Last week at the Duxbury Student Union, Lee Pulis and I held a workshop on using trash to learn about electricity, design and mechanical devices. We used CD drives from old computers. Inside the drives we found motors, gears, switches, and lots of interesting looking stuff. The main tools were small phillips head screwdrivers and […]
John created a scrolling game by using Scratch. By using the GUI based programming environment, he was able to create his own version of Mario. The game isn’t fully complete, but it has a lot of good going for it. You can play his game by visiting the project’s page on the Scratch site. If […]
Yesterday I bought the first cellphone of my life. I had been using the junker phone that my niece lost two years ago when she was in 7th grade. It resurfaced when she finally cleaned her closet. The phone was already on the plan and they had replaced it Tmobile was going to charge to […]
NubTalks is a bimonthly series of talks. They are held in the Cambridge area and cover a diverse set of topics. If you can’t get there in person, feel free to download the audio or video and join in at your leisure. This week there are two discussions. Since this is a new series, they […]
There are lots of reasons why we should be weaning our society off of carbon based fossil fuels and moving to sustainable, renewable fuels. Pick which ever reason you like and get to work: Security: Do we need to barricade solar panels and wind mills like nuclear power plants? Decentralized power: If a corporation owns […]
AskPang has an thoughtful reflection on Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge: Production in the Digital Age, a conference presented by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Tinkering isn’t so much a specific set of technical skills: there tends to be a pretty instrumental view of knowledge. You pick up just enough knowledge […]
Tim Writes: As a way to support my son’s interest in technology and supplement what is, except for computer class, an almost tech-free school experience, we have created a web show called WREXLabs (Reverse Engineering eXperimental Labs (the W is silent)), in which we take things apart to see how they work. We’ve got three […]
