Summer of Making Highlights
The Summer of Making at the Creativity Lab was jam packed full of wonderful ideas, great projects, building, making, and a lot of fun! Here are some of the highlights captured on video.
Intel Galileo Workshop
Last week a team of engineers from Intel Labs, the research department of Intel, visited Lighthouse to run a Galileo workshop with middle school maker students. The Galileo is a mini computer, that can be used to interact with things like lights and sensors. Students made robotic creatures flash eyes and move wings using photo…
Student Project Spotlight
This post is to highlight the projects students completed in our Installation and Community Projects week. Students were told to design and build a project for the school or their community using the skills and techniques they had learned this summer. Here are some of the projects from that week.
Helping Build the Makerspace: Skill Building Without Pressure
I led a group of students in building storage for the makerspace. Together, we built a large rack for storing lumber and a rolling toolbox/whiteboard combo. Obviously this was very helpful for Lighthouse School. The high school makerspace is currently a multi-function room -a common scenario for makerspaces in schools. It is shared by the…
Work-in-Progress: the process of making ideas a reality
Throughout the summer making program, we used several techniques to help students develop their ideas at different stages of making. The processes of drawing, prototyping, and documentation are just as important as the actual ‘making’ of a project. 1. Journals: Initial ideas, sketches of designs, lists, a working book that keeps everything organized. Every student…
3dPrinting- Make Something Cool: Expectations and Reality
What is the problem? 3D printing looks and sounds really cool. It instantly gets people’s attention no matter what age group. It also takes a long time, is prone to error, is not an intuitive process, and the learning curve for 3-d modeling is very steep. What one can actually make on a 3D printer…
Building Circuits with MaKey MaKey
We spent a week using the MaKey MaKey and Scratch to create interactive instruments and controllers. The MaKey MaKey is a kit that let’s you interact directly with your computer to control the keyboard and mouse. The week was popular with students, and in 5 days they learned the concept of circuits, programming, and made…
Cutting Tools and Young Makers
Kids of pretty much any age can use tools. Determining which age groups can use what tools (with what kind of supervision) is the trick. When do you trust someone to use power tools? When do you trust a student to cut without supervision? In this post I will talk about cutting tools used in…
Summer Making (Part 2) – Woodworking & Installations!
Summer making in the Creativity Lab was wildly successful. It lasted 5 weeks and taught more lessons than can be contained in one digestible blog post so here are a few bites-sized morsels: The impact of concentrated making over time on students is visible. The results include increased confidence, creativity, and resourcefulness. Talking about what…