As you may or may not know, I’ve been working with Amon in EASE lab which does education research and k-12 outreach. Part of my work this summer has been developing an activity that we could implement in a mobile makerspace (aka. trailer) that we could deploy in proximity to ice cream trucks.
Two posts ago, I wrote about what influenced me to pursue engineering, and part of how I got here was the introduction of new tools and technologies during my education. I wanted to fold part of that narrative into my activity, and what I eventually came up with was “popsicle stick tools,” an activity where kids make tools out of popsicle sticks (do I sound redundant?). So far I’ve developed three tools, the protractor, the calipers, and the screwdriver.
If you’re interested the instructions can be found: tinyurl.com/h738yhu
So this past weekend I ran a booth at the Boston Mini-Maker Faire (at the Children’s Museum) with our popsicle stick activity representing Ease Lab and Olin. I had thought this was my first Maker Faire but then I remembered that a few years ago I represented my robotics team at a Kansas City Maker Faire.
Caliper popsicle sticks chilling out after a cut job.
Originally we were having kids cut their own popsicle sticks using wire cutters, they would often forget to wear their safety glasses and splinters from the sticks flew everywhere. After some reconsideration we decided to pre-cut/pre-perforated using the laser cutter so we didn’t have to worry about safety logistics. We used a template acrylic sheet to line everything up to properly laser cut everything. In total I spent about 5 hours cutting out ~300 caliper sticks and ~600 screwdriver sticks.
During setup before the storm
The weather app told me it was going to 95° with scattered thunderstorms on Saturday, instead it was 95° and way too sunny. We were set up under the tent so we were partially shaded but as the sun moved across the sky it slowly encroached on on our station. The Children’s Museum estimated an attendance of around 10,000 people, so I was honestly expecting a monster swarm of kids. We prepared enough materials so that 30 of each tools could be made per hour. Turned out that there was plenty of stuff at the faire to keep everyone occupied, and we had a modest flow of kids coming to and from our tables.
Birds eye view of our booth (we changed configurations to be more shaded).
We had engraving stamps on the table so people could stamp their names into the popsicle sticks to personalize it. We also brought our mini router, so kids could drill holes on the spot. Interestingly the few adults that came to our table were only interested in the router.
Kid using his screw driver to fix Wall-e.
In addition to making the tools we had some “try” stations set up, we had a board with screws that people could screw in, pokemon with angles for people to measure (riding on that pokemongo wave), and a scratch game hooked up to a makey makey that would allow kids to fix a virtual Wall-e using their screwdriver and a hammer.
Sliceform Studios: Vineyards
I ran the morning shift and got to walk around the Maker Faire afterwards. Most of the stuff there was targeted towards kids (not surprising since it was hosted by the Children’s Museum), but I did come across a cool booth called Sliceform Studios, which is a software that generates a laser cut template for beautiful tessellated art pieces. I totally have plans to make my own now.
By the end of the day I was completely pooped. I was hot, sweaty, tired from standing all day, and kind of sick of explaining how to make calipers for the nth time that day (I was also probably the #1 consumer of candy in our booth). I am pretty in awe of people who do this every single day.
A few things I learned from this experience:
- Kids are better at following tutorials when then can easily flip flop between the instructions and their project (so keep the instructions where they are working)
- Your voice will inexplicably jump an octave when you’re helping out a small child
- Using a proper amount of glue is an undervalued skill
No comments:
Post a Comment