We prompted our patrons to make something for Halloween, but of course everyone was free to make whatever they wanted. The Art Studio also provided a bunch of activities, including silk screening with glow in…
Field Trip: Braddock Library
The Braddock Library is an amazing place. The building is beautiful, the staff is extremely friendly and the patrons are awesome. I was lucky enough to visit the library twice this summer and teach two workshops: one woodworking and one electronics. The woodworking workshop had about twenty kids participate and all of them created something original. One girl simply spent…
Maker Faire 2013
The third Pittsburgh Mini-Maker Faire was held in September here at the Museum, presented with HackPGH. As always, it was a lot of fun. I spent most of my time in MAKESHOP drawing with robots and teaching people how to solder. But I did get a chance to see all of the fun inventions and ideas that the makers were…
Open Source PinBall
Christian built a pinball machine… Well, he built a box with a ramp out of pegboard. The rest of our staff really helped turn it into a full-fledged pinball machine. We encouraged visitors to add their own obstacles, ramps, scoring systems, etc. This open-source pinball machine is my favorite new toy in MAKESHOP (sorry laser cutter). The additions to it are…