Community & School Partnerships (CSP) is a department at IU that does many things to extend IU’s reach into the world and to give the world more access to IU. One of which is tours for schools. A group of students gets an activity, sees a dorm and class building, and has lunch in a… Read more »

I helped out at 2 after school STEM programs this week. The first was Linton Stockton Elementary. We had 25 kids from grades 3-5 for just under an hour. They got to work with the Root robot and SpheroSPRK+. They used their own Chromebooks to code root , because it is browser based. They had… Read more »

We headed to Linton-Stockton Elementary for STEM day. We worked with students from grades k-5 with a variety of things One group built with Lego’s for the LEGO coding competition Another group coded the Root robot from iRobot. A third group of students built a maze (okay , some didnt understand what a maze is,… Read more »

I went to Shakamak Elementary for a couple of afternoons to help get their new laser going. We also got the teacher started with TheNounProject  for images and cuttle for design. There were a few kids around for after school and they were enthralled with the laser in action. The teacher made a couple of… Read more »

Last Tuesday, I went down to Leavenworth to the Purdue University Extension 4H office. They were just starting to set up their new Design and Innovation Studio. This will be utilized for some career/workforce development as well as getting kids in there for some skills and digital design work. They got some 3D printers, a… Read more »

Monday it was back to Lakeview Elementary to help with history. They are studying the 13 colonies, so I found an SVG map of the colonies (very similar to the one in their book) and did a bunch of tweaking to make it into a puzzle. We cut one for each table and they are… Read more »

There are many ways to carve pumpkins in a #MakerSpace. Saw this on a front office desk.   This wood is cedar and the face is (probably) cut with a saw. If you have a CNC router you could use that. The top comes off to turn light on/off. (I tend to use fence pickets… Read more »

Saturday October 21st was the annual Pumpkin Launch sponsored by Bloomington Parks & Rec at the Fairgrounds. About 500 people attended the event. There were only 2 launchers this year, one that could launch up to 1000 feet and one family’s first attempt that could launch 40 feet. Hopefully next year we can get some… Read more »

October 16 starts a busy 2 weeks, with something everyday. Monday was a first visit to Lakeview Elementary to do some laser cutting with students. They only have iPads, so design options are limited. They had recently taken a field trip with a forestry expert, so we had them find an SVG representing some of… Read more »

I like the iPad for many things. But coding is not one of them. An elementary teacher has 10 Circuit Playground Express. But the students have iPads. I have not found a way to do block coding (like makecode) with this combination. I like turtle art for a coding exercise and there are a couple… Read more »