You don’t have to watch episodes of Beauty and the Bolt on YouTube for very long before you clearly feel the enthusiasm for the joys of making that young co-creators Xyla and Andrew bring to their video education project. Engineering students Xyla Foxlin, studying robotics, and Andrew Dupuis, studying bio-engineering, are on a mission to bring the good word of the maker movement and its positive potential to as wide an audience as possible.
One of the great things about the maker movement is the diversity of the domains of making that it can encompass, from electronics and desktop fabrication to traditional shopcraft to crafting and home improvement. It’s a big tent with a lot of different skill sets represented. But the size of that tent can be intimidating to newcomers and those who don’t consider themselves traditional “geeks.” Xyla and Andrew are determined to teach as many people as possible, especially young people and those from different walks of life, many of the basic skills needed to be competent makers capable of realizing whatever types of projects one desires. They’re attempting to create a fun, can-do, on-demand attitude toward making that they hope will become infectious. We hope they stick with it.
So far, in their “Zero to Hero” series, Xyla and Andrew have done video intros to electronics, soldering, measuring, using drills and saws, programming Arduino, and other basic skills. They also post project videos for such things as laser-cutting snowflakes, a glowing rose nightlight, and a back-lit constellation light board.
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