1) The Eyeo Festival viideo with Leah Buechley showed us a passionate woman who is concerned about the under-representation of certain groups within the maker community. Apparently, rich white guys seems to be the predominant group of individuals who dominate this scene and was well documented in the presentation. Leah Buechly seems to have identified the problem based on her observations and studies, principally using statistics form Make magazine and Google, but offers no solutions for the problem. I am a white guy but not rich. I enjoy the simple pleasures in life such as riding my bicycle. Two years ago I had the itch to buy a new bicycle, but I decided against it. Instead, I decided to re-make my nearly 25 year old steed with all new and modern components.and save myself some money by doing all the work myself. Much of my inspiration came from a forum which I visit frequently for advice and suggestions: http://www.bikeforums.net/
2)Clifford Lee, in his writing entitled “Production Centered Classrooms”, reminded me so much of my 8th grade wood-shop class which we had to attend weekly at an elementary school located a mile and half from my school. For one morning each week, we made things out of wood. We cut, nailed drilled, screwed and mortised things which were borderline utilitarian. We constructed simple bird houses, book-ends, and tiny tables. Back in my day, the girls were required to attend home economics class, essentially to become a good homemaker. During this past winter, I realized that my bicycle needed improved fender protection to keep the snow, mud and rain off my body and bike. So instead of buying a set of fenders, I fashioned and carved out a new set from plastic pieces using a Dremel tool. People in the bicycle world call this a “hack job”, but I am quite happy with the results, and they are custom made!. Below is a photo of my “hacked” self-made front fender:
3)Halverson & Sheridan suggest in their article “The Maker Movement in Education” that “learning in making is emphatically not interchangeable with schooling”. If I were to follow this line of thinking, I often use a website called Quizlet where I use modern technology to make flashcards which I need for my foreign anguage studies. Here is the link: https://quizlet.com/latest
4)During one of the long and cold winter nights, I was surfing the internet and came across a Kickstarter project that was seeking funding. As I love the outdoors and am an avid gardener, there was a project that caught my eye called “PlantSnap”. This cell-phone app in development will be able to identify over 250,000 plant species once the database is fully developed which will be quite soon. I thought that this app would be a useful tool and decided to “make” a pledge: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/plantsnap/plantsnap-identify-plants-with-an-app
5)For the 11th of April, I will need to give a presentation to my fellow classmates of ED629 at Arcadia which involves using SIOP teaching techniques for ESL students. My presentation- or shall we call it a practice teaching session – involves teaching new immigrants to our country about having an election. I will have a thorough discussion of the vocabulary used in American elections and then proceed to have a mock election with my classmates. For this, I will need to construct a few props, principally there is a requirement to fashion a ballot box or a voting booth. When I watched Caine’s Arcade video, I thought to myself, “all I need are a few boxes and I will be set”.
6)Many people are involved in the arts, whether it is dance, music, photography or painting. I have discovered an activity which some people call a sport, and others have called an art. It is picking locks. I have been involved in this “art” for several months now with a modicum of success, and as usual, I discovered this while being bored during a long and wet winter night when there was no chance of bicycling or keeping myself busy in the garden. What is a man to do? Well, the art of lock-picking fulfills many of my primordial needs; it involves mechanics, it is a challenge, it is puzzling, one needs to manipulate one’s hands and tools with accuracy, and there is a great sense of satisfaction when successful. Naturally, I needed guidance for my newly acquired art-sport activity, and have therefor consulted this guide and several others:
http://www.capricorn.org/~akira/home/lockpick/
A photo of my lock-picking tools and two padlocks for practice.
7)Since my university studies and writings have taken much longer than expected today, I shall opt for a junk-food dinner. I did have plans to make a good dinner but that will have to be postponed until tomorrow. It has been at least half a year since I have made my favorite dish called “Käsespätzle” which is basically a German-Austrian variety of macaroni and cheese. This is not the easiest dish to prepare, as it involves “making “ the noodles by hand with a rotary machine. The dish is excellent, but I do not look forward to cleaning the silly noodle making machine afterwards. If you are even remotely interested in the recipe – mine is my mother’s – here is a link:
http://www.austria.info/us/basic-facts/austrian-cuisine/kasespatzle
Here is a short dry-run video of my 30+ year old noodle making machine.