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Mike Osuna brought his new creation and shared it with us during the SCRoW. He’s demonstrating how the Squishy Circuits can be used for introducing electronics to young kids.

Squishy circuits are a project from the Thomas Lab at the University of St. Thomas. The goal of the project is to design tools and activities which allow kids of all ages to create circuits and explore electronics using play dough.

Rachel and Hesen admiring Mike Osuna's conductive playdough

Rachel and Hesen admiring Mike Osuna's conductive playdough

Colorful Conductive Playdough

Colorful Conductive Playdough

Mike Osuna and Conductive Playdough

Mike Osuna and Conductive Playdough

Conductive Playdough

Conductive Playdough

Playing with Conductive Playdough at Jigsaw Renaissance

Playing with Conductive Playdough at Jigsaw Renaissance

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Educational Initiative

by willow on May 10, 2012

in Learn

All Hands Active in Ann Arbor participates with something called Bright Futures – I was on the phone with them yesterday to see how the program might be replicated at Jigsaw.
Members sign up to do a one-hour session at the established after-school program called Bright Futures. The school pays for their gas and one meal. They’ve started building out their curriculum (at least necessary materials, estimated cost, simple flow charts of how to go through a lesson).

At Jigsaw, I’d like people signed up to do this by our mini Maker Faire first weekend of June. When the inevitable teacher comes up and says “omg, how did I not know about this, I want this in my school,” we’ll have a clear way for them to interact with us. I want to do a trial run, and add what we learn to the documentation at AHA. A goal of mine is to not just go to the kids, but to have field trips to our space as well.

As we start building out that knowledge, we can easily write grants. One person from AHA recommended one person from each hackerspace participating in this sort of educational initiative can get together with everyone else and we can start to write big grants and volunteer time to do the administrivia of fundraising.

Please let me know if you’d like to participate in something like this, and what you would like to teach.

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Mini Bookbinding Class (4/22)

by mpark on April 24, 2012

in Events

I wasn’t able to attend Eleri Hamilton’s mini bookbinding class but I did manage to take a few pictures. She crafted a cute little journal out of repurposed materials. Hopefully she’ll hold another class soon.

Bookbinder at work

The finished product!

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Potluck pictures (from 4/19)

by mpark on April 24, 2012

in News

Budi threw a potluck to celebrate Team RAASIO’s victory at the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon.

Food!


People!


Robotics!

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SCRoW Report 2012-04-11

2012.April.13

Sorry I’ve been remiss in posting SCRoW reports recently, but here’s one for this week. A couple of young roboticists came in eager to work on something. Fortunately, Budi had a little robot kit which they assembled. Newcomer Sam showed us some surplus mechanics that he hopes to turn into a CNC mill and/or 3D [...]

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Supporting the Robo-Magellan Project

2012.April.7

The Jigsaw Renaissance Robo-Magellan Team needs your support!! Who we are: The Jigsaw Renaissance Robo-Magellan (JR-RM) team is building an autonomous robotic vehicle to compete in Seattle’s Robothon, on June 2 (more info here). This is a competition that will require skills in hardware, software, and a lot of ingenuity in order to compete with [...]

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SCRoW Report 2012-03-21

2012.March.25

Lawrence and Danny put some Bus Pirate boards through their solder reflow oven. Newcomer Derek worked on duplicating Theo Jansen’s strandbeest leg mechanism. Some members of the Robo-Magellan team were getting their feet wet with the software and hardware for their project. Join us for SCRoW every Wednesday evening. Projects of all types are welcome.

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Robo-Magellan Project (SRS Robotics Competition Entry)

2012.March.21

Jigsaw is building a self-driving (RC) car to compete in Robothon, on June 2. Professor Sebastian Thrun will help us complete programming all the major systems of a robotic car over the course of seven weeks. Join our team or become a mentor. We are meeting at Jigsaw Renaissance (Thursday evening and also during SCRoW: [...]

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