February 17th was the annual Black Market by Bloomington Parks & Recreation Department. They have a mix of small black business vendors and some activity tables. We had a few things out for people to work with. We had plus-plus building parts and pipe cleaners. We had some 3D printed articulated animals and a stop… Read more »
Entries by makervan
OETC24
I went over to Columbus Ohio for the annual Ohio Educators Technology Conference (OETC). There were a few makerspace sessions and a couple of Maker playgrounds that I helped out at. One group was showing shrinky dinks and using a heat gun to shrink them I reconnected with some people and had some good education… Read more »
EclipseActivities
I was hoping to write this post after I did these activities…but ordering at the University has really gotten slow (4+ weeks and still things aren’t in, some haven’t gotten through the whole process…) 1) Shaving cream sun painting : from https://www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/shaving-cream-sun-model/ paper plates shaving cream yellow food coloring red food coloring toothpicks scrap cardboard/squeegee… Read more »
microbit&morse
I spent one class period each with 3 – 5th grade classes to code the micro:bit and neopixels to send some morse code (you also need 3 alligator clip wires). I thought that using number of lights would be easier than how long a light was on would be easier to understand dot/dash. In one… Read more »
SouthCentralJrSrHigh
I got to spend 3 days at South Central Jr/Sr High in Elizabeth, Indiana. I worked with a variety of teachers and students. We started with makey-makey in the Environmental Science class where they were working on food webs. They picked one omnivore, carnivore, herbivore, producer, decomposer. They either made a model or drawing, then… Read more »
GrandPark
The Indiana Connections Career Academy (an online charter school) asked us to be a part of their event at the event center of Grand Park (there were several exhibitors, including a disc golf hole). It was a 4 hour time window where there students could come together from across Indiana to meet up and learn… Read more »
microbit&sound
We worked with 3 – 5th grade classes that were exploring concepts of waves. We utilized the micro:bit as sound level detector. This was their first time using a micro:bit. First we had them display the temperature. Then we replaced that with sound level. Next we had them use the “plot bar graph” piece of… Read more »
Electricity
Spent 3 afternoons with an elementary class working with electricity and circuits. As always, we started with 5 mm LED and CR2032 battery to see if they could figure out how to light it up. Then they got to try multiple colors and multiple bulbs. The teacher had some electricity kits, so we worked with… Read more »
CanaryKnife
Canary knives are one of the important tools when working with cardboard. Diego from Lectrify { https://www.lectrify.it/ } shared a #3Dprinting file on Thingiverse { https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4923987 } so you can print handles to go with replacement blades. This might bring the cost down a little, or let kids personalize their tools. I picked up a… Read more »
NatureWalk
I started off the New Year with a Nature walk with a 5th grade class at Lakeview Elementary (21 students). They have a nice wooded trail at their school. This is actually a “writing/story telling” exercise in that we want them to take pictures (they have iPads) along the trail. Then they should pick one… Read more »