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.

The Belonio stove

The Belonio stove

Alexis Belonio is an associate professor in agricultural engineering at the Central Philippine University of Iloilo City. In 2008 he received a Rolex Award for Enterprise for a rice-husk-burning stove he designed. Belonio’s stove is not complicated, either mechanically or conceptually: A columnar metal burner with the addition of a small intake fan at the base to tip the stoichiometry of combustion towards oxidation, giving a blue, clean, efficient flame that leaves little or no residue. Traditional rice husk burners, by contrast, do not have this forced-air feature and produce a yellow, dirty, inefficient flame that leaves tar behind. The upshot is more efficient use of rice husk biomass and greatly reduced pollution from the many rice-husk burners in use today.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan6

CD drive scrounged junkbots

After exploring the innards of our CD drives, students in my robotics class are coming up with some clever junkbots. Here are a few of the first ones, more to come as they evolve.As the school year begins, how do you help students understand the basics of electricity, manufacturing, and creating original devices? As a student, what are the best projects for the start of the semester or school year to get you excited to go deeper and learn more?

Continue Reading Chris Connors
How-To: Free DIY battery holders

How-To: Free DIY battery holders

In this project, we’ll make battery packs essentially for free. If you need a lot, make a lot. If you need more voltage, add on more cells with couplers. If participants and students in your workshop or class all make their own, they can do it together, maybe even doing a manufacturing project to create many for future use.

Continue Reading Chris Connors8
Kids build the village of Hutopolis

Kids build the village of Hutopolis

Gather a group of potentially bored kids in an open space with tools and a heap of sawmill scraps, add summer vacation and what do you have? Hutopolis!

A village of eight huts was constructed during two weeks in July from timber slabs from an area sawmill, salvaged wood and found items. Each hut is different, based on the children’s design, with odd angles and shapes, rooftop lookout posts, windows, doors, ladders and a fire pit under a homemade shelter in the village center.

Continue Reading Chris Connors10
Infernal machines as high art

Infernal machines as high art

Disclaimer: We at the MAKE blog do not advocate the construction or operation of chariots with giant whirling blades to chop people into bits, even if they are very rude. Nor, in general, do we like to celebrate the creation of unstoppable killing machines. Or even stoppable ones, for that matter. But we’re prepared to […]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan2
Theo Gray on electrochemical machining

Theo Gray on electrochemical machining

In this Boing Boing Video, PopSci columnist and author of the splendid and high-recommend Theo Gray’s Mad Science, explains how electrochemical machining (ECM) works and shows off a rig he put together to do ECM in his shop. The entire how-to can be found at popsci.com. Carve Steel with Saltwater, Electricity and a Tin Earring […]

Continue Reading Gareth Branwyn