Too Much Homework, Not Enough Time to be a Kid
Race to Nowhere explores the damaging effect of insane homework loads on kids.
Education
Maker Education is such a valuable role. These stories will bring you the latest information and tales of maker educators who area spreading the maker mindset. Help others learn how to make things or how to think like a maker at makerspaces, schools, universities, and local communities. The importance of maker education can not be understated. We appreciate our educators.
Annoucing Hobby How-To Month
We’ve been enjoying all of our themes and Skill Builder series this year, but many of us are particularly excited by this month: Hobby How-Tos. All of us being kids at heart, we still have a soft spot for things like scale modeling, rocketry, tabletop gaming, Legos, R/C vehicles, model railroading, miniatures and action figure modding, cosplay, papercraft, you name it.
Topology Tuesday: Klein’s Quartic
If you are looking for a subject likely to inflame the hearts of mathematicians, make them slightly weak in the knees, and induce some distinctly poetical sentiments, Klein’s Quartic, first described by German mathematician Felix Klein in 1878, seems like a pretty good bet. Though the surface itself, per Wikipedia, “does not have a (non-trivial) 3-dimensional linear representation,” several prominent math-bloggers have produced models, projections, and plain-language written explanations attempting – and doing a pretty good job of it, IMHO – to communicate their passion for the construct…
SpaceCamp at World’s Maker Faire
SpaceCamps have been happening at Maker Faire Bay Area, Detroit, and New York. The point of SpaceCamp is to propagate the robustness and awareness of hacker- and makerspaces. Attending spaces are curated into a shared area so that space facilitators get to know each other and Faire attendees are exposed to the wide variety of spaces’ interests, personalities, and geographies.
Cold-Forming Plastic Looks Like Acrylic, Bends Like Metal
UK educational supply center centre Mindsets online sells variously-sized 3mm thick sample sheets of Eastman’s Spectar copolyester at not-completely-outlandish prices. Spectar supposedly looks and handles much like acrylic, but with the surprising property that it can be cold-formed without breaking or whitening, and exhibits a memory effect, holding a cold bend until reheated.
Mini Post-It Menger Sponge
OK, so, it’s a level 3 approximation of a Menger Sponge, actually, incorporating 8,000 unit cubes, each of which starts as one-sixteenth of a “mini” size Post-It. Its creator, Nicholas Rougeux, likes Post-Its for this work because they “offer surprisingly [sic] structural durability and are easy to get in large quantities making them ideal for assembling structures like these.”
“My Visit to the Future at Maker Faire”
Marsha Semmel, who participated in Maker Faire Detriot and wrote a piece for our Making Detroit series, has a lovely piece about Maker Faire NY on the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) blog.
