Dream Flight Adventures
MAKESHOP was recently transformed into an interactive spaceship. Gary Gardner and his Dream Flight Adventures prototype returned to MAKESHOP for another day of playtesting with our visitors. He has already playtested his program at the Museum and a post describing that visit can be found here. He brought with him a newer version of the flight simulator software that he…
Typeface Design Drop-in Workshop
This was originally posted without the link to the font! Oops! Here’s the updated post! On two different recent Saturday afternoons we invited visitors to help us create a typeface — or nice looking collection of letters, numbers and symbols, like a comma or question mark — that we are going to turn into a font, or tool we can use…
Thinking About Typeface Design for Kids
Are you feeling inspired by our typeface design project? Do you want to work on your design skills at home? Here are some ideas for what to look for, what to notice and how to begin considering typography and typeface design in your everyday life.
Playtesting
A couple of Saturdays ago Gary and Sarah Gardiner of Dream Flight Adventures spent some time in MAKESHOP prototyping a new interactive, educational program. Gary has been developing this interactive software for quite some time and recently he was asked to implement it into a classroom in Shaler Area School District. The program is really fun to experience and I can…
Puppet Prototype
Each month, our staff picks a programmatic theme for MAKESHOP that helps us to decide on what activities to provide. Our theme in MAKESHOP for the month of February is puppets. We decided to explore different ways to make puppets by reimagining recycled materials, sewing finger puppets and cloth puppets, building marionettes and playing with shadows puppets. As always, we will integrate digital…
Chair + Lights = ?
The month of December is over and our GLOW theme is done, but that doesn’t mean that we are not still trying to add lights to anything and everything in MAKESHOP. After spending an entire month playing with lights and creating all kinds of switches, I decided that it would be really cool to make a chair that lights up…
Circuit block progression
I recently noticed that I have greatly changed my facilitation methods for circuit blocks. When I first started at MAKESHOP, I ran circuit blocks like a demonstration. I’d show kids how each of the various types of components worked, and then ask if they wanted to play with any of them. This didn’t last long as a style, because a…
Re-purposing Old Parts
I decided to drastically change the xylophone that I built for MAKESHOP. While prototyping some ideas with a group of preschool students, some teachers and I noticed that they really enjoy filling up containers and dumping them out. They also really like to put things through holes and fit different size pieces together. I was unofficially commissioned to create a simple prototype…
Family Fun
Ty and his sister spent a lot of time exploring animation. Actually, their entire family spent a lot of time exploring all of MAKESHOP. Their older brother was fascinated with the loom and spent most of his time weaving. Their siblings also had a blast exploring light painting. We experimented a lot with different light sources and different movement techniques….
Stop-Motion…What else can it do?
We are still continuing to test our stop-motion prototype. I tried out a couple of different techniques using our current setup. I was able to rig the camera into a position that allows it to see the entire MAKESHOP. We made a pretty simple animation of Nick while he was cleaning up one of the tables. Experimenting with animation in…