I need help! My maker projects are in chaos. Three years of designing, making and sharing 3D designs and makered projects have left my computer files and basement workshop in a mess.

I’ve always been a packrat (collector?). When I first started building computers and working in TechEd, having the right cable or spare part was important. Never throw away a functioning part because it might come in handy. As a maker, every piece of scrap and broken machine looks like raw material for future projects. The result is boxes and bins filled with enough junk to recreate the trash compactor scene in Star Wars.

Digital fabrication projects are even worse with files strewn across multiple devices, applications, folders and cloud storage platform. I recently started working with Lightroom to organize photos and realized how nice it would be to have a way to wrangle digital fabrication project files in a centralized way. I need to be able to find all assets related to a project in order to document or remix a model. I also need to teach students how to create portfolios of their maker projects.

I’ve been researching tools to help bring some order to my maker files. The diverse filetypes are challenging. Below are the many assets associated with one of my typical 3D projects.

Idea: I have lots of ideas for projects that pop in my head. If I’m lucky I will write on a scrap of paper, put in a IOS Note or OneNote notebook, or write in a paper notebook (Field Notes). Rarely ends up documented.

Sketch: A quick design sketch usually on an index card, scrap of paper or in a notebook. Rarely makes it into digital format.

Links: A 3D project usually involves a search on Thingiverse to see what is already available. Usually just keep browser tabs open with relevant websites up.

Source images: A search on google images, wikimedia and clker.com are great starting point. These images end up unsorted in my download folder. The info option on my Mac can show where I found the image. Sometimes these are screenshots 

Converted SVG: Often need to convert the source image to a SVG and frequently use online converter. SVG ends up unsorted in download folder.

Edited SVGs: The converted SVG is edited in Illustrator or Inkscape and usually involves creating multiple SVG files and variations. These usually end up on my desktop.

Tinkercad Model (link & account): SVG files are imported into Tinkercad to create a 3D model. Usually a single Tinkercad file but sometimes create duplicate for variations. File name, link and/or account info isn’t recorded locally. Can be a problem when working on STEM camp projects as model may be a different account.

Screenshots: Anywhere in the design or making process, I may take a screenshot to document a step. PNG file on desktop.

STL file: Download an STL file from Tinkercad for 3D printing which ends up in the downloads folder. May or may not have a relevant name depending on if I renamed the Tinkercad file.

Repaired STL file: STL file may need repair work or supports added using NetFabb and/or Meshmixer. Repaired STL may end up on desktop or downloads folder.

Gcode file: Gcode file for the specific printer being used. File usually ends up an SD card or downloads folder.

Physical 3D print: Majority of my 3D models are actually printed. 3D prints for current projects are moved around the house. Models can be found on the workbench, in pockets, backpacks and usually end up piled together in various bins and boxes.

Physical print failures: Failed prints usually have a story to tell and can be found on the workbench. Usually end up in failed parts boxes for future projects/articles and as test materials for various post-processing techniques.

Iterations: Physical prints frequently highlight issues with the design and all of the above steps can have multiple iterations. Sometimes overwriting previous versions.

Photos: Photos of projects are stored on my phone/camera and accessed from there. Moved to computer once phone fills up where they mainly are stored in folders by year with all the other family photos.

Edited Photos: Photos are usually edited via app on phone and sent to whatever device I am using. Results in duplicate copy of photo in download folder or on desktop.

Video: Recently experimenting with video but don’t have typical workflow yet. So various video files and edits on various apps. YouTube is probably default location.

Thingiverse file: Publishing model is usually done via Thingiverse which requires uploading STL file and photos along with writing a description & adding metadata such as category, tags, files remixed from, print setting, etc. Written information currently stays on Thingiverse with no local record.

WordPress Blog post: Project write ups including photos are published to a WordPress.com blog with no local backup of content.

Social Media: Each of the above steps might be documented at various points on social media. Mainly Instagram and Twitter. No local storage of these microblogs, journaling type posts.

If you have ideas or links that might be helpful to bring order to my maker projects, please leave a comment or contact me on Twitter @DesignMakeTeach. I would love to learn how you keep your maker projects organized.

(Note: This is a repost from my blog DesignMakeTeach.com but I still need help on organizing my own maker projects and helping students organize theirs.)

Students program a Parrot Rolling Spider minidrone to complete a simple objective Edcamp New Jersey on November 19, 2016. Photo credit: Rebecca McLelland-Crawley.

We have been using the now-discontinued Parrot Rolling Spider Minidrones in my district for a few years now. They do not require FAA registration, are relatively inexpensive, amazingly durable, easy to program and fun to fly.  As you can see in the photo at left, these devices can really captivate and engage learners of all ages as they explore the basics of coding. Consequently, they are very popular with educators, after-school programs, and kids of all ages.

While they can be flown via the provided app for fun, their popularity as educational tools to help teach coding is the result of a a great, free iOS app called Tickle. As a result, many schools and educators have built lessons and even entire units & programs utilizing these devices.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, in the wonderful world of Edtech Economics, the “free” applications we teachers love so much have a long history of eventually either a) starting to charge for their service or b) going away entirely. Unfortunately, the latter scenario just played out: as of October 2016, the Tickle app no longer supports Parrot minidrones, including the Rolling Spider.

Users everywhere are now discovering that Tickle will no longer be able to create programs for their beloved Parrot minidrones. (Existing code will still work / can be modified, and, the v4.0 release of the app is entirely separate from the older version, so if people never upgrade, they will be fine.)

I know all this because it happened to me last night.

My Parrot Minidrone Squadron, with 3D printed rotor guards. I like these guards better than the wheels the drones come with, even though the guards provide less protection from drops and crashes. Tradeoffs, people. Tradeoffs.

In a mild panic, I started searching to find out what was going on and quickly discovered users complaining via the Tickle in-app support board and on Twitter. Fortunately, I easily located information about Parrot’s Educational offerings and their K-12 EDU Guide (.pdf). In it, I saw they referenced Tynker, an outstanding (and formerly free) web platform for learning to code. In desperation, and fully prepared to have to pay something, I downloaded the app and started checking it out. (Note: the .PDF linked above also refers to Tickle, so, whatever happened between these two companies was likely a fairly recent development.)

Well, there’s a happy ending to this story – at least for now.

Not only does the Tynker App (for iOS and Android) support Parrot minidrones, for FREE, its offering is actually very compelling and in many ways an upgrade to Tickle. Check out these screenshots:

The Tynker App programming interface (iOS). Note the capabilities and commands. Super cool!

Drone support is built in and these programs can be studied, dissected and easily modified.

This is the “Air Controller” program – coding view. It’s more complicated than Tickle, but understandably so when you consider its capabilities.

This is the “Air Controller” program in operation. Pressing each button commands the drone to perform the selected task. Slick!

So, I’m happy, for now, and everyone who uses a Parrot Minidrone in school will be too, once they find out about Tynker’s offering.

But here’s the thing: the Tynker app is free.

For now.

So, what will happen if scores of educators adopt Tynker, and, for whatever reason, Tynker decides to start charging for it at some point?

Yeah. Exactly.

It’s simple economics, folks. These organizations are in business to make profit. It’s unrealistic and unfair for us to expect corporations to provide free versions of their paid programs for educational use. When they do, it’s fantastic! But anyone that builds lessons or units around any free program or online service must always remember to have a Plan B … just in case!

Note: this entry was cross-posted on my Fablearn Fellows blog.

In 1988 I found this video at SFMOMA. I’ve been using it in classes every year, every since. It is the precursor to OK Go’s wonderful performance pieces. They are resonant of maker curiosity……performance well choreographed with color, anticipation, and narrative….and physics!

Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) – Peter Fischli & David Weiss
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/88.35#artwork-info
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094300/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt
https://vimeo.com/175928976 – For a download!

And the terrific work of OK Go
http://okgo.net/category/videos/
Look up “The Writings on the Wall” and “This Too Shall Pass”

Seymour Papert of the MIT Media Lab, whose ideas strongly influenced the maker movement, was among the first to propose that computers could be powerful tools to support learning, allowing kids to express themselves in meaningful ways and to reflect on their own thinking process while creating programs.

In his speech at the the World Conference on Computers in Education, in 1990, Papert reflected on the relationship between political and epistemological aspects of educational paradigms, using a Perestroika metaphor to discuss resistance to change in education. In his talk, Papert poses the distinction between what he called megachanges – real, structural changes -, and incremental evolution. He suggests that, similar to what happened in the early days of Perestroika, educational reformers try to make incremental changes in schools, hoping that they will eventually lead to a new transformed and well functioning educational system. But, in his view, these reforms require a restructuration of the conceptual and administrative organization of education in much deeper and radical ways, which involves rethinking educator’s role, traditional curriculum organization and school’s bureaucracy.

As a strong activist for the transforming potential of computers in the learning process, Papert imagined that technologies could play an important role to drive megachanges in education by providing opportunities for learners to develop knowledge and express themselves by doing.

A while ago, trying to understand the reasons leading some countries to incorporate programming in their schools’ curricula, I was looking at the situation in the United Kingdom and much of what I read  supported teaching programming as a way to ease a shortage of workers in IT areas in the near future [e.g. 1, 2, 3]. So, in the country’s future economy, programming would be a valuable skill and for that reason it should be taught in schools. As in the UK, many countries in the world are making efforts to bring programming to their schools for this same reason. In my own country, Brazil, I’ve been seeing new independent programming schools popping up everywhere, trying to attract students by stating that besides the benefits of formal reasoning developed through programming, acquiring these skills could be a strong professional advantage for the future. In both cases, a lot is said about what should be taught, and very little about how it should be learned.

Although today there are many teachers concerned with new ways to use computers to make structural changes in our systems, it’s evident that marketplace forces still drive (and will keep driving) the future of education. The introduction of computers in schools took place many years ago and, still, nothing has really changed. Can we expect the same with the introduction of programming curricula?

While there is no intention to make any changes in the way we use computers at schools – and intention is the key aspect to megachanges – programming activities only will be a way to achieve technical skills, good examples of incremental evolution. Today, having great programming tools and robotics kits designed to support creative expression and new relationships with the learning process, this discussion should be pushed towards other directions: while achieving important technical skills, kids should have the opportunity to use computers to express their creativity and develop new learning attitudes, in exploration processes driven by personal interests. But who will take up the cause of this megachange?

As Papert states, paradoxically, “technology should be the instrument for the achievement of a less technical form of education”, since “having a strong technical infrastructure allows the system to be less technical in its methodology”. These shifts in the use of technology, however, will only happen if teachers are intentional on their goals and, in this sense, more attention should be put on the approaches to introduce programming for kids – approaches that have the clear intention to change the relationship of learners and learning, and that doesn’t focus only in the achievement of technical skills and in the development of abstract thinking. At this moment, when programming is being introduced in many schools, considering the possibilities brought by the use of computers to create meaningful learning experiences – although an old idea –  is more important than ever before, and should be at the forefront of the educational debate by us, teachers.

One important question to be posed is why, almost 30 years later, we are still talking about ways to shift this trend. While having much more questions than answers, I would like to emphasize the importance of reflecting on the underlying structures guiding educational decisions, and on our role as teachers to be conscious and critical when confronted with new educational technologies and methodologies.

References

Not sure if you all saw this, but we love Dale’s guide to starting up a Makers Space.  Here it is.

makerspaceguide

My instant reaction was to pause, and reflect on what is my “professional”, since the roles I play in my life, educator, studio artist, mother, curious person, all seem to meld together……in what seems to be a constant quest for a fully integrated life, I suppose.

Back to the original question – This experience has pushed me to focus my energies on the importance of fully integrating art and design into a STEM curriculum. It is crucial to not just “integrate” the arts into STEM, but teach the history and practice of the arts from within the curriculum – a full partner – STEAM education. I am lucky enough to have a couple of programs here in the school district that already are built on a STEAM foundation, but the arts still need to be more robust, to become a full partner with the rest.

I am also going to ramp up my own knowledge and use of programming into my studio practice, with the use of Processing and Java Script, in particular Paper.js. That experience will help inform the building of interdisciplinary teams here at school.

How is it possible to keep such gorgeous news unpublished for about two months? By the time I wrote this blog post, I tried to find the reason to why I didn’t release such good news in advance. Oops, I don’t have any reason in mind! Wait-wait, I get one! Over the past two months, I was digesting and ruminating what it means to be selected among 20 fellows out of 200 applicants from 30 different countries. I couldn’t still understand this not because I didn’t believe it but because it’s unbelievable to represent my continent, Africa, this year together with another fellow, Koffi Dodji Honou, from Senegal.

FabLearn Fellow, Cohort 2016-2017

What is FabLearn?

Led by Stanford University Assistant Professor, Paulo Blikstein, “FabLearn [is a fellowship program at Sandford University that] disseminates ideas, best practices and resources to support an international community of educators, researchers and policy makers committed to integrating the principles of educational makerspaces and constructionist learning into formal and informal K-12 education.”

The decisions about selected fellows were announced in the month of September 2016, close to the annual conference of FabLearn. Fellows have been invited to attend a diversity in making themed conference which held at Stanford University for three days, from October 14-16, 2016. Traveling to the U.S. was an experience I have ever had. I learned a lot from researchers, educators, makers, and policymakers. Prior to the conference, I participated in the 2-day workshops on Designing Making Experience at Castilleja School, Palo Alto.

Designing Making Experiences led by Aaron Vanderwerff  from Lighthouse Community Charter School, Oakland, and Angi Chau from Castilleja School, Palo Alto, both in California, USA.

The conference was inaugurated on Friday, October 14, 2014, with a keynote by Leah Buechley who is the developer of the LilyPad Arduino toolkit.

I met great minded people and learned from them the reason why I have to join maker movement.  Many thanks to FabLearn organizers who made it possible for fellows to join the annual conference of FabLearn. During the conference, I met family members from International Development Innovation Network (IDIN ). What’s fantastic #IDINetwork!

The picture above reveals that FabLearn made it possible for folks from IDINetwork to meet. Left to the right drawing zigzag line from front to the back is Mustafa Naseem, Molly Rubenstein, Alphonse Habyarimana, Koffi Dodji Honou, Arvind Badrinarayanan, Pedro Reynolds-Cuellar, Deborah Tien, Johana Sanabria, Umar Shehzad , Aggrey Mokaya, and Manon Woringer who is an Electronics Fellow at the IDIN-supported Twende Innovation Center in Arusha, Tanzania.

Nobody can believe how it would be possible to be part of two incredible international organizations in only less than three months.

Hang in there for more updates to come:)

With Edith Ackermann centerstage, what can start out as a question about keychains can quickly turn into a “masterclass in education theory”.  To get the full context, check out Dr. Ackermann’s brilliant lecture at the 2016 FabLearn Conference here (the part about keychains and designing with purpose starts around minute 54).  So how do we go from keychains to Piaget to Minsky to Papert?  Well, as Ackermann suggests, it’s a “process of abstraction”.  

There’s a lot to unwrap in what she says in this brief seven or eight minutes, and I’m not going to be able to cover the scope or depth it deserves.  Rather, I’d like to discuss the conversation through a lens that I hope to explore more as a FabLearn Fellow, which is what happens during the process of making.  During the conversation, Ackermann explains that “constructing new knowledge is about the process of abstraction – from concrete to abstract”.  So whatever a student makes, whether it’s a keychain that lights up or a paper circuit, students are thrust into abstraction by way of creation.  In asking students to make a keychain we are also asking them to deconstruct that keychain in their mind so that they can re-contextualize/re-create it.

Thus it’s through the process of making and design that students internalize new experiences and form new knowledge.  But, as Ackermann explains, “knowledge is (derived from) experience, and actively constructed and re-constructed by subjects in interaction with their worlds” (Ackermann 2007).  As students create and are given new projects – let’s say they move from making a keychain that lights up to making a paper circuit with LEDs – they encounter new challenges and are forced to confront their assumptions about their world.  This could be that the LEDs on their paper circuit don’t light up.  Then the student must ask herself why the LEDs aren’t lighting, which causes her to reexamine what assumptions she’s made.  The student may have to investigate what she knows about the circuitry and electric current.  As Ackermann explains, this is the process of creating cognitive invariants, or as she explains by quoting Marvin Minsky, “to understand something means to understand it in three ways”.

One could even examine the process of making and design outside of the context of academic learning, and instead, focus on the psychological and therapeutic implications of it.  I hope to explore this more in future blog posts.  But just to scratch the surface, I wonder how can the process of making and design challenge core assumptions students make about themselves?  For example, if a student encounters a problem, and in turn expresses the belief that she can’t do it, how can we as teachers encourage her to challenge this fixed assumption?  How can we allow her to explore different choices in response to frustration, and failure, and in turn, weigh the pros and cons of these choices?

Thus, the keychain is what Ackermann calls an “intermediary object” standing in place of the student’s internalized experience.  This is what Ackermann calls “intelligent form-making, turning ideas into a tangible artifact”.  Of course, when there is something that becomes tangible, it can be shared.  It’s in these sharing moments that we as teachers and co-learners find ourselves with an opportunity to interface with the internal learning process of our students, gaining a window into how they construct knowledge and their emotional relationship to learning.