I went to Van Buren Elementary School to work with some educators after school on using their 3D printer. I walked them through getting a image from the noun project and importing it into Tinkercad. Then we talked about some of the tools in Tinkercad. A couple of them were able to download and install FlashPrint on their laptops, so we walked through slicing and exporting that file to a thumb drive. Each designed a Christmas pickle to hide in the school.

I shared my 3D printing slideshows with them to use later :

Tinkercad classroom

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12DncbL9QcNjythf9THViPBENmWE3S1G5mckMHupHIQw/edit?usp=sharing
Name badge https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NJ53z67PIhqbTJ1Zem9oxPN2ieBKEgHZjkTAxrkPTro/edit?usp=sharing

Board game piece

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NJ53z67PIhqbTJ1Zem9oxPN2ieBKEgHZjkTAxrkPTro/edit?usp=sharing

Import SVG (extension is to make cookie cutter)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1X5OmMergf7qKEX1eMArYIl2V9eXZznQ_Rj5odgRVegM/edit?usp=sharing

Slicing in FlashPrint (most slicers are similar)

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BPnL–uV9xjHyPzG6eylGriB1kj8_cCeNXg75fzhTQU/edit?usp=sharing

We had another batch of 8th graders from Avondale Meadows come to IU for a campus tour. We had them build the “mini wind turbine“ kit from teachergeek. Before we got into the kits, we did a “battery & bulb” lesson. Each student got a CR2032 battery and an LED. Their mission was to light it up. It always takes a minute or two, but they quickly get it and we have that discussion about positive and negative sides/ends of the battery and legs on the LED being different length. We did this because, instead of a volt meter, they will try to make their wind turbine power the LED.

Because of transportation issues, they arrived a little late, so we were short on time. 2 groups did get theirs completed and we tested them with a fan. They both spun. They used 2 alligator clips to hook the LED up to the generator and…. it didnt work. So the first trouble shooting was to flip the wires (not sure which direction the motor would be turning so not sure which lead is positive). But that did not help. So they will need to work on getting the turbine to spin more smoothly and faster.

Bloomington Parks & Recreation held their annual Pumpkin Launch at the Monroe County Fairgrounds. They had 6 launchers this year in 2 categories (small & large). A little over 200 people attended, with a mix of families and college students. I gave out stickers to almost everyone. It rained lightly a little bit off and on, but we survived. There were 4 food trucks. Xfinity helped sponsor so they had a booth. Parks & Rec had some games and prizes for kids. I brought battery & bulb for a science lesson, orange and green pipe cleaners to make a pumpkin, other colored pipe cleaners to make whatever (some chose to make a different colored pumpkin, gnome/fairy/IUpumpkins trinkets for necklase or bracelet. I had about 40 kids and 25 adults stop by to do something.

These are the stickers I printed. Bill from Parks & Rec made the image.

Orange County has all (175) the 8th graders from the various schools participate in a manufacturing day. They get tours of several businesses, and they come to the Community Center for some hands on activities and lunch. Cook Medical had a couple of stations, there was a robotic arm from DeVry, and another company had a bottle filling machine, and one other (i didnt get a chance to talk with all of them). I had 3 activities for the students to choose from : rubberband cars, straw flyers, paper circuits. They split up and worked on the one they wanted. Of course we had to mark distance for the straw flyer and the rubberband cars and make it kind of a competition.

I went to the Blue Academy Elementary School in Decatur Township to work with the 4, third grade classes. They were doing a STEM rotation day before Fall Break. I brought paper circuits with a Halloween theme. They all worked diligently, though some did not get the circuit completed in our time allotted. Hopefully they will have some time when they get back from break to finish it. (I was so busy helping kids that I forgot to take pictures of them)

I headed to Batchelor MS Makerspace, because all 4 – 3D printers were acting up. I super heated the nozzle (260 as opposed to PLA 215-225) and let that “stew” for a couple of minutes. Then I unloaded and loaded the filament a couple of times. 3 of them responded to that. The extruder gears were grinding & slipping on the 4th one, so that is an issue for another day. When we went to print on the 3rd one, it just balled up on the nozzle – then I noticed the filament was ABS…so we took that off and loaded PLA and it went fine.

They have a nice Makerspace here. 2 rooms connected. 3D printers, Glowforge, Cricut & Roland vinyl cutter, poster printer, sublimation printer, lots of tools & materials, some woodshop tools, nice work tables. It is available for any class to use.

MCCSC held a STEAM Night at the Academy of Science & Entrepreneurship. They counted 275 attendees, which was a mix of kids and parents (families). There were 14 exhibitors, lots of robots, some robot art (sphero painting), some bugs, some engineering…a nice mix. I had paper circuits with Halloween templates and rubberband cars. Luckily there were 2 HS volunteers who helped with the activity because we had a bunch of people at once. (one of the volunteers drew their own image to light up) If I had to guess I would say we had 35 kids and just as many (if not more) parents. The parents also helped the younger kids with making the circuit. The rubberband cars were at their own table for people to explore and experiment.

I did a circuits session with a dozen home schoolers, ages 5-12. 
We started with paper circuits and they chose from the Halloween templates from makerspaces.com. The templates are good because they show where to put the copper tape and the lights. One nice thing about having a wide age range is the help that they give to each other. The younger see the older ones helping someone, so they help someone when they are done with theirs. I also brought out the circuit blocks for them to explore a bit with batteries, motors, buzzers & lights. I need to do a wiring check and make some more battery blocks.

I took a short trip to Unionville Elementary for 2 days to do some computer science with 20, 3rd/4th graders in Ms. Fishers class. On day 1 we did screen free. We worked through how to give instructions so someone could duplicate a pixel drawing, for example :

There were many good ideas, some talked about rows, some about where to start.
We did 2 examples where they used words. Then we did one where they were to use symbols.

They agreed we had to all start at the same place, that arrows would be a good symbol, and so would a splash of paint or scribble for coloring a block. Then they had to make their own drawing and create the instructions for a partner to re-create the drawing. Some were successful the first time, some were not. Some wrote the instructions on a line, like a sentence, some wrote it like going around the box.
The final exercise was getting Little Red Riding Hood to Grandma’s house, past a bunch of wolves. They had to use arrows to tell someone how to get there.

Day two was block coding on their iPad. We used https://playground.raise.mit.edu/main/
We changed sprite and resized it so we could see lines being drawn. Then we explored what the blocks were, and added “pen” blocks to get it to draw. The first challenge was to draw a square. Almost all got it, but they only did 2 movements (move & turn) and pressed the green flag 4 times to make it. So now the challenge was to add more lines of code so you only ran the program once. That was more of a challenge. A few jumped to the repeat block, though left repeat at 10. Next was to make a rectangle. Some were off on their own making all sorts of drawings. The at home challenge (if anyone tries it) is to code a snowflake.

(I was horrible again and did not get any pictures of their work…)

I am working with Tasha at the Bloomfield JH/HS Makery. They have a 54″ Roland vinyl printer cutter (aka sticker/banner maker). They just got Adobe Illustrator installed so they could add cut lines, and do some image editing. I dont know Illustrator that well, but Tasha had one image that she did several steps to try to get an offset outline of the shape to cut. (the process has to do with copy & paste & flatten then make completely black…). She had it, but also had several iterations on the same file. I was able to isolate the outline so we could make it a kiss cut. They had not done this particular vinyl yet, so I guessed at a cutting force, and was a little high. We also added the perf cut, but it only cut 2 of 4 sides. We think we did not look closely enough at the file and the other 2 sides might have been just off the artboard. I also worked with another file that she used Illustrator Trace feature on to clean it up a little, then exported as an SVG. She is hoping to use that on the CNC router.

While I was there, 6 students came to make t-shirts (vinyl iron on), so Tasha was helping them with that.