This week's activity is tinker with something you haven't tried before. And then post your reflections here.
By tinker we mean playfully experiment. Or, as Mitch suggests, tinkering combines playing and making.
You could try remixing a project in Scratch, create a game out of cardboard, or anything you haven't tried before...
If you haven't already seen it, here's the video introducing the activity:
Here is the Tinkering Studio page with specific ideas for tinkering with cardboard and other materials:
http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/projects
And here's more about the Art of Tinkering book: http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/art-tinkering
I'm probably not doing the activity right, but rather reflecting on some tinkering I did long ago: http://thebacklog.net/2014/04/15/learning-by-playing-and-tinkering/
What does it take for tinkering/playing to become a powerful learning experience?
I like your reflections dirkcuys & specially your island....
Last year i did the first #edcmooc and for our last assignment i made this video: https://vimeo.com/60681287
I have always had a soft spot for stop motion animation and in this case i tinkered with how you can made a analog book this digital thoughts in it. It really made me think about the combinations then you tinker with both the digital and analog together in not "normal" ways.
I want to hack a home-made makey makey - will keep you posted!
I will share an experience where I used tinkering (playing) to see how a 5 year old girl describes "Friction."
Scenario:
I asked Isabella, a 5 year old girl, the following question:
"If you sit a ball of string on the table and pull on the free end, what happens to the ball?"
She answered, "The ball moves towards me".
The follow up question was, "If I put the ball of string on a table cloth, what happens to the ball?"
In this case, the ball will spin because of the friction. Let's see how Isabella described friction while playing with the ball of string.
Video Link: http://youtu.be/7y-_bWpqTFI
I have posted my assignment for Activity 5 on Slideshare at: http://www.slideshare.net/tpitre/assignment-5-tinker-33624884 AND I put a copy on my website with LIVE links at: http://sequim-web.net/design/Assignment%205Tinker.pdf
I have wanted to tinker with Scratch 2.0 and Arduino (https://github.com/damellis/A4S) for a while. I put together a small project to change the color of the a RGB LED whenever scratch cat asks your favorite color http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/20887490/#editor I think this would be really fun for my middle school students
I had a small "students-own-choice (only five 11 yrs old boys)" today, with makeymakey and scratch and Lego Wedo. I was amazed how fast they understod the idea of the makemakey. Not much lecturing... We tried tinkering. And I had the chance to observe. Discussing the Fail > Try again > Learn. One of the kids had no patience with constructing a lego wedo vehicle. So we discussed that he was training his patience every time he didn´t make it.
And then he, tried to teach me Minecraft. Yeeez, he was so fast I had no chance at all. Building things really really quick. I saw the potential with matheducation, tech (STE(A)M). Redstone, Pistons and buildingstuff. Note to self; I must get an account on Minecraft. And tinkering in my own noob-pace.
So my tinkering today was to observe what happened, We made music with soundation.com tried to import in Scratch, but we had to convert first (tried Audacity) and then it was ok. Learning experience with a great portion of Play and Peers,
I decided to do some tinkering with a building toy idea I'm calling AD & HOC because it is All Dowel & Hinge On Cardboard based. I've been tinkering with creating building toy systems for a while. In fact it was during last year's LCL that I launched this Kickstarter to fund the purchase of a 3D printer to make prototypes of another building toy idea. (The shape files for that toy are available on Thingverse here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:166730)
I noticed while working on a light sculpture project this year that it's sometimes possible to leave the hubs out and just use the spokes.
That give me the idea for AD & HOC, which thanks to LCL2, I got around to trying today. This building toy is inexpensive, environmentally friendly, simple and flexible. The shape files for the hinges are available on Thingverse here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:301989
Below are some pictures of the first shape I built with it. I thought I'd need to use hot glue to attach the hinges to the cardboard, but they stayed on reasonably well with just friction. This shape looks a bit like cardboard origami, with hinges instead of folds, but I think it's possible to make almost any shape with it. I hope to tinker more with this idea during the project phase of LCL2.
Given that @1L2P said "This week's activity is tinker with something you haven't tried before", I had to exclude my trash toys, (like ScaraBots), Scracth projects & Makey Makey.
So I asked my friend @raffaella to give me a block of clay (a fine quality clay from Tuscany) for doing something new.
What Can I do now, I said to myself? Why not a Scratch cat?
This is the first step. Now the cat needs to be fired to become a terracotta (@raffaella is going to do that) and then I will paint it with colors.
Playing with clay has been a great discovery for me, not only a funny experience. While you knead you really feel you are creating something, because the matter is shaped by your hands, and you are free to create forms depending on how your creativity moves your hands.
Create things with hands and mind will give you the best satisfactions of your life; and it's a great learning experience, also because the failing is an important part of the creating process.
The hand is the window on to the mind - Immanuel Kant
Interesting! I wonder if you had heard that MIT's motto is "Mens et Manus" ("Mind and Hand")?
@shari told me she was surprised to hear that.
Fred, that second photo you posted reminds me one of my favorite light artists, James Turrell. I could see yours as a larger room installation with quadrants of the room in completely different lighting zones. James Turrell images
Wow, thanks @natalie
I didn't know about the MIT motto: it is fantastic. I really like the seal.
So, the MIT was founded in 1861, the same date when the Italian state was founded as result of unification of Italy 
Thanks for the comment @shari! I love how Turrell plays with light. On a much smaller scale I'm also playing with light and form using 3D printed shapes and programmable RGB LEDs. The biggest piece I've made is this thing http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:297089 which pushes the limits of my printer, my budget and my wife's patience. As the usual technology forces increase capabilities and drop prices (and my wife really is very supportive) I'm sure the pieces will steadily grow in size. Given the necessary modular nature of larger pieces it is entirely possible and might be fun to do collaborative projects in which the modules are collectively printed and then assembled together at a MakerFaire or EdTech Camp.
I'm working on combining a few different apps. (I recently learned that this kind of tinkering is called "app smashing" and I think that sounds pretty fun! I'm trying to figure out how to use a combination of IFTTT, Evernote, and Storify to share and publish the things I'm reading. It's been fun tinkering with the logic behind it. We'll see if I can make it work!
Thanks for posting this @thomaspitre , it gave me a lot of fun ideas 
How about combining the maze and the toilet tissue roll?
-> Is it different to solve a cylindrical maze?
-> How could you adapt the maze to make it harder or easier?
-> is it still a perfect (only one path) maze? if not, how many solutions are there?
-> if there are more solutions, which do you like better? the shortest? the one that lets you spiral the most? ...
Maybe make the shapes 3-D and give each side a maze?
And why should you 'walk' the maze, you could make the maze walk around you in a sort of rubick's cube or the labyrinth board game.
Or how about making a color based maze that lets you step from red to orange to yellow, but not directly from red to blue or green?
Could a 3D / sketchup maze without walls, but with a path that has height-differences work (when the height-difference is to big you can't go that way)?
Now I want to tinker with mazes
@FredBartels - that's beautiful! Sharing the hinges on thingiverse is mind-blowing, because what you actually did is invent a new construction game and release it to the public! Now if there was a way to see what people did with it...
Always inspired by the wonderings and doings of Mr. Fred Bartels 
@ofer Thanks for the comment! One of the most satisfying aspects of Thingverse is its support of users easily sharing when they make use of an uploaded model. (Much like the Scratch website in this regard.) It is quite encouraging/empowering when this happens with a model you've uploaded.
Although using all this technology you are, as I mentioned once before, an artist, Fred!! Great job!
For me, I tinker more with computational design than physical design, but really impressed with makey-makey, and earlier this year tinkered with the Scratch 2.0 Leap Motion plug in, using the PC camera to detect and control motion in a project with the wave of a finger (sensing>video motion = on).
That said, frankly, it's a challenge to make tinkering with computational design tons of fun to kids. The key is immediate, glitch free player feedback. I teach using 3D platforms as a guest instructor, and I have to say, that Scratch's 2.0 is the most reliable and given the choice, kids gravitate to it over 3D because it reliably and quickly provides the results of what they just programmed.
This weekend, I "tinkered" computationally (!) to guess-rebuild a "don't touch the white tile - arcade style" game in Scratch to add to my upcoming summer teaching syllabus. And while doing so, figured out "A" and "B" options to develop the scrolling arcade movement, which I like, because frankly, while I share these templates with the kids, they get more use to the instructor as "debugging" guides so that during class time, when kids ask, I have code snippets in my back pocket to direct them to check out or simply grab and add to their project "back packs". So, this pre- tinkering let's me be a better on demand human "player" in the classroom.
Sorry I've been offline (and will be again this Tuesday – tinkering with my Toastmasters contest speech. Actually I'd like to offer writing/editing text as an example of tinkering... with words).
This week's p-word is Play. The activity is more about Tinkering. Of course the two overlap, but I do think there's a difference in context. It's more common to tinker by yourself than it is to play by yourself. Play tends to focus attention a bit more on social interaction, while tinkering focuses attention more on objects. Again the two are not mutually exclusive, but it's interesting to think about the differences.
Speaking of play and creativity, here's a speech of mine that's a bit tangential to this week's activity, but very much in keeping with the philosophy of LCL – extending childlike playfulness into adulthood: “Childhood Saving Time.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wX6_5vkjBA
Don't have time for any new tinkering this week (lame, I know), but here some reflections from past experiences. I introduced store-bought Mexican piñatas at my French granddaughters' 4th birthdays. 
They liked it so much that it's become an annual tradition. A couple years later, I asked if they wanted to construct their own (not to mention save me money!) So of course, they've started constructing their personal piñatas. Each year they get older, they have more skills, more history, more ideas on how to tinker more elaborate designs – before they smash them to bits to get the candy. (The prizes are the least important part of the fun.)
Another cross-cultural example somewhat tangential, but interesting, is carving Halloween pumpkins. It's a wonderful American activity for designing and carving, but a Dutch tinkerer was the first one (as far as I know) to figure out that you could turn a pumpkin sideways and use the stem for the nose! 
(“Play With Your Pumpkins” book by Joost Elffers)
Moral: when you're tinkering with a team to play outside of the box, it's always good to have people who come from different backgrounds.
I think most of us tinker all the time. In sports. (I'm always trying to work on techniques to throw my golf disc further and with more accuracy.) In cooking. (I'm still trying to replicate the spicy black bean soup I loved from a Mexican restaurant off of Central Square in Cambridge. Any recipe has long disappeared with the restaurant.) In rearranging the furniture; in designing a workshop; in parenting; in maintaining relationships (men have to tinker more than women, because everything is so much more mysterious to us.) Here's an example of a poor man trying his best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
Okay, I've pretty much gone off the rails here, but that's just part of tinkering outside of the box.
Brilliant concept of "Childhood saving time" - bravo!
I started by contributing to this week's wall -- a worthwhile project.
For my main tinkering project I wanted to do a remix on Scratch since I had not done that before. (The link to the final project is below.)
My first Scratch project in Week 2 was a great experience for me, and I wanted to learn more Scratch options and functions, and do a remix.
I looked at the starter projects under Scratch Help and decided to be ambitious and try a game. I used the Hide and Seek remix and combined it with the 5-random-facts-about-me concept from another remix. I changed everything except the hide and seek code -- deleting the scoring, changing the sprite and background, changing costumes, adding sound effects.
I got frustrated when I was interrupted and accidentally erased my project in progress! But it wasn't going well anyway. I reminded myself that this is typical when tinkering, as I knew from past experience, especially as a child -- it can be very frustrating and often several attempts are accidentally ruined or have to be discarded.
I took a break and later reviewed my plans and what I had learned. When I went back to the project I was able to reconstruct it quickly and then complete it -- after some more frustrations. I experienced a big sense of victory when I found a way to keep the sprite from disappearing from the screen for the remainder of the project when it is clicked when it is in a "hide" status in the hide and seek game. Here's how to do it: include a "show" code block in the early part of the next part of the code.
The final touch: a good name for the project.
I plan to participate in the LCL Zoo when I have some time to work on that.
Conclusions: A lot of learning, a lot of frustration, a final positive result! Creative Learning requires a high degree of tolerance for frustration.
Here's the link to the project on Scratch, "Catch the shapeshifting fox": http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/20968598/#player
The tinker assignment was to try something new and tinker in a domain not so familiar. I am not comfortable with digital art at all, so this site “tinker cad.com” sort of a Minecraft practice ground was my project here:
https://tinkercad.com/dashboard/search?q=exquisite+waasa
I did a horse because one called “Tinker” came up in the Google search. Should have chosen an easier inspiration to start.
If you want to go even higher tech, there is a tinker site to play with molecular structures,
http://dasher.wustl.edu/tinker/
but my less stressful favorite was this tinker site to get the ball to the cup: http://inventionatplay.org/playhouse_tinker.html
(AND note the fun with cloud creations as an alternative tinkertoy.)
What did I learn? I am much more patient with clay or origami than digital art/building, but, of course, when in Rome. ..
My takeaway thought was how cool it would be if Legos were bendable and could change sizes to flex in different ways. I also liked that there is the 3D maker option for this website and wondered will people be making Minecraft or new Lego shapes, beginning to make their own physical kits and if so, how will the two (game and toy) complement and change each other in the future?
Sorry the link to tinkercad is not still working, here is a copy of "Exquisite Waasa" or "Tinker"
For this week activity, I decided I was going to make my first app. I spent my Easter evening tinkering with MIT App Inventor. I started with watching the HOC tutorials and made the 3 small apps. I was having so much fun, I then decided to make the HelloPurr app starter project, which led me to remix the HOC Digital Doodle project to give the user a choice of colors and the option to use the phone camera.
This thing http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:289650 is one of the more interesting creations I've seen on Thingverse, and shares some similarities with AD&HOC in that it messes around with traditional hub placement. In the example shown the hub moves from where you'd expect it - at the intersections of the triangles - to the center of the triangles. I'd bet there are kids who could have a lot of fun exploring the possibilities of MCMs.
Great list of things we tinker with, without thinking of them as tinkering. We are all natural tinkerers. One aspect that I like very much about the four Ps is that they represent very basic human behavior - they are not something we would have to do "specially" in order to support learning. We already tinker and play, we do so with our peers, we follow our interests and passions, and we work on projects. The four Ps can help us design learning experiences that build on the way we naturally experience and explore the world around us.
Unfortunately, I was not able to tinker with something new this week due to work commitments. So I decided to post a previous tinkering experiment that I created. I modified an existing Scratch game that has had many user generated iterations to create a Scratch game called Tax Dodgers (aka Mitt Romney's Tax Dodgers). The game was inspired by a little known video game produced for the Atari 2600 video game system in the early 1980s, Tax Avoiders. Hope you enjoy!
I'm always tinkering. All my childhood I've been tinkering . Studying architecture and working on it means thinking projects, making models, drawing ideas, and again and again. I tinker with my daughters who are also used to tinker. In fact I agree with Bobmohl and 1L2P, tinker is natural for all of us. I tinker because I can not to tinker, it's impossible....
This week I have had lots of friends and family at home so I'll show you my experience in the last Christmas workshop for children. We have been tinkering with different kind of materials to find out how light changed their appearance or our vision through them. When we finished I create two short videos. It was my first time working with a video editor program and It won't be the last. I'm sure.
I think tinkering helps me to live with imperfection and with mistakes. I have ever created nothing that were exactly as I wanted it to be. And I like that because I'm always surprised and because that push me ahead.
For this week's play and tinkering focus, I decided to play with learning how to create a Tumblr blog about creative discovery, among other topics. I've never made a blog before, so I thought it would be all work and no fun. But, it was a surprisingly intuitive and playful experience. It required a fair amount of tinkering, including figuring out how to go behind the scenes and change some of the html code.
I've now got the shell of a blog set up that I intend to complete for my creative project. It's a great art and technology mash-up and another skill (in addition to Scratch) that I never would have imagined having before this course. Fun!
Lego WeDo and Scratch
I’ve never played with Lego WeDo. After getting some directions and help from LCL and CCOW friends (thanks to Fred Bartels and Martin Dillon), I purchased my first Lego WeDo kit. I was happy like a child for trying my new toy: blocks, wheels, sensors, cables and wires! I wanted to explore and learn about it. I wanted to have another motivational tool available to my students.
After playing around a little, one question came to my mind: Could be possible to re-create each WeDo project in Scratch? How would be the limitations? How to make this work together? I wanted to explore the virtual and the physical projects, to test possibilities and limits.
So, I draw each component of the Lego project, as an independent Scratch sprite and add scripts to them. The idea was to make both, Lego and Sprite move with the same command, simultaneously.
Project #1: Ducks
I draw Scratch sprites as “avatars” of the Lego WeDo ducks. The Scratch script controls both virtual and Lego ducks, in their spinning directions (right or left arrow)
and speed (up or down arrow). In this project, the Scratch controls Lego WeDo ducks.
Lego WeDo and Scratch - Project #1 (click here to watch the video)
Project #2: Gears
This project uses a distance sensor that connected to gears make them spin.They turns clockwise or counterclockwise depending on the distance from an object.
One thing I love the most is to draw and Scratch allows us to draw our own sprites! So I drew each wheel as an independent sprite correlated to the real ones. I also added the distance sensor value showed in the screen. The sprites says “clockwise” or “counterclockwise” each time they change direction.
In this project, the information flux is inverted: the Lego controls the Scratch sprites.
Project #3: Drums
Here I drew the sprites and add used another interesting Scratch feature, the sounds. Both monkeys move together and as the Scratch one touches a different drum a different sound was produced.
My Makey Makey Exploratory is going to put together a human piano to do for assembly. It is going to require 8 kids and 8 "paino players." They plan on running one ground wire in front of all the "keys" to hold onto and then hold up there hands so that the other students can play them standing behind. The keyboard will be projected and the sound through the theater speakers. They are going to compose a couple of little ditties. Some of them play the real piano. Will post video when it happens. It should get quite a rise out of the kids.
I documented the process in here: http://thingswork.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/learning-creative-learning-week-5.html
Two things:
When I adopted my son, I vowed that we would have a pacifist house. He would learn all about peaceful resistance. Even when I would buy water pistols, I would seek out the animal-shaped ones that were really just whales and crocodiles squirting water out of their mouths. Ours would be a weapons-free home!
This all changed last year when Isaiah started making his own guns. He had been exposed to them in books. The beloved classic “Danny and the Dinosaur” has guns in the museum, for example, and Isaiah was fascinated from the start by the shape of these weapons. From memory, he started making guns, all kinds of guns, out of construction paper and tape. He had started his maker career with cardboard, but he quickly discovered that construction paper has much more malleability and with enough tape applied, you can still get solid structures. He begin churning out 3-D shapes by the dozens—blimps, airplanes, houses, hats, and, of course, guns. The handles of the guns were sometimes so beautifully curved, they looked like elaborate snail shells.
Our home is currently knee-deep in construction paper guns. I may have adopted a descendant of Samuel Colt.
I recognize that this assignment is about my son tinkering, not me. [I will belatedly start my own tinkering project this week when I begin a multi-week construction project for MIT’s Scratch Day! This will serve as my final project.] However, it still illustrates a type of kindergarten learning spiral, as I have needed to tinker with my own ideas about how to raise my child, and one thing has lead to another: For example, my son’s interest in the engineering aspect of guns lead to an interest in history. After we read “Sam the Minuteman,” he expressed a desire to see a re-enactment of battle that started the American Revolutionary War.
We live in the greater Boston area, and each year, on the same day as our famous marathon, we celebrate Patriot's Day, which was yesterday. The nearby towns of Concord and Lexington are filled with encampments and re-enactments of famous Revolutionary War battles. The first such battle begins each year at 5 am on the Lexington Battle Green. While I was dubious that this would actually happen, my 5-year-old easily bounced out of bed yesterday morning at 3:30 in order to get to the 5 am start of the battle.
Afterwards, he was fascinated by a little snippet from the battle recreation. Two Minutemen muskets pointed out of two tavern windows when the Red Coats approached. At some point, a shot was fired—a shot that hit no one—and this marked the beginning of war that would last 8 years.
No one knows who fired the first shot. When my little Minuteman is slightly older, this is just the sort of information that could open the door to conversations about the futility of war and peaceful resistance! We might just spiral our way back to pacifism.
I also tried the Pet the Kitty app. I thought of a twist that might be fun: Have a student take a photo of a dog or cat and upload that image. Find a 'bark' sound for the dog. I had some trouble with the sound for the Kitty and used a sound from 'Scratch'.
Hello I made this tinker project with Randy hope you enjoy it.
.The you tube video is here.
Finally, we get to see Randy again. You are right, it looks like she's not so sure about the activity at first.
Ah - App Inventor is pretty cool! To share your project with others, download your project (not sure if you used AI classic - which in that case, it's an apk file; or if you used AI2, which in that case, you download an aia file. Then, send that file to whoever you want to upload it, and have them open in their phone email and download to their phone. They will need to have: 1. SD card loaded 2. USB debugging set to "on" 3. file manager (there are lot of free ones out there that are great). Once they've downloaded the apk or aia file, they can upload the App Inventor projects and play them on their phones!
Great idea. Leads me to the thought of doing an app with an ABC of animals--A is for alligator, B is for bird, C is for Cat and so on and on. Than the user can click on a letter which would bring up the animal and than they could interact with the animal in some manner, like petting the cat to hear it meow and purr. Now I just got to learn how to do that! My kindergartners would love it! Unfortunately we use Apple products at school, no droids, except for my personal phone. I hope the AI eventually branches out to be compatible with IOS.
Thanks for the information. I used AI2, which gave me the option of both APK and AIA file. Is there an advantage of one type file over the other?
apk is the executable file (can not be remixed). Is the app that runs on your device
aia is the source code that can be remixed
Thanks Adriano. One more question: I remember a few month back you shared your app with a QR code on Google+, so anyone could scan and get it. How did you do that? Did you have to go through Google Play or is there another way? What I really would like to be able to do is create a website(sandbox) of my apps and have my apps there for anyone to be able to download and use on their device.
I have stored the APK file inside my site folder, so the APK has an url (for istance http://www.yoursite.xx/xxfolder/file.apk) that can be QRified with a QR code generator like this, (for example)
Late to post this but for this week my son and I had tinkered with making our own finger-sized skateboards.
We used the cardboard dowel found in some cheap coat hangers:
We cut a small strip out about 3" in length. Then, we flattened our piece with broad-nosed pliers until it resembled a skateboard deck. We cut rounded edges into the corners and lifted the ends up so the shape ended up resembling a skateboard.
Then, we tightly wound electrical tape around it and were able to get grooved impressions for fingers to "stand" on.
Finally, we mounted trucks and wheels from one of my son's finger skateboards purchased at the store. Our next project with finger skateboards will be to figure out through tinkering how we can make our own homebrew trucks and wheels using junk parts.
I accidentally fell into a tinkering rabbit hole. I went to a craft store and picked up a mythical device I'd once heard of through the magical portal that is YouTube: a scoring board. My focus in college was graphic design, but Bauhaus save me, I can't for the life of me fold anything. My sense of 3D design and materials in the physical space is abysmal.
Thinking it might somehow tie into the wedding I’m failing to plan, I decided to give paper letter and box crafting a try. Inspired by my discussion with @James_B about video inexperience last week, I filmed everything. To the journey! What destination?
If this were a river tubing excursion, I'd be the kid getting caught in the number eddies. You can see me trying to wrap my head around a good way to fold a material that's much smaller in depth than the 1/8th inch increments on my scoring board. I eventually came up with a technique that involves using an offset column and treating even and odd score lines differently.
Next up: video editing. Or as I like to call it, my float through the rapids of Mordor. It was mostly fun; I giggled like a much younger version of me. Then, unpleasantly, my YouTube upload suffered significant quirks, some of which might be related to my video editing software (nicknamed "Gollum" from this point on). What I present here is a video that's been on an unholy journey from Gollum to Blender to YouTube.
Gollum did the unthinkable and now I have the honor viewing LCL videos in green and magenta.
On my quest, I re-evaluated what it means to tinker. Tinkering is, to me, playful experimentation without a formal guide. When learning new things, sometimes it's hard to tinker. For instance, I thought I might learn how to use a sewing machine, and then realized that investing in one and learning basic use and safety was going to require quality time with tutorials. In short, tinkering in this case requires a foundation. This "swaying effect," in which one ping-pongs between instruction and tinkering, building on previous experiences, manifested in my attempts to learn Blender, too. Certainly there are some endeavors, however, where a starting point is intuitive and inherent. Maybe folding boxes is one of them.
Well, tinkering is very interesting to me from old days,
Scratch was one the thing that I was curious about and in LCL2 I found some time and instruction to work with and generally was a great experience,
apart from that in this week I tried to tinker with blended physical and digital technologies, because I believe that taking advantage of both would come up with more interesting ideas,
here is what I have tinkered
Arduino Uno and Arduino IDE
another one is ** Lego bricks and Lego Digital Designer**
(You can download Lego digital Designer in here: http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/download )
and this software was really great and I got familiar with it in LCL
And at the middle of the course I put this on my wall:
Then in this activity I tinkered with these bubbles and 4Ps and come up with this:
@heloisazal I enjoyed hearing and seeing how you've been exploring connections in Scratch with LEGO WeDo models.
I thought you might be interested, Mitchel just learned about these WeDo Challenges from Tufts:
wedo.dreschallenges.com/
This Is my first Scarabot.
I have seen Adriano's picture of scarabots and following his suggenstion i disassembled an old computer
looking for a small engine, and collected all waste material to build it.
Thanks to his guideline I've been able to realize the scarabot in a short time
When all was ready and it started to move was so amazing and exciting .
Thanks to Adriano, he's really a good teacher .
I am thinking of doing a unit in middle school with sensors and electricity prior to bringing out any micro controllers. So I created an an alarm using resisters, IR Sensor, and NPN Transistor, and a better.
I´ve noticed that Randy is there!!
Finally I finished my video
The video is not listed please don't share yet . It is just for the school presentation and for a CS education meeting that it is holding in Naples next week, where Adriano and me will present a short paper on the activity of tinkering.
I should translate in english, I know!
Thanks to all of you give us!!
I played with Lego Mindstorms with my boys for the first time and this was my "tinkering". See a short video clip: http://youtu.be/XxumHn-B_Do I'm like @mresmres and I love Lego Mini-figs. So, if you look closely, there is a mini-fig of myself and my 10 year old son (who helped me with the Lego Mindstorms) on the vehicle.
I just followed the "Quickstart" instructions for both the vehicle and the programming. It was my first try at Lego Mindstorms. I had fun, but it wasn't easy. Good thing there was a "quick start" tutorial! I needed it! (Took me awhile to do it. Not very quick for me... )
I've blogged about my tinkering experience here (video is embedded here too): http://www.coetail.com/chezvivian/2014/05/01/play-2/
My blog goes into a bit of a tangent in that I discuss a discovery I've made that some teachers are taking the various Learning to Code programs and turning them into homework which is later graded. This is killing the "play" and "fun" and definitely stopping any tinkering going on...
Heloisa suggested me that the video could be not adapt for all countries because the guy is playing with hot glue gun. I recreate the video shorter.
Sorry for who could be hurt from that!
Hello everyone!
I was looking forward to this activity, since I love playing. But I found myself postponing it because I wanted to do something new and challenging and I didn't know what exactly.
So today I decided to dive right in. I used some toilet paper rolls that I kept collecting.
So here is the result and the inspiration for toilet paper roll art: A child swinging in a tree - a perfect combination of my love of children and play.
It was quite a challenge to create all the stages of the project. Still, I found a great joy in letting the tinkering take me to new places and ways of doing a project.
Although I felt a bit tired by all the concentration on the details, I realised that this is another way of developing myself. I'm so happy that I have this beautiful landscape and I can't wait to see the children exploring it. Looking forward to your feedback.
Activity - Take Time to Tinker (and Share Your Experience)
Think about the feedback you've received from your peers and what you've learned since joining LCL. Then, take time this week to tinker with something you've been curious to try. You could explore using familiar materials such as cardboard in unfamiliar ways. Or experiment with remixing a project you find in Scratch. Or playfully explore another tool or activity. Post your reply below and keep an eye out for the posts from the peers you worked with last week. If you can, try to provide feedback to two or three remixes in addition to posting your own.
Here's the video introducing the activity:
I love to play/tinker with paper and other recyclable materials. With paper I’m often trying to find forms that are simple to make and very useful for teachers of different kinds. Many years ago, I learned how to make a paper cup by squaring an 8 ½ ”x11” piece of plain paper. Simple and useful. I wondered what would happen if I thought of other uses for the cup. The best idea I came up with to hold small manipulatives: words or numbers on pieces of paper, paper clips, counters, etc. So they don’t fall out you can just take the back flap and tuck it where you tucked the front flap. Then I wondered what I could do with the 8 ½ “ x 2 ½ “ strip that was left over from squaring the paper. I found I could use the same fold and make 3 finger puppets from the strip. (Then I could store them in the cup and label them if I wished.) Many teachers and students with whom I worked added to the possibilities. Finally, I wondered what would happen if I went “big” with the same fold. Using a double sheet of newspaper, I found I could create several kinds of hats, make a little trash container to tape to the side of a desk or use as a large container for Valentine cards, messages to parents, etc. Later I made a little “how-to” book showing how to make many things from simple materials and techniques. I show teachers how to use the puppets and hats to retell stories, create original stories and re-enact real life scenarios. For math and word games, we store pieces in the medium or large version of the cup.
More play with paper!
Igarmon, I love your story! One of my friends also wanted to raise their son without toy weapons. She and her husband gave in when their son was even using his mashed potatoes to shape and try to play with guns! I think you are wise to try to "go with the grain" of your son's interests while at the same time continuing to expose him to your cherished values.
I will show my favorite activity, named "200 paper cups" .
I practiced this activity in my workshop at Space waseda( the theater in waseda, Tokyo).
Here is some examples. I want you to think what the participants want to make
