by Carrie Leung | Jan 17, 2023 | Donations, MakeFashion Edu
Written by ChatGPT, Prompt/Edit by Carrie
A big thank you to Melanie Crider and Pam Anderson of Pioneertown, California, who have generously donated fabrics to MakeFashion Edu over the years. Artists themselves in the Western motif and makers in the pioneering way of life, they understand having the right materials can increase the joy of designing and creating. These fabrics have been used in prototyping, student projects, and for learning pattern, construction, and sewing skills.
Thanks to these donations, teachers have been able to redirect their time from fundraising for materials to improving learning content for their students. The ability to tinker, design, and test with these fabrics has allowed students to develop their skills, apply academic knowledge, and expand their creativity through the ability to iterate with proper materials. It has given them the opportunity to fail, explore, and learn in a hands-on and engaging way.
The donations from Melanie and Pam are a powerful example of the importance of community support and the role it can play in providing educators and students with the resources they need to teach, learn, and grow. We are grateful for their generosity and the impact it has had on the thoughtful fashion tech pieces on the MakeFashion Edu runways.
by James | Jan 13, 2023 | Donations, SteamBeans, SteamHead Spaces
Solar panels are a way for an individual to create a tradable commodity: electricity. It often goes unappreciated that even a middle school student is able to create a tradable commodity. And we are not talking about growing a few grains of rice and eating it at home; electricity can be traded for money by any anonymous person with a computer, the internet, and some electricity. In terms of educational philosophy – energy independence is a pillar of the systems thinking that we teach to students of middle school and up. That could be literally electricity, like it is in this case, but it also includes time, money, and even motivation. Esoteric, perhaps, but we can also boil it down to “creating what you want”. In the end we are all required to do so, we are just not taught many ways to accomplish the tasks, nor given many explanations about the systems behind energy.
Exerting your personal preferences is a tough skill for students to gain personal advancement from, because they rarely have support and mentor-ship in discovering their preferences. MakeFashion Edu excels at that. But once you are able to set your own course, knowing the rules of the system is key.
the craigslist posting for our used solar panels
The goal is for students to gain experience with the energy economy by remotely controlling the orientation, storage, and expenditure of energy. Enter: our desert solar panel project!
In 2020 Hot Purple Energy, a solar installer in Palm Springs, California, donated 4 solar panels to kick off our project. We quickly grew it finding a company on Craigslist that had removed old but working panels, and was selling them for a great price.
Our desert land has lots of sun, so why not let our students have access to it? We were teaching 100% remotely at the time as well!
Our progress, in brief, is that our solar and DIY batteries are running and online, but still need an orientation motor system. We currently let students choose from several fixed orientations. Also, the energy gets consumed by our computers in San Francisco, so it’s not the same “electrons” (but also, it never is), and we keep a ledger to account for it.
If any teachers would like to know more, feel free to contact me, and I’ll also be posting details about the batteries, inverter, etc!
by Carrie Leung | Jan 10, 2023 | Donations, MakeFashion Edu, Neighborhood Earth
Written by ChatGPT, Prompt/Edit by Carrie
At SteamHead, we exist solely on the generous donations of time and resources. In 2020, we were faced with the challenge of finding ways to continue providing meaningful educational resources and support. We were fortunate to receive two critical donations that helped carry us out through the pandemic and is still impactful today.
The first donation, a safe and reliable truck from media production professional Josh Smith-White. Josh understood the importance of being able to transport equipment. This donation allowed us to deliver materials and supplies to families, including electronics donated from Shenzhen, China. The supplies made their way to educational makerspaces in the U.S. and Canada, ensuring that teachers had access to the resources they needed to continue learning for their students. In a time where public delivery services were particularly challenging and certain supplies scarce, this donation created a big impact.
The show must go on! Powered up with tech supplies, Hollinger K-8 School and Drachman Montessori in Tucson, Arizona were able to prototype projects with the delivered materials and were able to host their annual MakeFashion Edu exhibition virtually! You can find their annual fashion tech book on their pieces and stories here.
The second donation was a cash donation from Shawn Lange of L2F Inc. and BrewGrit. This was our first-ever acceptance of cash as a donation. Shawn, as a father of three and an engineer, understands the importance of providing students with uninterrupted access to materials and experts. This donation ensured the continuation of a course for approximately 150 students when our team members could not be there in person due to travel restrictions. The donation provided a grant for a dedicated local teacher to collaborate with us, and the class was able to continue through the pandemic. This course built upon past work such as this maker education workshop for migrant children.
On behalf of the beneficiaries of their donations, we are incredibly grateful to Josh and Shawn for their support. We appreciate their belief in the power of communities coming together to support one another.
