Robots, junk and art
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Monthly Archives: August 2013
Education’s Death Valley
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley.html
Cargo-Bot
iPad puzzle game to teach kids programming
The object of Cargo-bot is to write programs that control a robotic arm to move, sort, and stack colored crates. The computer language is a simple instruction set consisting of of squares that tell the arm which direction to move, and whether or not to perform an action based on the color of the crate. You write the programs by dragging and dropping the instruction squares into a sequence that causes the arm to perform the assigned task. You can also write programs that execute other programs you’ve written. (This is important because each program has space for just 8 squares, so you need to be able to write efficient code to complete the challenges). The challenges start out easy but become maddeningly difficult as you progress. With subroutines, if-then statements, and plenty of opportunities to practice debugging, it’s a good way to get kids to think like a programmer. You can also record a video of your program in action and share it to YouTube.
Code Academy
Learn to code interactively, for free.
Tim Hinkin
A true maker …
- The secret life of machines
- Homemade simulator rides
- Safebreaking
- Whack a banker
- Rubberworld Hunkins experiments
- The Under The Pier Show
- The anthropologists fund raising ritual
- Giant cameras
- Vulgar waterclocks
- The rudiments of wisdom
- Art Apocalypse
- … and much, much more
3d printers
New York — ‘Welcome to the future!” the smiling young man says behind the desk in the storefront on Mulberry Street. Initially, you’re looking at — what, a micro toy store? A minimalist model emporium? You take in the elegantly sparse layout of objects in MakerBot’s retail outlet: all right, there’s a black helicopter there; and an old-fashioned, red-and-yellow checkerboard spaceship; and some groovy little plastic cars; and what looks like a dollhouse; and a mansion; and various multicoloured polyhedrons and cylinders and angular shapes; and, what’s this, a mock-up of a human head; and … wait, what do you mean it’s all “printed”?