Idea born of observing students feeling like they had failed when they saw an error message, and having difficulty persuading them that breaking things is often so much better for learning than getting it right the first time. With this, getting an error is a win! As it should be. Download below, design and execution by my colleague Becca…

Maker Stickers! I’m so excited about this. 🙂 It started with being dissatisfied with the difference between the beautifully designed craft supply storage that we drool over on craft blogs, and how electronics components are stored. All those little drawers may be brilliantly categorized, alongside handmade gadgets to measure resistors or light up drawers to find components, but goodness,…

I’m working on a notebook about tides and tidepools with a Spark Core inside to retrieve data about the latest tide levels. It works, hooray! (I say working on because I’m still adding to the notebook, which documents me learning both about tides and about the technical details of getting the wifi and electronics parts…

I want a Makey Makey for remote hugs. I’m using Tom Igoe’s term “remote hugs” for paired devices that communicate a simple message at a distance. Like these adorable lamps, pillows connected to a loved one’s heartbeat, or long-distance electronic scrapbooks. A simple remotely-connected button can be amazingly emotionally expressive when the meaning is personalized…

Spirogator is now online and downloadable. It’s an application designed as a math, science, and art inquiry activity. You can use it to play with digital “spirograph” patterns, export those patterns, or export and fabricate the gears themselves to make physical patterns on paper. More here.

Concept: aesthetic investment. Motivation through making something your own, getting it just right in look and feel. I was thinking about this in the context of feeling increasingly excited about Le Fonduephone after I’d put in some time cleaning the space (the projected environment) and improving the layout and look. Being able to make something…

Le Fonduephone update: mouse-draggable projected fruit, application written in Processing. These are just photoshopped web images of fruit I used as a test, looks surprisingly nice though. I think it’s the color that works well.

I’m making a fork with IR LEDs for Le Fonduephone, so it can be tracked and used to pick up and move the projected fruit. Press-fit battery holder and conductive paint in laser cut traces techniques from Hannah Perner-Wilson’s Kit of No Parts. So many iterations but I think I’ve figured out a better way…