Working on this final project has definitely been a challenge for me. Using Tinkercad was a little intimidating at first without any prior experience. As I began conceptualizing my lesson plan, I worried about how to connect the idea of building architectural forms in this computer program would relate to a big idea. I was also unsure about how to introduce each aspect of the project and what order if instruction and activities would be most effective to creating a meaningful lesson. I talked out my ideas with my roommate at home and they gave me advice on how I might be able to introduce each aspect of the lesson in order to cause the least amount of overwhelm or confusion for the students participating, knowing like myself, they would not have previous experience using Tinkercad. The most helpful part of this project was coming to class with my lesson plan so far and talking out my challenges and uncertainties with my partner. She helped me ground my big idea and find meaning in the project that I didn’t initially recognize as important. She pointed out aspects of the project that she thought were really meaningful and gave me support for where I could improve. This not only helped assure me that I was going in the right direction but allowed me to make adjustments to make the project more effective. In the end, I came up with a project that I think would be really enjoyable for high school kids and would help them learn a program that they could use for so many other projects in the future. I was really surprised that I was able to come up with a way to teach students something that I just learned how to use myself and in the end I hope I was successful.

This project was really difficult for me overall but I am happy with the results. I feel that using scratch in this way has allowed me to find new ways to use technology. Though my project is very basic, I was able to realize my concept successfully and was able to think of new ways to expand based on similar themes. As I went through the example projects on the scratch website, creating something with sound was interesting to me. I began to think of how that could be incorporated with my own artwork and thought of a colored pencil sketch I had done about spirituality and healing. I thought of how each chakra is in tune with a different musical note how healing for each chakra can arise from listening to that note play. I imagined it would be interesting to be able to click each chakra on my sketch and listen to the corresponding sound. After looking at the tutorial for the music and at the different controls, I came up with the simple idea where I would create a sprite as the symbol for each chakra, upload an mp3 file of healing sound for each, and program the sprite to play the sound when clicked. Though I think it would have been more successful if the sprites were lined up according to their location, I decided it would be better if they were spaced out around the background image (with information on each one in the instruction box). A problem I has was that once I clicked each symbol, the sound would not stop playing, making it impossible to listen to a second chakra sound one without the fist one still playing. Though I thought it was interesting to be able to overlap the sounds, I looked at the controls and found a “stop all sounds” control. I decided to program that control to the center drawing I did, so that when clicked, all the sounds stop.

While I was really out of my element for this project, I was glad that I invested myself fully in it and took the time to realize my concept. This project took a lot of problem-solving to find the simplest way to make the idea work. For me this project was really interesting because it allowed me to think of ways that scratch can be used for different kinds of spiritual healing and mental illnesses such as anxiety.

Check it out here : https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/265098967/#player

It was really exiting how the children were able to grasp the project so well. I was expecting a lot more difficulty and while sometimes we had to problem-solve in some situations, the bots were really successful. Though many of the motors were breaking, we kept up with making enough so that the kids got their creations working. It was really nice to see parents helping their children realize their artistic vision. While some parents were rushed or not participating, which I understand, I enjoyed seeing the adults help out. I think having one person at each station to guide the process of this project worked really well because each step required explaining and assistance. I might show kids more examples in the beginning stage so they could get different ideas of what they would make. The group functioned really well. We were all working attentively and everyone responded when someone else needed help at another station. I think I would have enjoyed to come earlier had I been able to, as I think the parents and adults were more energetic at the beginning and it would have been helpful to set up the project. Though I did make one prototype for this project, I think next time I would set up more examples for the kids to get different ideas. I tried to be really involved in the planning and pre-setup to make sure things went as efficiently as possible. On Maker Day itself, I made sure to help those who were struggling and make sure we didn’t run out of motor/battery attachments. I really just wanted to make sure everyone had a good time. It was really great overall. I think all the different stations had amazing project ideas and all the kids really enjoyed themselves.

This project was really enjoyable for me. When it was first introduced, I was a little nervous as I had struggled with Arduino in the previous project and have never used Illustrator or laser cutting before. What gravitated me to not get discouraged was that we had complete freedom in our designs. Even though I knew I didn’t know how to do every step of the process, I started out by not overwhelming myself and just focusing on the design. I started with drawing my wolf out with pencil and then figured out what parts would be the cut-out. After I did that with each side’s design I went over the parts that  would be cut out carefully with sharpie.

Once I had all my designs laid out neatly I scanned each side individually and uploaded them to photoshop. Once in photoshop I changed the contrast and levels so that the background was stark white and the cutout image was black. From there I send the files through illustrator and prepared the format so they could be uploaded to the laser cutting machine.

I knew I wanted to keep the LED lights simple, as I had spent a lot of time on the laser-cutting part of the project, so I decided to program three lights, two of which I wanted to light up at the same time. I didn’t know how to do that at first but I realized the solution was simple, I just had to make two of the LED lights extend from the same leg of the bit so they received the same programming. I planned the circuit out, compared it to the tutorial example and decided it looked like it would work. I constructed it and got discouraged when in didn’t light up but realized I was just using a dead battery.

This project was good overall. I think it was a lot like the design process of something like silk screening, where there are many steps that come together to realize a finish project that often yields unexpected outcomes. It definitely helped me to deal with each step one at a time, as to not get overwhelmed. I would want to use laser cutting in projects in the future. I could see this being a really fun project from high school students, if the laser cutting facilities were available. This project definitely requires a lot of time so I think it would also be a successful art project  if the design of the lantern was the focus with the plan to put tea lights inside instead of using Arduino. Overall I was satisfied to see my  lantern fully constructed and lighting up!

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For me this project was definitely the most complicated. I definitely struggled at the beginning because I wanted to do something with a lot of different lights and I had trouble understanding how to edit the code to get different lighting effects. I broke away from the computer for a bit and started designing the piece of art I wanted to light up. Instead of using one of my old pieces, I decided to make something original. I have been dealing with a lot of pain recently and love and faith have been what bring me through it so that is why I chose this imagery. I cut out the pieces out of construction paper, glued it together and poked holes where I wanted the lights to be.

At first I made three holes but decided to add a forth so that the LEDs would light up in the order of the crucifix. I finally found a simple code that lit each of the four lights one at a time. One I had the order sorted out, I got to work constructing my circuit. First, I sketched out the circuit plan to know where each thing would have to go. I was confused about the connections and needed to ask for help to get a circuit that would turn on as my model was not correct. Once I got an example specific to my design of the connections to the negative and positives in the right place, I was able to shift things around to get the LEDs to light up in the right order. Now came laying down my copper tape and taping down my LEDs to test out if it would light up. After staying a while after class to keep working through soldering where there were shorts in the copper tape, I got three out of the four lights to light up. After analyzing what was going on with the fourth light, I discovered it wasn’t working because I had burnt the copper tape next to it while soldering it. I took that one apart, added new tape and finally, it all lit up!

When I got to class the next time, I realized it wasn’t being as reliable and I had to press down really hard on the switch to get it to light up. I decided to take out the switch and make it a press-on button instead.  I also decided to cut out a piece of yellow cellphone onto the flame and to cover the three LEDs around the heart with red cellophane to change the color of my lights.

Working through this project, I definitely got a lot more frustrated and felt slightly more overwhelmed than I did in previous projects. I think the number of different elements that needed to come together to function properly is what made it so much more complicated than past projects. i was happy with how I went through the design steps to troubleshoot, fix problems and make improvements. I have never used programming like this so it was really nice to learn how to do so. I would be interested in doing this with way more lights but would be worried doing this in a classroom with kids because it was already really hard for us to get it to work and as rewarding as it is to work through challenges, it would be disappointing if none of the lights came on.

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FIFH WORLD

(RIP Jimmy)

This project was really exiting for me. I think it was really helpful to base the project off of someone we wanted to honor. It allowed us to connect to what we were creating on a much deeper level and share that expression with the class in a meaningful way. First, I asked myself who I wanted to honor. After gathering some colorful paper, markers, LED lights, copper tape, battery and saudering kit, I imagined a card that would be for my grandmother. Though she passed away a few years ago, I wanted to honor her memory. She was from Greece so I chose to do blue and white LED lights, the colors of the Greek flag, which worked conviently for an effective circuit where all the lights would turn on at once. From there I sketched out the New York City skyline as it was when my grandmother came to America.

Experimenting with practice circuits helped a lot to troubleshoot for this project.

For the final circuit card design, I found it helpful to map out where the battery would go, where the copper tape would go and where the lights would connect.

For the corner that would connect to the battery on the positive side by folding over, I attached a second layer of paper so I wouldn’t have to fold the front of the card. The second layer of paper could also act as a buffer so that the LED would light up when the front of the card was pressed, connecting the circuit. I was proud of my problem solving for this challenge because in the practice card I was not able to figure out how to make a switch for my circuit so it had a likelyhood of blowing out.

From there, I pasted down my copper tape, folding the corners carefully so that I wouldn’t have to sauder the corners and the functionality could be more reliable and built a pocket for my battery, interlacing the copper tape.

I colored in my skyline and saudered in my LEDs. When I turned it over and saw the finished project I was really pleased, the lights were super bright and reliable and the folded switch was working.

I think the most challenging part of this project was coming up with an idea that interested me that was simple enough to realize successfully.

I would be super exited to do a project like this with my future students. I think it’s really powerful to create projects inspired by personal experiences and aspects of our identities. It allows the maker to form a strong connection with what they are making and create more meaningful work because of it.

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The introduction to this project left me wondering what direction it would go in. We were put into groups and given a pile of magazines which left open possibility for visual inspiration from flipping through the images. After looking at a few pages, I stumbled upon these long image strips and immediately thought of a carroussel of moving pictures.

I shared with the rest of my group that it would be cool to make a wheel attached to the motor that spun the images to tell a story almost. From there, we asked ourselves how to bring this idea to fruition. We imagined how to best construct the wheel and how we could successfully attach it to the motor. We thought about poking something into the spinning part of the motor to serve as a base. We then would construct some kind of wheel off of that and paste the images around it. We settled on a cork which we poked into the spinning part of the motor. the cork was attached to a plastic wheel, as it fit perfectly in the hole of the plastic piece, and we taped popsicle sticks to it to create the image reel’s diameters and create a large circumference to display the images on.

From there, we created a study base to hold the motor itself up straight and cut cardboard strips to support the image strips we cut from the magazine. We had the idea to bend LED lights in order to more easily attach the image wheel to the popsicle sticks at a perpendicular angle.

From creating this moving image reel and sharing it with the class, I learned that our inspiration came from an early type of animation called a Zoetrope. This project definitely came with some challenges. While the wheel did successfully spin at first, as it was manipulated more it began to lean to one side. To combat this problem we thought we would try to add more weight to the center of construction. We also tried adding binder clips to four opposing sides of the wheel to balance out the weight. To create more weight in the center, we added a cup to the apex of our construction and found some vintage styled images to create yet a third ring of moving images.

In the end, it would be really cool to make a more precise and therefor effective moving images wheel but for this project it was interesting to learn a new way to use the motor in our designs. It was eye-opening to see the different ideas people came up with for their moving images. This gave me new ideas about teaching art and I connected it to a text we read by Gude explaining how important delaying closure is for activities. Sometimes its really exiting to not knowing where you are going when you engage in a project and not having a set goal. As we went through this project, it was definitely most effective to stay open to the possibility of creativity.

This project was very enjoyable for me. It definitely helped to know what direction to go in from the demonstration at the beginning. From there, Alison and I grouped up and collected the materials we wanted. First, we just experimented by building a prototype, sharing with each other how we thought the bot might be most effective and imagining how to best go about construction. We decided that putting the motor on the inside of the cup would give it more centrifugal force. Also, placing the markers evenly away from the edge of the cup would ensure balance as bot moved. We taped everything together, put a glue stick on the motor as a propeller and the wires inside the cup and gave it a go. We were very pleased with the successful results of the prototype as it created a circular pattern of lines and markings in repetition.

Professor Kantrowitz came around and asked each group to pick a word. We chose the word “EXITED”. As we asked ourselves how to connect the word we chose to the result of the drawing bot, we imagined little adjustments to see how they would affect the drawing pattern. We decided to experiment and imagined that by replacing the glue stick propeller, we might change the pattern of the lines. We started with something lighter, a straw. From this adjustment, we evaluated that the propeller was moving too fast to cause any distinct movement in the legs, leaving us unhappy with the result.

We decided to go back to the glue stick, this time poking the motor into the center of the tube instead of on the edge. The result was that the lines the bot traced were not impeded by the weight of the propeller shifting to one side, creating full circular lines. As we evaluated the changes, we decided that these complete lines were less exiting than the broken lines created in the original design.

Looking for a solution, we shared ideas and concluded that we should try to do something to shift the balance of the propeller away from the center of the bot. We taped on a Popsicle stick to the end of the glue stick propeller and tested out our idea. We found that the lines we got from this adjustment were the most exiting we had seen so far. For aesthetic purposes we added feathers to our exited little bot.

To share our bot with the class, we got a blank sheet of paper so we could see what pattern our final construction would make. I was super pleased with the circular, vibrant and energetic lines our bot produced in the end. This project introduced a completely new idea of working with motor circuits and taught me an interesting way to make a robot through the design process of sharing, asking, imagining, building, evaluating and sharing once again. It was really enjoyable to test out different ideas and seeing what results they yielded. It was definitely a challenge when something did not work, but it was exiting to come up with successful solutions. This definitely was a new and multi-faceted project that could be used with students to teach them the diversity of results different choices can create and the use of new vocabulary in a hands-on and expressive way.