Last month we hosted our first annual Mini Maker Faire at Westside Neighborhood School. With ten stations to choose from, children in grades 3 through 5 from throughout Los Angeles navigated the maze of opportunities in our STEAM corridor to laser cut hand drawn art, code robots, work with power tools, build cardboard creations, and engage in virtual reality. Map in hand, students explored the various stations, collecting stickers along the way as they completed each activity. 

Participants coded custom robots using the Hummingbird Robotics platform and the SNAP! programming language. They designed 3D models using Tinkercad. They visited far off lands and outer space through Google Expeditions, and painted in a 360 virtual world with Oculus Rift. 

Teacher, student and parent volunteers helped to facilitate our stations. We accommodated approximately 100 children, with many parents in tow. We were joined by the wonderful people from the reDiscover Center who ran the String Art station in our Maker Court. 

It was a tremendous first run, and the experience provided us a solid foundation to build upon for the coming years. Below is the Mini Maker Faire map, and a few pics from the event.

When I reflect on the concept of making, however loosely defined, I think of the process of putting something together that didn't exist before. In most cases it involves pre-planning, but sometimes it can happen more fluidly, as I tinker with an existing object that later becomes part of something else. The making occurs because of an interest in a particular topic or area of study, and an acknowledgment of unknowns. There will be things I don't yet know how to do, or I have not yet experienced, and thus I will need to learn something new in order to reach my goal. Making, therefore, encourages and I would argue cannot exist without, a need for continual learning.

I have been "making" my whole life. I just haven't labeled it as such. From working with construction paper, tape and scissors to build marble runs as a child, to crafting a portable wooden folding table for my wife in my twenties, to designing and constructing a life-size R2D2 for my daughter for Halloween, I've spent a great portion of my waking hours making things. I have always been fascinated with how things work, and to see if I could build my own version of whatever toys, devices, or tools I discovered in my daily life.

With the surge of the Maker Movement in this past decade, and particularly its potential for impacting the learning environment in schools, I have embraced a concept very close to home. It's as if the Maker Movement helps to justify all of my time tinkering in the garage or the office, sometimes producing items of no significant value for anyone else, but for which the process of designing, building and iterating fulfills something inside of me. 

​This desire, this passion, to create something out of nothing is what drives me to continue making for myself, even as I further my development as a teacher of others. I find that it is critically important to constantly challenge my mind to grow, whether that's learning a new coding language, designing a 3D model, or honing my woodworking skills.

A personal project I recently completed is a portable WiFi-based weather station, integrating a small touch screen, LiPo battery, 3D printed case and the Adafruit Feather board. While I have a bit of practice using the Feather board, I had no prior experience implementing a touch screen. I had to make minor adjustments to the 3D model, but once those were complete, the build was fairly straight forward. I am pleased with the result. It is astonishing to see the number and variety of projects available (Adafruit, Sparkfun, Instructables, and more) for the average person to dive into and learn about. And these projects can inspire new ones of your own creation.

My next project, a portable time-lapse camera. ;-)

In sharing this project out to one of my PLNs today, I realized that I had not put any final posts of student work here. So, above are some samples of final projects printed out and in place. With 40 students, a bit more printing remains. Below is a quick test run with some of these new components.

Okay, this is a quick update. After initial design drawings and cardboard prototypes, the marble run pieces have reached the 3D design phase with my 7th graders. Most students used Tinkercad to complete their work, while a couple of them chose Autodesk 123D Design. The actual printing process is going to take some time, but thought I would share a quick gallery of the models.

As these print out, we will send over to the lower school to use on the big wall in the Launch Pad!

Very nice work done by these creative, artistic and diligent 7th graders.

The Magnetic Marble Run wall project is now underway. The official wall, for use by our lower school students (k thru 4) is now mounted just outside the Launch Pad, our lower school makerspace (see first three photos below). 

My 7th grade technology students are in the process of designing new pieces for their lower school friends, building out cardboard and card stock prototypes, and testing out their designs. We have five prototyping walls ready in PIRL for use by the 7th grade. In some of the photos below, 7th graders can be seen testing out their initial pieces, making revisions  based on those tests, and documenting their work along the way. 

Our next and final stage will be to use TinkerCAD to design these same components in 3D space, print them out, and mount on the official wall. 

In preparation for our new lower school innovation space, the Launch Pad, I have constructed a magnetic marble run wall that will serve as one of a several interchangeable walls used by students to explore, write, design, build and play.

I used sheet metal and some lightweight 2'x4's  to construct the wall, and have embedded small magnets into each marble run component so that it can be easily placed and moved around the wall.  While these components would work fine with PVC, cardboard or other material, since we have access to 3D printers and design software, this seemed the more enjoyable option. I have experimented with a few models using 123D design and our Taz 6 printers, and in the fall will work with my 7th grade technology students to fabricate 3D components of their own design. 

My challenge for next year's students will be to design their parts in such a way that as a team they must build a run that will last at least 10 seconds on the wall from top to bottom. Components will be assessed on the basis of creativity, marble run duration, and a minimal use of material.

Below is a short clip showing a test of the initial components. I realized in working with these prototypes that two magnets side by side don't provide enough stability for the parts to stay in place on the wall. As you will notice in subsequent models, I've created a tab located in the top-center of the piece to allow a third magnet to serve as the last point in a more stable triangular shape.

Here is a recent run, including some of the latest printed components. As mentioned above, the newer parts have a small tab at top-center to accommodate a third magnet.

We had our first opportunity to use the sandbox with students in science class this past week. Working with the 5th grade science teacher, Ms. Waid, students reviewed the key elements of topographical maps and explored live changes to topography as they recreated real-life maps in the sandbox. They replicated the Santa Monica mountains and coastline, and rebuilt Crater Lake in Oregon. 

The groups discussed contour lines and intervals, what it meant when lines were closer together or farther apart, and what the different colors on the map represent. In addition to reviewing these core topographical elements, students were asked about water sheds, where local water sheds reside, and how rain water should flow given certain geographical formations. We then ran the rain simulator so that students could test whether their hypotheses regarding water shed locations were true, and discussed the impact of unusable rain water that drains to the ocean, and scarcity of water in times of drought.

Discussion also included the formation of Crater Lake, an existing caldera, and how over time, rain water and snow fall can build up to form a lake.

Below, students are generating rain fall by placing their hands above the surface. At the right height, the XBox Kinect sees these objects differently, and the software is directed to run the water simulator.

I look forward to future classroom uses of the sandbox. Volcanos are a natural fit with this tool, but as new software is developed, I am hopeful there will be many more avenues for inclusion at different grade levels and subject areas.

We hit another milestone today, with the successful configuration of the water flow simulator. It turns out, our first attempts were on a graphics card that couldn't handle the calculations that were required to make the simulation work. We upgraded to an Nvidia GT720 with 1GB of video RAM, and that made the water flow a bit more smoothly. Here are some short clips of the original water simulation.

Next up, on the software side, we will make some modifications to allow for lava simulation. On the hardware side, I would like to integrate USB buttons so that frequently used settings can be accessed with the touch of a button.

A couple of months back, we had an aging air conditioning unit in our network/server room go bad. Anyone who works with networks knows how critical it is to keep this kind of room cold at all times. As we went out to bid for a new AC system, I asked the following question of our vendors:

"Can we receive a text or email alert when the room gets above a certain temperature?"

A notification of this kind would allow us time to shut down devices gently, if necessary, rather than see them overheat. The vendors all responded that this was a feature that could be added, but was not inherently built into what they were proposing.

As a maker with a recent interest in IoT (Internet of Things), I decided to take this project on myself. With the growing variety of apps, devices, development boards, and online services dedicated to IoT, this project seemed within my grasp. My first instinct was to look at the Arduino platform, as that is what I am most comfortable with. I've built a number of Arduino projects in the past, but none that were connected to the Internet. With a little further research, however, I came upon the Particle.io platform, and the Photon development board.

Particle.io is designed specifically for Internet connected devices, and the Photon board is a perfect prototyping hardware for those learning about IoT, as it is easy to set up and has built-in WiFi connectivity. A quick search on Youtube brought me to this thorough instructional video on using the Photon with a temperature sensor.

The video described a set up that included a DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor as well as a photo cell light sensor. I built the same model, and rather quickly had it up and running on my dashboard in the Particle.io platform, as seen below. I could track temperature, light and humidity every few seconds on this dashboard from anywhere with a web connected device.

I am amazed at how easily this can be done. With an investment of under $50, anyone with an internet connection and WiFi can now track environmental conditions from anywhere in the world. And with prototyping tools like Particle, people are creating new and innovative systems that have the potential to become fully operational products and businesses.

My original question, however, was still not addressed by what I had put together. I needed an alert that allowed me to be notified when the temperature in the room rose above a specific degree. The Particle.io dashboard worked wonderfully if I was logged in and viewing the live stream. But that wouldn't be the case in most circumstances. I needed a text message or email alert when I was away from my desk, possibly off campus, possibly on the weekend.

I discovered two great IoT platforms that I believed could meet this need, Structure.io, now called Losant, and PubNub. Pubnub, in particular, I learned about after attending an Arduino/RPi session through LA Meetup. There, one of the engineers from Pubnub presented the platform and had two working temperature sensor projects using Arduino and Raspberry Pi. She showed live data streaming from each of them and how the data interacted with the Pubnub platform. 

While my investigation of these platforms didn't lead me to using either, I was able to create what I needed. Using IFTTT (which stands for If This, Then That), I added a "trigger" to my existing code at Particle, which allowed me to send an email to myself based upon conditions that I set. It took some trial and error to tweak the code, and I still think it could use some refining, but I now receive an alert when temperatures rise above a level that I have established. 

For further information on how IFTTT and Particle work together, see this page.

I plan to dig deeper with Losant and Pubnub. I am certain these are tools that I will use in future projects here at school. IoT is in the emergent stage, with so much more to come, and I believe there are many opportunities to integrate this technology into the learning process for students. 

The project moved forward this week with the next level of calibration. While the initial Kinect RawViewer application allowed the Kinect to see the perimeter of the sandbox (the X and Y coordinates) and provided a basic level of use for testing the AR Sandbox software, we needed to refine the Z axis calibration between Kinect and the projector to more precisely pair the sand with the projected topographic elements.  Below are some initial views after projector calibration. We dimmed the lights in the room, which gave the sandbox a luminescent appearance.

* For background information on RawViewer and Projector Calibration, see the step-by-step directions from the UC Davis project.

While the initial tests after projector calibration appeared accurate topographically, we didn't feel the look of the sand compared well with what we were seeing online. We decided to add more water to the mixture to allow for shaping the sand in greater detail.

Below are photos after the water is mixed in. Charlie is seen working with a small disc during the projector calibration process. And because word spread quickly that the sandbox was near completion, we had our first class visit. Preschoolers came in to explore the sandbox, learn a little about topography, and receive an introduction to PIRL.

Where do we go from here? There are still some issues to work out with the software, including the introduction of fluid water and lava simulation, which requires the correct video graphics driver. In addition, we are currently connected via VGA, which will be swapped out for HDMI next week.