Spring Semester So Far (Plus a Little Bit of Last Semester)

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Spring 2024 is already maybe the most vibrant semester in recent memory, even taking into account pre-pandemic semesters. Lots of energy in our student community, and lots of interesting projects, including our Free Little Art Gallery, for which we held an opening event where some folks dressed up for the occasion, and for which we had live music (provided by Lorenzo, a talented musician from our students community and Innovation Center regular).

Gallery Opening

We hung our 4th (or 5th?) show at the end of last week, including art from students, staff and families of staff, community organizations, other FLAGS in the U.S., and folks from a Northern California retreat center.

All the FLAG shows so far

The guest book we implemented says it all:

FLAG Guest Book

The maker-centered learning (MCL) professional development for teachers project I’ve been working on with John Pellman (Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Capital College & Career Academy) and the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) is picking up speed. We held last month’s session at a fabulous space called Community Shop Class in the Oak Park area of Sacramento.

Community Shop Class PD

For our first student-led workshop since lockdown, Rox showed folks how to make plushies.

Plushie Making

Adorable.

plushie

We’ve been flying our surveying quadcopter regularly to document construction progress on the new science building, which is coming along nicely.

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Depending on many, many variables (far outside of my control), there’s a possibility that we might be able to expand the Innovation Center into the labs and classroom spaces that will be vacated once this new building is up and running.

Leprechaun Traps!

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Leprechaun Traps

Students are making leprechaun traps in the Innovation Center today, ahead of spring break next week. Here’s Sojourner’s (Makerspace Facilitator) very lethal version:

Lethal Leprechaun Trap

Sophie (Makerspace Facilitator) even created custom chocolate bait using a combination of the laser and vacuum former!

Leprechaun Bait

A student compared the activity to kindergarten, which makes me awfully happy.

DIY Vacuum Former

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DIY channels on YouTube are a source of inspiration, and lately I’ve been watching one in which the maker creates figures and environments inspired by Sylvanian Families.

https://youtu.be/_Ti2hTKZnmE

In one episode, the maker uses a DIY vacuum former (made from a plastic jar) to create little bottles. We have a commercial thermoformer in the lab – Sophie most recently used food safe plastic to create candy molds for our holiday party, and made this lovely Nova (our space bunny mascot) lollipop.

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I thought it would be fun to prototype a little DIY version, and so set out designing it, starting with a simple box (using Makercase, certainly in the top 10 of most useful makerspace software) to which I added holes for the vacuum hose and the top surface. A couple of iterations later, all glued and clamped up.

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Though I think it would have worked fine, I decided that the grid of vacuum holes needed to be smaller, so I altered the file in Illustrator and re-cut that piece with the laser cutter.

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I hooked up the vaccum and gave it a try, sandwiching plastic between various frames and heating it with a heat gun with promising but not perfect results. What ended up working best was just heating the plastic in place with a heat gun while the vacuum was running.

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Here’s a closeup shot of the resulting mold, which is a perfectly acceptable result for a quick protoype!

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Mobile Modular Peace Pole Prototyping

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The Innovation Center is collaborating with folks from the Equity Center, the PEAC²E (Peer Engagement for Achievement, Culture, Connection and Excellence) program, and Diane Carlson (Sociology) on a Peace Pole project. One of the many ideas that has emerged from the collaboration is to create a modular mobile “peace pole platform,” essentially a design specification and a set of affordances that will enable members of the college community – disciplines, student groups, classes, anybody – to create art and interactive content for display.

Peace Pole Platform Prototype Planning

Spent the day yesterday in the Innovation Center (I love having the lab to myself and locking in to the rapid prototyping flow), crafting a 1/4 scale prototype of the mobile modular peace pole platform prototype (M²P⁴?), and in particular exploring how the segments will connect. Nothing especially revolutionary about the basic design; each segment is a simple 12″ x 24″ rectangular box (our big laser has a cutting area of 18″ x 32″), and the pole itself will be three of these bolted together in a concealed way.

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The big circle in the middle of each end piece (Illustrator file above) is the access port, and so I think I’ll be able to reach in and connect them together with bolts. There are other ways of creating access panels from the outside – I’m thinking magnetic – that I might explore just to make the connection process simpler.

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Three of these stacked will be about 6′, and provide 12 possible faces for art and expressions of peace.

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Version 1.0 will be “static” – crawl, walk, run – but the long-term goal is to have the base of the unit equipped with power, sound, and a Raspberry Pi or similar, such that folks have a set of givens they can design for. Think lights and sensors and haptics and interactivity. Two peace poles communicating at a distance? A receipt printer that provides folks with a prayer for peace they can take with them? Lots of possibilities!

Spooky Soirée

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The Innovation Center @ Folsom Lake College held its annual spooky season party last week, and much fun was had by all. Activities included origami bat racing…

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cornhole…

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button making, pumpkin and cookie decorating…

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a costume contest, and some other things I’m probably forgetting.

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Students even hung out in the studio for some impromptu jam sessions. It’s nice to be back in person!

The Sound of Blue

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We’ve been doing a bunch of work and prototyping in data sonification, for example playing weather data on music boxes, and building out a modular synth rig to provide realtime sound of sensor data. Max Mahoney (Chemistry) has been a key partner in the work, and has ideas about how we might sonify various chemical processes. The other day, we had the opportunity to do a rough prototype of sonifying liquid color change.

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The first prototype (above) involved simply adding food coloring to a beaker of water, and using the ADDAC 308 module to transform light data to CV, which when fed to the modular synth lowers the frequency of the audible sine wave. The second prototype involved more carefully controlling the light by placing the apparatus in a box, sticking a battery + LED on the outside of the beaker, and poking a hole in the side of the box for the light sensor and another in the top so we could use a syringe to introduce the food coloring. Here’s version 2:

Lots yet to do, but we think we’ve got a functional prototype that Max intends to use in the classroom this semester.

Weather to Music – Data Sonification

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We’ve been developing a Quantified College initiative, in an effort to gather and represent lots of data at a variety of scales, macro to micro. The plan is to collect as much data as possible, from weather to the microbiome of the college, and then explore ways to represent those data while providing students with hands-on experiences. A big part of the plan is data sonification, using low tech means – music box mechanisms – and high-tech ones – a Eurorack synth we’re in the process of building out. Faculty, staff, and a student prototyped the former during our most recent Maker Wednesday session, using wind data from a weather station we recently installed outside the Innovation Center. Diane Carlson (Sociology) transferred the wind graph to the piano roll-style music box card…

Wind to music

…which sounded like this:

Here’s what it sounded like inverted (with the roll upside down, resulting in the higher pitched notes becoming lower pitched ones, and vice versa):

1000 Maker Cranes

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Students from the Moorpark Makerspace (directed by my friend Clare Sadnick, and one of the CCC Maker college makerspaces) and the Innovation Center have been meeting to develop ways to connect and maintain community maker energy during this COVID-19 crisis.

CCC Makers Meeting

Their first collaboration – #1000makercranes

Here’s one created by one of FLC’s deans.

#1000makercranes

We’re all missing the fellowship and connections, and these kinds of projects are helping smooth things out until we can return to our beloved space. Why not make a crane and post it to the social media of your choice, using the #1000makercranes hashtag?

Brewery Build Day

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Brewery Build Day

Spent the day with CJ (Lead Makerspace Facilitator) and Max (Chemistry), remodeling the Spider Shed (site of our picobrewery) and assembling our new 15 gallon Spike+ System. Lots and lots of tri-clamps.

Pumps

We also finished up one of two new fermenters.

New Fermenter

So much gleaming stainless steel.

15 Gallon Spike System

The electricians should be by this week to finish up the power, and we hope to get our first brew day over the break!

Physicalizing Poetry: Creative Writing in a College Makerspace

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A couple of weeks ago, the Innovation Center hosted Lisa Danner (English) and her Creative Writing class for two class sessions about physicalizing poetry.

We started by introducing students to these really fun Metaphor Dice…

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They rolled the dice, individually and in pairs, and then wrote and shared poems based on their dice rolls.

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Our overall goal was to get students to think about ways they might give physical form to their writing, so I asked Sophie and Sydney (two of our outstanding Makerspace Facilitators) to create some physical poem prototypes to help guide student thinking. They used the laser cutter and the embroidery machine and 3D printers and came up with these fantastic models.

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3D Fabric Printing

We talked about the many forms that poems (and words more generally) can take, from calligrams…

Shiite Calligraphy symbolising Ali as Tiger of GodIshvara7 at English Wikipedia [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

…to the inspiring Viewfinding poetry and sculpture installation by artist Sarah Cook.

Students returned a week later to start physicalizing their own poems, some using glue guns and materials from our low-resolution prototyping cart, and others working with the laser cutter.

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It might be less obvious (to some folks, anyhow) about how English classes might use makerspace resources, but we think we’ve come up with an engaging instructional sequence, and hope to tweak and adapt and scale it up, exposing lots of different kinds of students to maker-centered learning.