3 Key Qualities for a School Makerspace
The blend of people, process, and place that makes a school makerspace successful.
makerclassroom
Why Educators Love Maker Faire 2013
Teachers love Maker Faire because they see how much it means to engage their students as makers. For Teacher Appreciation Week, we want to salute educators who bring the Maker movement to kids in schools and in after-school programs. We believe making has the power to transform education and develop the potential of every child to create and innovate. Getting making into schools can be difficult so we’re particularly happy to applaud the efforts of pioneering educators who are leading the way. It’s important that these pioneers realize that they’re not alone.
Electric Kart in Your School?
Chad’s a former student of mine who has been doing electric car projects for about six years now. On seeing The Cap Kart project, he says:
If you were to start an electric vehicle school program, I would start by following these guidelines to build an electric go-kart! It looks like they got everything donated and therefore kept the overhead down. After doing this you could challenge other schools in the area to a race. Also, this would be a great stepping stone for moving towards a full vehicle!!
Get started in accurate design with Sketchup
Sketchup is an easy-to-learn program for 3D modeling. While it gives you an easy way to design creatively, it is a bit more challening to design accurately. If you are going to make physical models of your designs, you will need to make them small enough to fit on the tool that will make the part. You can send the 3D models to a number of toos, including the ShopBot, CNC Mill and MakerBot, among others.
If you follow these pretty easy steps, you can get yourself and your students into the habit of designing accurately dimensioned objects. Here is a set of screenshots and a sample file that show the steps of this process.
