The finished play table I first blogged about last Friday. If you look close you can see some screw holes on the top. I used short 1″ #8 wood screws to get everything together…but when I put the pieces together, I found the fit snug enough that I didn’t need the screws. I’ve included an interior shot to give you some picture of the joinery.
Remember, you can pick up a Google Sketch Up Model of this project here.
Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this weekend.
Filed under Furniture, This Week In the Shop, Workshop
One of the neat challenges in designing furniture (and teaching) is the need to get outside yourself in the middle of a private act. I think putting oneself in another’s shoes, no matter the context, is one of the most civilizing things humans can do. Because before I was a father, before I was a husband, before teacher, and before I was a craftsperson, I was a selfish, selfish toddler. And if you ask my wife, the toddler in me isn’t that far below the surface.
When I designed my Simple Bench, I had one eye on my eventual audience. I can’t say that my design is unique as a quick look around Google or Etsy.com proves otherwise. My design, unlike a lot of others, can be built from one 6′ pine board and leaves a whole lot of details up to the builder. It’s flexible.
The Kid’s Bed Frame design has its own flexibility also. My son is a huge fan of trains, especially a certain blue train that talks. Please don’t say his name. The boy can hear you and I will have to make some silly noises and read a bunch of books. Seriously. Stop even thinking his name.
So when the boy asked for a new bed, I took the opportunity to get outside myself and my wants and built him a train bed. It’s what he wanted. I used the Simple Bed Frame as a base, then cut out the sides, front and roof/shelf from 1/2″ plywood. A quick couple of coats of paint and boom! Done.
Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this gorgeous Labor Day.
Filed under This Week In the Shop
As my students have become more competent with tools in the past few years (and cripes, does it feel weird to say years…) I’ve gotten the chance to think: what would be really cool to do next? What would be just flat out awesome?
Here’s my answer: wood & lino prints designed by the student, for the students work. My summer crew churned out about 30 different wood projects and many pieces deserved something special. In the third week, I took the plunge and bought $80 worth of tools. We spent the next few weeks cutting as many designs as we could and experimenting with the results.
Search block printing at www.instructables.com for how-to guides.
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this week.
Students with autism, people with neurological disorders and people with two eyes and ears and a brain often need a place to talk. For my students with autism, the act of conversation can be harrowing, heartwrenching and terrifying. On a good day. My students often must master sitting in one place, labeling the world with words and comprehending the speech of others. Once this is done, maybe they can open themselves to the vulnerability, the hurt, the anguish and the ecstasy of a conversation. I’m known as a loquaciousness guy, but make no bones about it. A true conversation with those I love – my wife, my sons, my brothers, my father or oh, god, my mother – fills me with terror. I must face the person in the mirror, flaws and all. And my partner will witness it. I go through my life in a series of small talks, in terror of the moment it all falls down and I must converse with the ones I love. I can only imagine the world my students bravely navigate in everyday.
And I, the onery cuss I am, conceived and helped build them a bench to have those conversations. This is the conversation bench. I can’t take credit for the design. These types of benches were popular in Victorian times. A particular student of mine — the student with a wrench in his pocket, a messy shock of brown hair, a mass of freckles, snotty nose and the gleaming eye of one who knows so much but needs just as much — helped in every step of the process. He picked out the busted up chairs, broke them apart, screwed the mess together and sanded like a demon. I finished it myself because I used oil-based finishes. The student decided to hold a contest – he made clay coins and hid them around the schoolhouse. When found, they have been turned in for the reward.
The reward is a conversation – a real, honest-to-self, conversation. On politics, baseball, Airsoft guns, video games, NASCAR or whatever. Just a conversation. A reward, a terrifying reward, for a job well done.
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down. Have a nice conversation this week.
Two projects really took off this summer – chalkboard slates and boomerangs. The boomerangs, of course, took off a little bit more.
Back in the fall I built a bike barn. It’s more of a third-world shanty, but it housed the bikes and kept them sort of organized. Either way, I picked up a large number of cedar shingles as a roofing material. Time got away from me – I never roofed the barn. Instead, I used the shingles to create these cool little chalkboard slates. I used an exterior paint as primer, then covered them in green chalkboard paint. A couple of decorative touches later…
My second big project has been an exploration of flight using boomerangs. The summer program is themed around continents. I got stuck with Australia. Hence, boomerangs. Here’s a flight test of our third or fourth iteration of salvaged plywood boomerangs. Pick up the pattern here.
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this weekend.
Filed under Classroom Project, This Week In the Classroom
This spring, a sweet little book fell into my hands. Nina Tolstrup, an UK designer (she owns studiomama, a design firm). Her projects include lamps, scooters, wall planters, book ends and card holders – all out of One Block of Wood.
Ms. Tolstrup’s eye for function and style dovetails nicely with her habits of simplicity. While not every project is truly made from one piece of wood, each project involves a minimum of cuts and a maximum of flexibility. As a woodworker, I appreciate her style – as a teacher, I appreciate her clear directions, beautiful visuals and simple construction. I’ve used the little handbook a lot this summer – and students have been bringing home all sorts of handmade, kidmade, pridefound stuff. If you are looking for a crafts-centered introduction to the world of woodworking, take a little spin through Ms. Tolstrup’s plain-spoken world.
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this weekend.
Filed under Book Review, Classroom Project, This Week In the Classroom
A few shots of the shutter table project. My students & I created these (there were four completed tables) tables using up-cycled window shutters & salvaged fence posts. Finished with spar urethane. Pocket hole joinery throughout.
This year was a big year in the STEaMworks (STEM focus, art driven, work/project centered: the STEaMworks), my self-styled Maker classroom. We (and the Math/Sci Team) built a lot of projects: rockets, rocket cars, derby cars, catapults, simple robots, box-making, bench-making, bridge-building, sail-testing, music making, spirographs, pendulums, 3D prototyping, CAD models, Arduino projects, Alice computer programming, Art Cars, shed construction, a digital STEM Fair and more. I’ve just typed that up and still can’t believe it! Nine months and so much sweat, math, science, art and tears. How did we (my co-workers and rock-solid team, my students and my very understanding family) do it?
With these ten tools!
10. A bank of computers
Computers don’t actually make a Maker classroom, computer access does. In the past to years, I’ve developed an instinct, capability and ability to integrate the technology into our science and math-based classroom activities. Not every project needs computer (for example, the spirograph build) but many projects can be enhanced with its use. My students use a computer almost everyday; researching the day’s project, finding working examples and interactive demonstrations online or better yet, actively engaging with their small corner of the online world. A Maker’s classroom without computers can still work, but becomes harder to facilitate.
9. Alice Programming Environment
Currently in beta, developed in part by Randy Pausch and sponsered by Electronic Arts, the Alice Programming Environment provides a free, useful sandbox for students to learn the basics of computer programming. No, its not a powerful, high-level language like Python, nor does it have many applications outside of a the program itself (like say, Arduino’s sketchpad) but students learn logical thinking, loops, conditional structures and the like. This high-level of abstract thinking immediately transfers to other areas of life. My students often have to use conditional structures when planning a get-together (if I invite John and he doesn’t like Stacy then I can invite one OR the other) or completing multi-step, sequential projects (finish step 1, move on to step 2, check during step 3, go back to step 1). This type of abstract thinking comes naturally with age and cognitive development. When you teach a population challenged by exectutive functions like I do, any tool which allows students to practice these skills in an explicit way gets on my personal top ten.
8. Google Sketch Up
If you are looking for the most bang for your buck, find a way to incorporate Google Sketch Up in your room. I use GSU8 as a baithook, as a reward for strong academic performance, as a product creator, a academic break activity, as a curriculum enhancer, as the “cool” homework, as “can you believe this, parent? Look how competent your child is!”-bragging rights maker. I bait the kid with computer time and hook’m into learning geometry concepts, I reward twenty mulitplication problems with five minutes of worktime. My students create castles and learn spatial skills placing firing arcs from the catapults. My students create designs for headphone holders and houses and Borgian libraries. My students thrown tantrums and ten minutes designing furniture calms them down. My students turn in homework when I say the fateful words, “build it on Sketch Up”. My parents shake their heads in disbelief and new wonder. Familiarity with a program like GSU translates to coursework in college, into certificates in industry, into a career.
Perimeter/Area/Polygon Exercise in Google Sketch Up
Bang for your buck.
7. The support of community experts
Despite what my students may think about me, I don’t know everything. But I know a lot of people who do, and if I don’t, I know people who know a guy. Community experts mean I can do more with less and I can do more than I know how to do. I just have to ask and listen. I just become a facilitator, rather than a traditional teacher, for my own kiddos. I get the opportunity to occupy a different, more equitable and just as powerful space. My classroom thrives.
For those in Houston, look out for my Community Watch tag. I try to give credit when credit is due.
6. The woodworking tool box
Last summer, I started working on this toolbox. It holds various hammers, chisels, squares, sliding bevels, saws, tools and supplies for four to six students to build nearly anything with wood. This box contains magic. Absolute magic. If I can’t make it with the contents of this box…
…then it is beyond the scope my middle school curriculum.
5. A blog
Once a student is done listening to a lecture, performing an experiment, finding a solution and wrestling with a problem the student must process their new-found knowledge. Communication – whether short answer on a test, long essay on a bulletin board or oral presentation – provides the best opportunity for a teacher to evaluate their student’s learning progress. Student-centered blogs provide a quicker turnaround, leverage a student’s love of technology, allow practice zones for literacy skills, support multimedia integration and boost parental engagement all at the same time. The Math/Sci program produced roughly 80 posts this year. Some 2000 page views. We had twenty students contribute to these articles. That’s four essays on math/science learning per child. I teach science…but my kids can write. That’s a whole lotta communication.
4. A team of expert, engaged, bad-mamma-jamma professional educators
In the words of Arlo Guthrie – “One man singing a bar of Alice’s Resturant, then that man’s crazy. Three men singing it…that’s a movement”. Teaching is an art, a craft and a sweet science. Artist need muses, craftsmen need tools, sweat and wood. And boxers need to be knocked around a little to “season them”. If you do this alone, you burn out. You do this with a crew of people you can rely on, you change the world.
And I’ve gotta helluva movement marching with me.
3. Eyes and Ears
I carry a camera with me at all times. The camera records my students’ smile, my students’ learning, my students’ simple moments of success. If I don’t record it, I don’t share it, I don’t put it in my students hands and say “Remember this. This is important,” then it didn’t happen. The camera preserves my students’ success.
My colleagues use the discontinued Flip cameras to record video. We edit the video in MovieMaker and move it over to a YouTube channel. Other teachers can see our work, parents can look over our shoulder, the boss-upstairs can say “this is what our teachers do.” My eyes and ears give context and visual ooomph to any project I can develop.
2. WD-40, Hot Glue, Vice Grips & Duct Tape
Use them in this order. Always works.
1. A school which provides the space, curriculum and materials for exploration
My plea for you – especially if you are not already engaged in education – is to find a school which promotes Maker values and Maker projects and support those programs the best you can. Lend your expertise, donate used tools, put your dollars and voice behind hands-on education. Individual teachers, like myself, can only do so much inside a classroom. We need support on the streets, on our speed-dial and in the hearts of our parents. Hands-on, project-based, maker-centric education works and we need your help to get it to the next level. Keep talking, making and setting things on fire until our principals, superintendents and school boards sit up and take notice.
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this weekend.
I ended the year with an exploration of music. I used xylophones, pendulums and windchimes to explore frequency, wavelenght, pitch, volume, etc. I probably should have found a way to incorporate physical waves, but a trip to the beach was out of the question and I met disaster in my attempts at building a wave pool. We did, however, create a pretty sweet 2×4 xylophone and frame.
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this weekend.
My very first class for TX/RX Labs (or any other place non-school) is completed. Six students (adult, this time) built benches with me for two half days. We were a little crunched on time, but we stayed late (or showed up early) and completed our benches.
I want to thank my students for coming and sticking with me, my teaching assistants (Oleg, Jim, Oz and Roland) and TX/RX Labs for having me. Most of all though, I want to thank my brother Jim. I think I’m good at this stuff – but I taught him how to build the bench at 7am…and he was teaching by 9. Jim taught me the value of hard work…because it’s the only way to keep ahead of his talent. I have a wonderful brother. So thank everyone for a wonderful class and holiday weekend.
Guess we gotta get finishing!
Make it safe & keep the rubber side down.
