Parts, Parts, Wonderful Parts (or the Making of a Maker)

This is cross posted from my other blog A Make Per Day.

Recently I picked up an old dead photocopier. It was heading for the landfill anyways so I figured I could take it home and strip it of anything useful.


Turns out that the parts are only a side benefit. The the best part has been getting my boys to help take it apart. My 3 year old has a short attention span but my 6 year old has been eating it up.  He can't stop yammering on about the robot insects that we will make.  This is a huge learning opportunity for them.  As we take off parts I describe what they do (when I understand the purpose).  He sure is excited.

As a society we need our children to understand that these machines are not magical boxes that do wonderful and mysterious things.  They are systems an we need them to be able to look inside and figure out how things work.  They need to see that  you can figure out a purpose for each part.  Once they can see the purpose of the little parts then they can start figuring out the bigger system. This is important if we want our children to become makers instead of just consumers.  Consumers just buy magic boxes and then throw them out.  Makers create wonderful things.  Or messes - but messes can be wonderful too.

This photocopier is a wonderful experience for my children.  Today we hooked some of the motors and gearboxes up to batteries to see if they worked. The whole project is a great way for them to learn.  It cost nothing.  If they break something while trying to take it apart it doesn't cost anything.  If we burn up a part, oh well.  It was free.

Don't get me wrong, there are some great parts on this machine.  I have my eye on a couple of big stepper motors.  They are already earmarked for some CNC projects.  Lot of the other motors, gears, and belts will make great projects.  The machine contains countless hardened steel shafts and even the metal brackets are getting saved.  This junk will be supplying projects for years to come.

While this isn't really a project where I am building something tangible, I am definitely creating something in my children.

Mike Rowe is the Man

Recently Mike Rowe testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.  Don't know who Mike Rowe is?  He is the host of popular Discovery Channel show called Dirty Jobs.  He goes around the U.S. doing the dirtiest, messiest, and nastiest jobs he can find - and he does them with a smile.

Anyways he recently spoke before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation advocating for the skilled trades.  You can read the whole text here.

It occurred to me that I had become disconnected from a lot of things that used to fascinate me. I no longer thought about where my food came from, or how my electricity worked, or who fixed my pipes, or who made my clothes. There was no reason to. I had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought.

We need to the trades.  How stuff gets built, produced, or fixed can't be a mystery.  We need people to do these things.  University is not the be all and end all of education.

I need to teach more like he suggests.  Anybody who knows me knows that I like to make, build, tinker, disassemble, and hack things together.  Why buy when you can DIY.  I need to pass this mindset on to more of my students.


Along the same line you NEED to watch Mike Rowe's TED Talk about dirty jobs.  It is awesome, though provoking and entertaining.  (There is an awkward discussion about animal husbandry - just warning you.)




Up next:  Gever Tulley's 50 Dangerous Things (you should let your children do).

My Pencil as Seen by a Germ

Disclaimer - No hamsters were harmed in the taking of this photograph.  No duct tape was used (although it came close) and most of all no money was spent.

I threatened to do this a while back.  I was given a webcam a few years back as part of a package to get us experimenting with how to use technology in the classroom.  It was not an expensive webcam.  It was  not a great webcam but I did use it.  Then I got bored of it.  Close to a year ago I threatened to find a way to hook it up to a microscope to take close up macro pictures.  Well I finally did it.  It was really easy.  It was Friday and I had a prep last class.  Could you blame me?

On the Instructables site I found this how-to.  It was as simple as taking out the lens and reversing it.  A microscope was not necessary.  All you need is an external webcam.  While I had to do a little bit of work to get it to work it is completely reversible.  Focus is really touchy and you need a lot of light but I would love to see what could be done with a webcam that has better than 640x480 resolution.  Read the how-to and do it yourself.  Voiding warranties is a huge amount of fun.  Trust me.

Oh yeah - show a science teacher near you.  Mine was as excited as a kid at Christmas.

Pocket Knives Make Excellent Gifts

Wow. 

Gerver Tulley's program is everything I want to do - only I never realized I wanted to do it.   You all know that I tinker - I just don't share or teach it very well.  That is it - I am going to open up my garage (and my toys) to the neighborhood kids - right RIGHT now.   Um  maybe not - it is 11 PM.  

I bet you that this format would work in my math classes.......... two and two are adding up and I am getting a parabola!!!

He also did a neat Facebook question and answer session.  His answers are worth reading.

All the best, and remember: pocket knives make excellent gifts,

- Gever Tulley

Rock On!

So did you spend a wad of cash on Rock Band 2 this Christmas? Did you have to buy an expensive console to go with it? Did you lose hours to playing the the happiness that is Rock Band and or Guitar Hero (but secretly feel guilty about the price)?

Well you are not going to like me very much.

Last night I was over at a friend of mine's. Now I had been perfectly happy to scoff at anybody who lost hours of their life playing these rhythm music games. Then he had to pull it out. And I played it. And I liked it. And my wife played it. And she liked it. Rats. Big fat expensive rats. We were driving home and when I reached to turn up a song on the radio she asked "You are thinking about Rock Band too, aren't you?" Yes. Yes I was.

So after drinking too much coffee on the drive home I sat down to think about it. I was jealous and wanted Rock Band II. But I have one problem. I am cheap (cut my own hair cheap). Friends have tried to call me frugal but they are just being nice. So I started looking for a free open source clone. Enter Unsigned. A free open source rhythm music game. It felt just like Rock Band. The bonus is that apparently XBox 360 instruments connect to PC's quite easily. After some reading it looks like Wii and PS2/3 versions will too - but with more work. (I already have experience hooking WiiMote's up to my laptop.)

I was surprised to find out that the program runs well on my low end work laptop. I have only been using the keyboard to play and it is fun. Later this afternoon I intend to go and rent a XBox 360 guitar controller to try. There looks like a reasonably active community that creates charts for existing music (charts are the part that tell you when to hit the buttons - the actual game). You are supposed to own a real copy of the original music. There are more free tools for doing it yourself.

The cons? It is not as pretty as the real thing. The song charts are user created so most of them don't have all of the instruments and don't have all of the difficulty levels. (Why don't they make more easy levels? Not all of us can play on expert!) The program actually isn't even finished. All we have now is a beta version. If you try and play a song on a difficulty level that hasn't been created then all you look at for the entire song is a bunch of empty frets. The songs and charts are a little bit annoying to download - you usually have to move the files around to two different directories.

It definatly isn't perfect - but I am sure that there are flaws with the money I am saving too. Until I win the lottery I will continue being cheap and playing this free game. It's fun.

Now where did I leave those hair clippers?

Wiimote Whiteboard - IT WORKS!!!

Well I got the WiiMote Whiteboard working! Can't type any more - too busy playing. I will post a video when I get a moment. Yee haw!

An Interactive Whiteboard on the Cheap (Like $100 Cheap)!!!!!!!

Wow. A Wii remote hacked into a DIY interactive whiteboard. It even works to turn your regular monitor into a tablet!

All that you need is a projector, a Wii remote, a laptop with Bluetooth, and some sort of IR light source (an easy DIY project) - oh and some open source downloads.

Thanks to Vicki Davis (CoolCatTeacher) who pointed this out in her blog and Johnny Chung Lee (the creator).

Time to start rolling my loose change to buy the parts for one.