Month / March 2016

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  • Coin making

    I cast some coins in pewter. This was the process: 1. making the mould 2. heating the pewter 3. filling the mould with pewter 5. coin

  • Squishy stuff

    This week we’ve been starting to put together our research project proposals. I am thinking of doing something to do with squishy things. I have some initial questions: What are squishy things? Do squishy things help kids learn? What kind of processes are needed to use squishy things in science and technology classes? I’ve been…

  • Coin things

    My initial idea for the “Design Education for Sustainable Futures” workshop: Macro(bigger picture): How does capitalism relate to sustainability? Exploring private ownership and profit based economies / profit before people and land. Meso (subject area): Are there alternatives? “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine…

  • Design Charrette

    The final day of “Design Education for Sustainable Futures” was spent participating in a “design charrette” A charrette is a collaborative design method, where one participant spends 10 minutes outlining an idea, and then the group collectively provide suggestions / ideas / insights for 20 minutes, writing them down on a large sheet of paper…

  • Sustainable Futures

    Reading week was spent in the (lonely lonesome) studio design studios learning about designing education for sustainable futures (well, it was not so lonely: we were a comfortable 14 participants, and it was an interesting course). We learned theory and ideas surrounding design activism and agency. There were various spectrum to get our heads around.…

  • A new kind of punchcard

    Over the past few months I’ve been learning to use openFrameworks and I am *just* starting to like it because I hactaully made something do something. I’m playing around with having blob detection recognize very very small holes. Oh the joy. Look at those blobs. Oh, and playing with blob-detection whilst wearing a totes blobtacular…

  • Tour Testing

    I made a guide book that takes you on a bit of an anstract tour of the library through the book. It was a bit of an experiment, and I don’t think my class mates loved it. But fun to make. It is part inspired by this rather wonderful snippet from Words by Jean-Paul Sartre:…

  • Seeing form somewhere

    I’ve been on a couple of visits to the British Library to research a tour guide. It may sound like an obvious thing -that you might see things from somewhere. But in some texts (i.e. maps and science papers) the idea that there is a perspective is not so obvious, and it seems like they…

  • Picture-frames, adventure-maps and postcards

    Using cultural prompts (a research method I learned here), I made a set of activities which I sent out families. The activity prompts the participant to do something, and contain blank copies of the following: a map, a postcard, and a picture frame. The aim was to gain some perspective on the way in which…

  • Breaking everything

    Yup. Look at my desk. that is how I am feeling right now. I have made a massive mess. I had something really great, and I’ve spent the last few months breaking it and making it not so great. Why. Why? All I have right now is broken code, badly drawn things and paper that…

  • Testing connections

    I have been developing the way in which paper pages connect to the digital. There are various options and I explored each to see which was worked the best. Magnetism I used this code snippet in openFrameworks. Magnets are really fun, however they are pretty unreliable and hard to control (it is difficult to place…