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 He brought with him a newer version of the flight simulator software that he…
Harrison, the teacher
Harrison is a regular visitor to the Museum and has been mentioned before in this blog here. A couple of days ago, he visited MAKESHOP with an agenda. He needed help soldering some components. I can certainly help someone solder something, but Harrison really helped me understand what it means to turn your imagination into reality. Harrison planned on creating…
Indian Scouts and shopbots
I had the opportunity to teach a Saturday workshop about electricity to a group of Indian Scouts. The group consisted of fifteen kindergartners and fifteen dads. I’m not sure who had more fun… me, the kids, or the dads. I think the dads did. I gave the group the challenge to use some motors and batteries to make something… anything. As usual,…
Interactive Fiction
We’ve been running a series of Sunday afternoon demonstrations of computer programming using Inform 7, which is a programming language for creating stories that you can play like a game. Visitors learned about using nouns and verbs to navigate story games, then about how to write code to make their very own story worlds. We used an online version of Inform…
Puppets and technology
How do you mix paper bag crafts with technology? Our usual answer to a question like that is “put a light on it!” Basically, we tried to figure out what we could add to a paper bag puppet to make it more “techy.” Rebecca created a very cool example that combines a paper bag with an electronic circuit. When you…
Kai’s Invention
Kai is a regular visitor of the Museum. He is the kind of visitor who really enjoys tinkering with anything and everything. On this particular day, we were experimenting with making light-up cards using copper tape and LEDs. Kai was very interested in exploring what could be done with the copper tape and a piece of paper. He already had…
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…
Light Painting Results
We have finally gone beyond the prototyping stage of Light Painting. Rebecca explained a lot about the process in this blog post. I have had some more time to set up the workshop side of MAKESHOP to better facilitate light painting with our visitors. The exploration of this technique is really fun. I have had kids and adults of all…
Activated Origami
This was really cool workshop taught by one of our favorite guest makers, Sibel Deren Guler. Visitors were able to explore and learn how to create several origami projects. They were then encouraged by Deren and me to add lights and motors to their creations. This was the first time I witnessed activated origami and I loved it. These special…
Light Painting Tests
Each month, our staff decides on a theme to help us decide what projects and activities we want to offer to our visitors. Our November theme is “Time” and we’ve been messing around in the shop, brainstorming some fun, open-ended activities that emphasize the idea of time passing. We knew we wanted to do some light painting, so we started…