Making, Arete

  I decided to add a feature to the motor to see if I could get it to work.  I added an iron core to the coiled wire, to see if the stronger magnetic field would compensat enough for the added weight to get it to spin.  It didn't work at first, but I discovered that I had stripped the wrong side of the wire, so the contacts were not timed correctly with the field.  A little twist of the wire got it working.  I could probably fiddle with the timing more to get it to run faster, but I was happy to get it working  I have soemthing a little bigger cooking for the resistor project, but I am not quite done yet.  I will update you when I have it ready....

What was challenging : oddly, I struggled most with TinkerCAD and OnShape.  I am definitely not proficient in Fusion 360, but I apparently have developed a little bit of intuition for it – and I had a hard time translating my thinking to the other apps.  I couldn’t find options and commands quickly enough to get anything done in the 1 hour time limit.  So I just decided to use Fusion 360.  Overall dimensions : 1.0” x 1.0” x 0.375” If I had more time : I would experiment with flexibility and tolerances – adjusting the size of openings and the thickness of the printed material to see if I could get it to fit multiple sizes of pencils (and maybe use less filament to save cost and time) without breaking.  How did I use materials : I picked a particular pencil to give myself a constraint to work to.  Now that I look back at the design brief, I see that I did not make it to fit any pencil – so that doesn’t meet one of the requirements of the brief.  However...

A good community provides the resources to realize a new idea.  “But they also provide a constraint.  The idea has to be within the values of the community.  This keeps us focus not on [superficial things], but on things that actually provide value and are interesting and new and dynamic and weird.”  - Hank Green Several features of maker-centered teaching and learning that have been identified by Clapp et al. (2016) are consistent with literature about apprenticeship learning, especially the broad distribution of teaching roles and active engagement in figuring things out.  In fact, situated learning/cognition (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1984), cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991), and communities of practice (Weger, 1998) can be excellent frameworks for understanding and building on emerging findings in maker education.  Moreover, the maker movement affords a really powerful opportunity to extend theori...

Education is not preparation for life.  Education is life itself. – John Dewey  1)  The basic occupation of all human beings is to become more human.  That is how Paulo Freire encapsulated humanization.  By “occupation”, I have in mind the meaning that occupational therapists ascribe to that term: the everyday things that occupy our time and give our lives meaning, including the things we want, need, and are expected to do.  For many adults, that does include jobs.  However, it also includes hobbies, leisure activities, relationships, and all sorts of other things we can do with our time (with our “one and precious life” as Anne Lamott says).  For children, their primary occupation is clear: play.  To prevent any person pursuing their basic occupation is, by definition, dehumanizing .   2)  Teaching catalyzes learning.  The legacy of behaviorism has bequeathed educators a tacit assumption that teaching causes learning....

  The primary occupation of children is play.  And they attack their occupation with joy and gusto.  To watch young children engage the world, it seems obvious that we human beings come predisposed to wonder and play; to explore, test, and modify our world - and find our own place in it.   Some grown-ups find joy and meaning in their occupations too.  But most… not so much.  In the contemporary (Western) world, work is what most people do to be able to afford the things they want to do.  And then can’t find time to do the things they want to do.    Even among those privileged enough to earn more than they need, nearly half of workers in the US do not use their vacation time , time poverty is considered a virtue, and huge numbers of people acknowledge that much of their professional effort goes into obscuring the fact that the work they do is pointless .  Among people marginalized and minoritized in our society, dehumanization occur...