Monday, July 25, 2016

It doesn't work! Lessons learned in a maker workshop


We made rubber band race cars with Windsor kids this month in collaboration with the public library's "Ready, Set, Go" summer reading program. There are lots of instructions on the web for making these little cars.  Ours involved old CDs, paper towel tubes, buttons, glue guns, and rubber bands.



When the kids arrived, we had a prototype to show them, all the materials laid out, and we dove right in.  All the kids were able to make their cars without much trouble....or innovation. I always struggle with finding a balance between having a set project that will meet with success, yet also allow kids to struggle and solve problems. In this case, the project was straightforward.  Except, it wasn't.


After getting his car ready to go, one little boy kept saying "it doesn't work, it doesn't work."  All the other cars around him were spinning across the floor as if by magic.  He was so frustrated.


And then I realized that I had fallen into a trap--the "focus on the end goal trap."  We, the adults, had jumped right in to making the cars without taking the time to talk about the mechanics of how they worked.   Finally, just as the workshop ended, he started to understand how the rubber band made the car go.

We had held a maker session, but jumped over the learning.  Well, I learned something!

Monday, July 4, 2016

Helping students understand our complex collection




Our historic machine tools are intricate, specialized machines that made.....other machines.  It has been a challenge to figure out how to help students understand how they worked without being able to touch them.




We decided to try an intro activity for students focused on gears--spur gears, rack and pinion, worm gears, and bevel gears.  We discussed each type of gear and then they had to figure out how each of the household implements in this toolbox worked. We discussed how gears transfer energy, transform energy, and change the direction of energy. They loved the mystery box and were excited to figure out what each implement was and how it worked.






After we explored all the household implements, pairs of students were sent out onto the exhibit floor with magnetized gear labels. I have never seen students look so closely at our machines--we suddenly had kids scooting around on their backs identifying gears I had never known about.

When combined with a discussion of water power, belts, and pulleys as well as a demonstration in the working machine shop, our students are finally understanding our collection.












Monday, June 20, 2016

The Evolution of Manufacturing

 Our museum focuses on the evolution of manufacturing from the first iterations of the American System to the present day.  Most of the students who come to visit come as part of their history unit on the Industrial Revolution.






To explore the evolution of manufacturing, we use visual thinking strategies to examine images of manufacturing work through time. Students then use chronological thinking skills to organize the images and then discuss how work and manufacturing has changed.

                                     








Students have a context for the machines which they then examine on the exhibit floor. All sorts of contemporary issues come in to the discussion and students have much to ponder back at school.

Monday, May 30, 2016

Challenges with e-textiles

We had our first experiment with e-textiles in the Learning Lab this winter after school. The kids were to first design something with pencil and paper, include a component that would light up, and then design the circuit.  After completing the design on paper and pencil, they would cut it out in felt and sew on all the components.  Here's an example:



There were so many challenges with this project. First there was the design challenge. When given a piece of paper and asked to draw a figure, almost all of the students were completely stopped in their tracks. They simply couldn't come up with anything. We made suggestions such as a fish, bat, robot, etc. In the end almost all of them ended up copying one of our designs.

Designing the circuit also proved to stump almost all the students. In retrospect, I should have had an entire after school class devoted to experimenting with simple circuits as it was clear the kids didn't understand how to connect the battery to the LEDs.

The challenges continued when the students then needed to cut out their paper and then their felt. Many of them (4th and 5th grade) didn't have the manual dexterity to use scissors. We had to do the cutting for several of them.

I quickly realized the next steps would also be a problem--threading the needle and sewing. One girl had sewn before, but the rest of them quickly had difficulty threading their needle, knotting the thread, and sewing a straight stitch. I untangled many, many attempts.

This was a frustrating afternoon for many of these kids. For some, a lack of resiliency, made them give up almost before they began each step.

This project which combined art, technology, and basic craft skills proved to be really, really challenging. If I were to do it again, I would offer it only to middle school students and make it a multi-session program where we worked on each of the components more slowly.  

To be honest, I'm not sure e-textiles will come back to the Learning Lab anytime soon. They components are expensive and, while there is a TINY connection to our collections and history, I can think of other more engaging activities that help us reach our goals.








Supplies:
Coin cell battery holder
LED
Conductive thread
Felt
Needles
Scissors
Paper & pencils



Monday, May 23, 2016

Sometimes low-tech activities are the most engaging

We added a building challenge to the Learning Lab for our general public. This proved to be popular. Every day we would find new structures left behind. Here's what we did:

Materials:
1" cubes, craft sticks, 3 oz cups

Challenge #1: Build a structure with one cube as the base.
Challenge #2: Using any size base, build the tallest possible structure
Challenge #3: Build a structure with just one cup as the base
Challenge #4: Feats of Balance. Make something stick out in an impressive way!




One day I went around the corner and discovered that this visitor had managed to get every cup stacked.


Visitors of all ages really enjoyed this challenge!


Again, low-tech challenges that visitors could easily grasp have been the most engaging for our general public.







Monday, May 9, 2016

Welcoming the general public to the Learning Lab--keeping it simple!

Our new learning lab is located right in the lobby of the museum. In thinking through what to do with the learning lab during the summer months we are open, we realized that unless we were offering specific family maker day activities, hosted by staff, we needed to come up with inviting activities that visitors could immediately grasp without help--our staffing is just too limited to have someone at the tables all the time.

We had learned from visiting other museum maker spaces that complex tinkering activities offered in spaces without staff don't easily engage visitors. Our answer was to set out simple machine models with short experiments for each model.  Families stopped by throughout the summer to try them out.


Here's an example for one of the experiments. We adapted these from the instructions that came with the models.


We were pleased and surprised by how engaging this activity was. Our museum is filled with complex machines. It seemed a natural link to then offer visitors an "Eye Spy" sheet to see if they could connect their simple machines experiments to the complex machines on the exhibit floor. Making connections between technology, history, and our collections is a goal we continuously explore.











Monday, May 2, 2016

Connecting our history to our tinkering programs



The American Precision Museum is a National Historic Landmark and engineering heritage site where we seek to connect history to technology and engineering. Our telegraph project accomplished this goal by connecting our magnetism tinkering workshops to our Civil War exhibit, Arming the Union.



We used these instructions.

Materials included:
Hammers
Nails
Wood Blocks
Telephone wire
Wire Strippers
Batteries
Perforated Metal Hanger Strips


We also offered this program in the summer for a Family Maker Day.  It provided a nice challenge for both adults and children. Everyone was excited when they were able to make their telegraphs work! 



This program provides a nice connection between history and technology. It was here at the American Precision Museum where new technological innovations had an impact on the Civil War.




Monday, April 25, 2016

Chain Reactions-the best tinkering activity!

I think Rube Goldberg (or chain reaction) builds capture the essence of everything we're trying to do in the Learning Lab.  This open-ended activity allows children to easily work through the engineering process.  We had students think about a design ahead of time, troubleshoot, and then explain how their machine worked.  This activity, more than any activity we have ever done, had students continuously tinkering and troubleshooting until they got their design right. I could see some of them improving in their ability to focus and stick with a challenging project before my eyes in one afternoon.

I had thought that we needed an elaborate set of materials for this build, but in the end what you see below is all we really needed--blocks, marbles, dominoes, paper towel tubes, tape craft sticks, and....best of all...pieces of a staff member's old plastic race track.


Chain reaction builds also provide for a varied range of skills and work well for an after-school program. For some children, just mastering the concept that a ball rolls downhill when when one end of the ramp is higher than the other was a learning moment. For other children, figuring out how to have their ball change direction provided just the right amount of challenge.


We made short videos of their machines and had them explain how they worked. The video proved to be quite popular and kept the students constantly improving and getting things to work just right.


I think we could offer chain reaction builds frequently. Our Pinterest Board has lots of ideas.

Monday, April 18, 2016

Making things go: Mousetrap Cars and Balloon Cars

This summer we offered a Family Maker Day afternoon where families could explore the concepts of simple machines by making cars.  It was a great way to explore wheels & axles, levers, inclined planes, and the concept of mechanical advantage.

To prep for the day, I had our working machine shop intern pre-drill holes in the mousetraps. He thought I was crazy, but then came out of the shop to help in the Learning Lab. It was a nice opportunity for our intern to be a leader with a group.















While the kids were really excited about making these cars, I was really happy that I had chosen this activity for families and not for an after-school project.  The mousetraps really snapped. Nobody was hurt, but the potential was certainly there.

For our next Simple Machines Maker Day, we made balloon cars.  These were much easier (and safer) to make and, in the end, more satisfying for the kids because they didn't need much help.  In fact, this project went so well, that I offered it to some summer camp groups. I had everyone bring a water bottle which made the prep much easier (and a little cheaper).


These worked so well that sometimes the parents had a hard time letting the kids try it!


These activities, along with a few other car builds, are pinned on our Pinterest Cars Board.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Lessons while Soldering















We recently purchased soldering irons for use in the Learning Lab. These Weller soldering irons have proven to work well. They have temperature controls and include a stand and sponge. This support proved to be important for our students who were at times struggling with fine motor skills on this project. In fact, after watching one student do well with a soldering stand, I purchased several more for our second session. We also had wire cutters available.


Again our teen volunteers proved to be very helpful.  Not only did one of them lead the students through the assembly of this WeevilEye kit, but they also were incredibly helpful with the students who needed help following directions and support with fine motor skills. Almost all of these grade 4 - 6 students were able to solder together the kit successfully.








We set up the stations with a piece of masonite over the table to protect it from burns. The cords went down between the two tables and connected to power strips underneath.  We had the power strips turned off until after we had gone over safety rules, had a demonstration, and were ready to start. Of course we all had safety glasses and I had made sure that we had ice on hand and that the first aid kit was stocked with neosporin. Happily there were no incidents.

At first I had mixed feelings about this program which was basically soldering a circuit board and assembling a kit.  The underlying purpose of the Learning Lab is to foster innovation and provide space for open-ended learning and problem-solving.  In fact, a colleague came up to me while the workshop was going on and said "wow, they are learning so much."  My immediate reaction was negative. I was frustrated that the students were just following directions and not really THINKING.

Here is a student using a "solder sucker" to repair her soldering.
But then I thought about it some more. Of course, they were learning soldering skills which could be applied to other more open-ended projects in the future.  But they were learning more. They were learning about being precise and about what happens when you don't do something perfectly. They had to fix their mistakes or the circuit wouldn't work. That's what this museum is all about--so we were learning about precision here at the American Precision Museum.

I also realized that they were learning about collaboration and helping each other. Of course, some students finished before others.  I encouraged them to lend a helping hand and was happy to see this helper step up to the plate. We are trying to foster leadership here as well--someday our teens will graduate and we will need new students to step in.


In the end, this soldering class gave me lots to think about. It made me reaffirm the pedagogical underpinnings to our work and helped me broaden my own thinking about what the kids are learning and how we achieve our goals.



Monday, March 21, 2016

Furnishing the Learning Lab


After a winter of tinkering, we received funding from the Alma Gibbs Donchian Foundation and the Hypertherm Hope Foundation to formally install a learning lab. I now knew how we could manage groups, mess, noise, and the general public all within our front lobby.  I was most interested in making a flexible space so we purchased workbenches with adjustable heights, shelves, and castors. We replaced the industrial castors with smaller wheels to lower the height for students. 

Here the tables are pushed together so we can all work as one group.
We can pull them apart when there is a large crowd.
Lab stools at 24" height have worked well not only for students, but for general visitors who have been known to carry them around the exhibit hall.

Young and old alike are using our lab stools.
We have space challenges at the museum. Our Learning Lab is right in our lobby and the general public passes right by throughout the summer. I installed this shelving so visitors could see the projects we work on throughout the year.

This shelf is used to display prototypes and projects
Car prototypes: balloon cars and mousetrap cars
I want the students to feel comfortable in the space and to begin to feel like it is their space. These photos, clipped on to wire, show pictures of students and their projects. The kids like to look at them.

Of course we have photo release forms for all the kids.





We continue to develop the space. We need storage and a half-wall to help define the space a bit more in the summer. Rather than purchase storage units, I asked the local tech teacher if his students would like to design and build for us. Here's their first stab at design using SketchUp. It is turning in to a great design and community service project for them.





Monday, March 7, 2016

Tinkering with Magnets

They also experimented with pendulums and "magic wands."


Our four-session magnetism series began by just letting students play with magnets. Ideas for this program came from Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff.  First we just explored how magnets worked.



I had thought we would experiment with magnetic slime during this session. I made it at home first (always a good plan) and it was a messy disaster. I decided that we did not have the facilities at the museum for this project.

To prepare for this session I cut small blocks of wood at home and pre-drilled holes for straws and dowels. Other materials for this session included duct tape, tongue depressors, string, and scissors. My tub of arts and crafts supplies was also available.

The kids stacked ceramic donut
magnets to make them "float."
After some directed experiments, the tinkering began as they built various contraptions. This photo below captures the spirit of tinkering. Lots of duct tape and trial and error to create something incredible of his own design.




My goals for this first session on magnetism were to have the kids explore how magnets work and to loosen up and begin to tinker without direction. I was pleased with the mess by the end of the afternoon!

We began our second session by making our own compasses. I used these instructions.