SteamHead — Great Things Blog

Welcome to the Great Things Blog

James — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Great Things Blog is where we share what’s happening across SteamHead’s programs and communities.

Here you’ll find student project documentation, educator reflections, event recaps, and ideas from the global network of makers and teachers we work with.

What to Expect

Project stories — the process behind student work, not just the finished product
Educator perspectives — teachers sharing what worked, what didn’t, and what they learned
Event recaps — runway shows, maker fairs, workshops, and community gatherings
Resources and ideas — tools, lesson structures, and approaches worth sharing

We believe that learning is strongest when it’s documented and shared. This blog is part of that practice.

Snow Drop! Grade 2 Robotics and Coding

James — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A story of collaboration, authentic audience, cross-grade mentorship, creative coding, and physical computing written to encourage educators!

Using MicroBlocks + OctoStudio for a Grade 2 Winter Performance

At our elementary school winter festival, something unexpected happened.

Paper snow fell from the ceiling.

And the Grade 2 students were controlling it.

This post shares how we used MicroBlocks, micro:bit, and OctoStudio together to create a live robotics effect for a school performance — and why this combination is such a powerful pathway for young coders.

The Big Idea

Grade 2 students:

Built cardboard “snow release” boxes
Created paper snow
Programmed an iPad app in OctoStudio
Triggered a live robotics effect during a school performance

Behind the scenes:

Fifth graders wired servo motors to micro:bits
I wrote the MicroBlocks program that ran on the micro:bits
The Grade 2 classroom teacher orchestrated rehearsal, context, and performance flow

The result? A gymnasium full of students cheering as snow dropped on cue — triggered by second graders.

Hardware + Software Overview

Student-facing tool:

OctoStudio (iPad app)

Microcontroller:

micro:bit

Firmware / runtime:

MicroBlocks

Actuation:

Servo motors connected to trap doors on cardboard boxes

Trigger method:

OctoStudio “beam” signal
MicroBlocks code listens for the beam and activates the servo

The servo motors were mounted to bottom-facing doors on cardboard boxes suspended in the auditorium. When activated, the doors opened and released paper snow.

Why This Pathway Is Interesting

Many educators use OctoStudio. Many educators use micro:bit. Fewer combine them in this way.

The key bridge is MicroBlocks.

Using MicroBlocks, the micro:bit can listen for OctoStudio beam signals and respond physically — turning tablet-based block coding into real-world robotics control.

This implementation builds on work shared by Wenjie, who extended OctoStudio beam support for micro:bit projects. The references that helped guide this project:

I was first introduced to MicroBlocks by Kathy Giori at the Bay Area Maker Faire (Mare Island, 2024), and this project felt like the perfect opportunity to explore its flexibility in a live setting.

What the Students Actually Did

Grade 2 Students

Designed and built cardboard “snow release” boxes
Engineered simple bottom doors
Produced paper snow
Programmed OctoStudio to send beam signals
Rehearsed timing during performance practice
Triggered the snow live

The coding was simple and clear: send a beam when a button is tapped.

Images:

MicroBlocks Code (Teacher-Created but possible for most of my 3rd graders I think)

The micro:bit ran a MicroBlocks program that:

Listened for a specific beam ID
Rotated the servo to open the trap door
Returned the servo to closed position

Image:

Uploading directly via MicroBlocks made iteration fast — especially useful during rehearsal testing.

Fifth Grade Contribution

Fifth graders handled:

Servo wiring
Power connections
Mechanical mounting adjustments

This cross-grade collaboration gave older students meaningful technical responsibility and gave younger students a visible “tech mentor” layer.

The Physical Build

The snow boxes were simple but effective (see the images above):

Cardboard structure
Bottom flap door
Servo arm connected to door
Suspended in the auditorium

The engineering constraint was real: if the servo didn’t move correctly, nothing happened.

Authentic Assessment: Did It Work?

This project shifted assessment away from a rubric.

Success was measured IRL:
Was the audience entertained?

Upon drop, the audience response was immediate and loud. The cheering created a powerful feedback loop — students saw that code + cardboard + motors = real-world impact.

It wasn’t a simulation.
It wasn’t just a classroom demo.
It was part of a public performance.

Why This Matters Pedagogically

1. Robotics Through Familiar Tools

OctoStudio is accessible and playful. MicroBlocks allows that environment to extend into physical computing without abandoning block-based thinking.

This creates a pathway:

OctoStudio → Beam → MicroBlocks → micro:bit → Servo → Physical Action

That bridge lowers the barrier to robotics.

2. Real Audience > Teacher Assessment

When projects leave the classroom:

Students care more about reliability
Iteration becomes meaningful
Debugging becomes urgent and authentic

The measure of success is not “Does the teacher like it?” It’s “Did it function in front of everyone?”

3. Cross-Grade Systems Thinking

Grade 2: design + coding Grade 5: wiring + electronics Teacher: system integration

Students saw that complex systems require multiple roles — coding, hardware, mechanical design, rehearsal timing.

Video Walkthrough

I record a short explanation video for students whenever possible. It serves two purposes:

Reinforces in-class instruction
Allows students to rewatch independently

This supports differentiation without slowing down the entire group.

Reflections on MicroBlocks

MicroBlocks made this feasible because:

It allows live programming to micro:bit
It supports extensions and flexible communication
It bridges block coding and embedded systems

For educators already using micro:bit, MicroBlocks offers a fast, responsive workflow. For educators using OctoStudio, it opens a door into robotics.

If You Want to Try Something Similar

Start small:

One micro:bit
One servo
One beam trigger
One cardboard mechanism

Then scale.

The magic isn’t the snow.
It’s the moment students realize they can control the physical world outside of the classroom with code.

Learning Happens Everywhere (If We Let It)

Mapet — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

We love learning environments that don’t announce themselves as classrooms. A FabLab visit, a cooking class, a university night market, and a coworking space with a capybara café all stood out on their own this November, but together they revealed something we’ve been circling for years in our work at SteamHead.

Learning thrives when spaces invite participation rather than instruction.

At FabLab Bangkok, the scale and openness of the space immediately stood out. There was serious equipment, plenty of room to move, and an education-focused makerspace operating right next door.

Before visiting, we found them through the FabLab network and coordinated over Line, simple, informal, and human. The FabLab manager shared a thoughtful teaching philosophy, and our conversation quickly turned to familiar ground: how to make robotics playful, how to support student agency, and how motivation changes when learners feel ownership over their work. It felt less like a site visit and more like a peer exchange.

That same feeling showed up later in a very different setting, a Thai cooking class we joined after work. The structure was simple and hands-on.

Participants judged their own work based on taste and enjoyment, not grades or rubrics. People wanted to get it right because they were going to eat it. Language differences faded into the background as everyone focused on timing, technique, and shared tools. Cooperation emerged naturally, without being assigned. By the end, strangers felt connected through the act of making something together.

On a Friday night at Srinakharinwirot University, we visited the campus night market. Students and vendors gained real-world experience while serving food, running stalls, and interacting with the public. At one point, a professor stepped outside with a violin and began to play, not as a performance, but as a contribution to the atmosphere. The live music shifted the energy of the entire space. It wasn’t scheduled enrichment; it was someone bringing their craft into a shared environment and trusting students to appreciate it.

Even Union Space, a more traditional coworking environment, surprised us. Inside was a capybara café, an unexpected combination that blurred the boundaries between work, leisure, and curiosity. While Union Space focuses on desks, meeting rooms, and projectors, the presence of something joyful and unconventional changed how people interacted with the space. It reminded us that environments shape behavior as much as curricula do.

One location made the connective tissue especially visible, though we may be a bit biased. MakerStation, an education space adjacent to FabLab Bangkok, is preparing students for the STEAM Racing Global program. Students are designing toy cars in TinkerCAD, 3D printing them, and racing them down a long track.

What struck us as worth calling out wasn’t the project itself. It was the shared “language.” These students were using the same tool our students use in San Francisco. Conversations sparked instantly between us and the class. A technical interest became a bridge across culture, age, and geography.

Across all of these spaces, the insight was consistent: informal learning environments reduce friction. When learners aren’t positioned as recipients of instruction, they step into agency more easily. Motivation becomes intrinsic. Cooperation emerges because the task itself demands it. Backgrounds, accents, and prior experiences matter less than shared focus and shared tools.

This isn’t a new idea in theory, but seeing it repeated across such different contexts reinforced it for us in practice.

At SteamHead, these experiences have sharpened our commitment to designing learning environments that feel more like night markets and kitchens than classrooms. We pay closer attention to atmosphere, flow, and how participation is invited. We think carefully about tools that create shared language across communities. We leave more room for learners to judge their own work and define success in ways that matter to them.

We don’t believe informal learning spaces replace formal education. But we do believe they reveal what learning looks like when it’s working. Our goal isn’t to replicate Bangkok in San Francisco, or anywhere else, but to keep learning from spaces where education happens quietly, socially, and by choice.

Those are the spaces we keep trying to build toward.

MakeFashion Edu's Metacognition

James — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

MakeFashion Edu is not just a fun project, it has solid connections to progressive education philosophy and academic musings. For newcomers, this is our project where students choose advocacy issues and then combine fashion and electronics for a public runway, exemplifies Dale Schunk’s (noted education academic) notion that learning and cognition are shaped by a learner’s beliefs, which in turn, are influenced by personal, social, and cultural factors. This project-based approach promotes Social Learning Theory.

MakeFashion Edu places students in a real-world scenario where they present their fusion of fashion and technology at a public fashion show. Simultaneously, they engage with a global audience through our Instagram account (instagram.com/makefashionedu). This authentic learning framework allows students to receive real assessments and feedback from the public - outside the walls of the classroom (Shaw, 2018). Pride or shame comes, not from the teacher, but from the viewers. Consequently, students are not merely absorbing knowledge passively; they learn actively through societal appraisal. I think this aligns very well with the spirit of Schunk’s viewpoints, if not the exact phrasing.

Constructivist Learning Theory also intertwines well within the MakeFashion Edu project’s ‘fabric’. A big goal is the belief that learners actively construct their own understanding and knowledge (Schunk, 2012) - learner agency. Students are afforded ample autonomy to define their success, and I as a teacher discuss it openly in class. This choice varies per student and could manifest in a deep dive into electronics, crafting persuasive arguments, or honing craftsmanship to elicit public appeal. The crazy diversity of student paths towards success really shows the constructivist principle of learner-centered knowledge construction.

In line with Schunk’s emphasis on metacognition, the teaching approach taken encourages open discussions on learning strategies. By prompting students to reflect on their strategies and knowledge building process, the project further reinforces their metacognitive skills. It’s a great blend of Schunk’s viewpoints!

References

Schunk, D. H. (2012). Learning theories: An educational perspective (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html?id=53ad2847cf57d75c068b45c5&assetKey=AS%3A273549456019456%401442230680395

Shaw, M.A., et al. (2018). The SteamHead Design Immersion Curriculum. SteamHead Productions. Retrieved from https://steamhead.space/design-immersion-curriculum/ ‎

ChatGPT4, please ELI5 John Dewey's educational philosophy

James — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT

ChatGPT just did an excellent job helping to teach me! Educational Theorist John Dewey wrote a fantastic essay in 1938 called “Experience & Education”, which shares nuanced viewpoints on progressive education. The points he makes are important for me to reflect in my curriculum plans for next school year. However, it is super dense, and written in high-~~eleven~~ academian, and is super long winded to help in avoiding subtle philosophical contradictions. But here it is summarized into four main points!:

**Section 1: Traditional vs. Progressive Education is a False Dichotomy**

John Dewey’s “Experience & Education” examines the contrast between traditional and progressive education. Traditional education, Dewey argues, is rigid, authoritarian, and focuses on the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student. In contrast, progressive education emphasizes the role of experience in the learning process, fostering active engagement, collaboration, and problem-solving.

Dewey criticizes traditional education for its lack of attention to the individual needs of students and its focus on memorization and rote learning. In progressive education, however, the learner’s experience is central, and curriculum is designed to be flexible, allowing for adaptation to individual interests and abilities. Dewey also critiques the false dichotomy that has arisen between the two approaches, suggesting that a balance can be struck between the essential elements of both.

**Section 2: Educational Experiences: Continuity and Interaction**

Dewey delves into the role of experience in education, asserting that all genuine education arises from experience. He emphasizes that not all experiences are equally educative; some can be detrimental to the learner. To ensure quality learning experiences, Dewey proposes two criteria: continuity and interaction.

Continuity refers to the idea that every experience influences future experiences. As such, educators must consider how each experience sets the stage for subsequent learning. Interaction, on the other hand, highlights the importance of the interplay between the individual and their environment. Dewey believes that effective learning occurs when the learner actively engages with their surroundings, allowing them to construct meaning and develop new understanding.

**Section 3: Teachers as Facilitators instead of content-machines**

In progressive education, the role of the teacher shifts from an authoritarian figure to a guide, collaborator, and facilitator. Dewey emphasizes that teachers must create a learning environment that encourages exploration, inquiry, and reflection, while also providing guidance and support when necessary.

Teachers must be aware of their students’ prior experiences and be able to build on them in a way that fosters growth and development. They should also cultivate a sense of community within the classroom, promoting collaboration and social learning. Dewey stresses the importance of teachers being lifelong learners themselves, constantly reflecting on their practices and seeking ways to improve.

**Section 4: The Democratic Ideal and Education**

Dewey connects the principles of progressive education to the democratic ideal, asserting that a well-functioning democracy requires educated and critical citizens. Progressive education nurtures these qualities by fostering an environment that promotes inquiry, communication, and collaboration.

Dewey also emphasizes the importance of education in social reform, arguing that progressive education can contribute to breaking down social barriers and fostering a more just society. By promoting the growth of each individual and equipping them with the skills necessary for active citizenship, progressive education can help create a more democratic and equitable society.

In conclusion, John Dewey’s “Experience & Education” outlines the benefits of progressive education in comparison to traditional methods. By focusing on the role of experience, the teacher’s role as a facilitator, and the connection between education and democracy, Dewey’s work continues to shape educational theory and practice to this day.

(ChatGPT-4, James’ Dewey Prompt, April 24, 2023)

Reference: Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Touchstone Book. http://ruby.fgcu.edu/Courses/ndemers/Colloquium/ExperiencEducationDewey.pdf
Image Credit: Thufir, Diffusion Bee. (2023 Apr 24). James’ Dewey Prompts.
Writing Credit: ChatGPT-4. (2023 Apr 24). James’ Dewey Prompt.

Dyscalculia + Microsoft Teams

James — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Dyscalculia is a congenital condition that affects an individual’s ability to acquire and perform mathematical tasks. It is a lifelong condition, and here is a Numberphile YouTube video on it.They say 3-6% of people have it!

Having dyscalculia does not mean a person won’t be successful and happy, but it can often mean that academic or other life tasks are not well-designed for them.

I read a pretty long academic paper, or five, on the condition, it’s identification and possible “treatments” (awful word choice by the academics, imo). Funnily enough, when seen through the eyes of technology-integration, a large amount of the “treatments” fell into things I do anyways for all of my students.

Here is a list of things, you can imagine how without tech these things might require a lot of work especially just for a few students. Imagine applying this stuff to paper worksheets:

Offer students the use of Microsoft Teams Immersive Reader
Use sans serif fonts as a default.
Use “dark mode”
Format your content nicely, or copy/paste other content into a new doc
- Use bullet points
- Don’t justify paragraphs
- Add whitespace with page breaks or extra space between paragraphs
- Add hyperlinks
- Add images (PowerPoint auto designer is awesome for this btw)
Allow students individual access to documents, so they can review at their own pace. The Teams “Assignments” function does this really well.
Encourage note-taking directly on the study materials; once again “Assignments” is useful to get each student their own copy of the lesson doc that you can later review.

Finally, just raise awareness in class over learning difficulties, so that students can self-advocate for themselves.

Credits:

Words by James Simpson
Images by Thufir running DiffusionBee

Seating Arrangements for Students with Disabilities

James — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In my 2018 classroom, I had the privilege of working with 18 students, two of whom presented with disabilities. Specifically, Theo was diagnosed with moderate autism, which impacted his social abilities, and Maria had a sensory processing disorder that resulted in high sensitivity to certain sensory experiences, such as physical stimuli and sound. My personal experience with misophonia helped me to connect with Maria and understand her challenges.

*Theo, sitting in the corner*

The seating arrangements in my classroom were designed to cater to the diverse needs and preferences of my students. Theo was granted the privilege of sitting almost exclusively on the floor in the front corner of the classroom. This arrangement allowed him to avoid unexpected social situations and be in a familiar and predictable environment. Furthermore, he was permitted to start working before my instructions had concluded, which facilitated his active learning and information retention, as well as reduced his dependence on support from his peers.

*Maria, experiencing distress from a sound*

Maria, on the other hand, did not receive specific seating arrangements but was provided with the privilege of changing her physical location as required to avoid highly sensitive stimuli. This was particularly important in light of her high sensitivity to stimuli, such as the crunching sound made by scissors when cutting certain types of paper and proximity to electronic devices. As a result, Maria often had to move her seat in the middle of a lesson, which could have been a hindrance to her learning process, but instead helped her to develop resilience to painful stimuli and allowed her to resume her work without disruption.

In my opinion, Maria’s experience was greatly benefited by the understanding and support she received from her classmates and the school. This understanding not only improved the empathy that other students had for Maria’s condition but also resulted in more positive social experiences for her.

In conclusion, I believe that I was fortunate to have had a classroom with clear challenges, as it provided a valuable learning experience for my students and myself. I am aware that other classrooms took different approaches, some that did not work as well or support diversity, and I wonder what internal lessons my students took away from comparing my class with others.

**Related Reading
**

Types of sensory disabilities: https://www.aruma.com.au/about-us/about-disability/types-of-disabilities/types-of-sensory-disabilities/
Teaching students with intellectual disabilities: Constructivism or behaviorism? https://doi.org/10.5897/ERR2017.3366
What is Misophonia? https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-misophonia

Credit

Author: James Simpson
Artist: Thufir running DiffusionBee

MakeFashion Edu: Paper Dresses

James — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Paper as a “fabric” for affordable student wearables projects? It might work out better than you think!

While researching at a textile museum in Prato, Italy, the team at SteamHead visited an exhibit showcasing paper dresses. These dresses, made entirely out of paper, were not only beautiful but also surprisingly durable. Paper dresses have a rich history in America dating back to the 1960s. During this time, paper dresses were seen representing political and cultural messages. Andy Warhol and Harry Gordon, among others, worked with fashion designers to get out new garments quickly to convey the messages of the times.

The teachers with MakeFashion Edu are excited about the potential for paper dresses made from sustainable, eco-friendly materials. They believe that this could be an excellent option for students - for all emerging designers - who often have limited resources.

This summer educators will gather in Calgary at the Fuse33 Makerspace, and testing will commence on a variety of proposed materials, paper and synthetic/paper blends included!

Prato, Italy, it is well known for its textile and clothing industry. It has a large and well established Chinese culture, which was established to drive Prato’s textile industry. Prato is also currently important center for textile research and innovation, making it an ideal location for MakeFashion Edu to discover new uses for this old material.

For our teachers in Arizona, consider checking out the “Generation Paper” exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum!

*A “Nixonette” Dress*

Donations: Material Matters

Carrie — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

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.

Desert Solar Journey

James — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

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!

Donations: Critical Contributions

Carrie — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

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.

Fuse33 LiDAR Scan

James — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Fast and easy 3D building scans: I recently used an iPhone 12 Pro with LiDAR and the PolyCam app to create a 3D scan of the shop floor at Fuse33, a makerspace in Calgary. The resulting 3D data was composed of voxels, and the image was painted on from the iPhone’s camera. It is blurry, but only took about 15 minutes!

While there are other methods for creating 3D scans that will give you a sharper image, such as photogrammetry and Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), these methods require rendering the data on a graphics card after taking hundreds of photographs in good lighting conditions. You would need to schedule a whole day, maybe multiple days, for a model of this size to be completed. In contrast, the LiDAR method on the iPhone 12 Pro allows you to render the 3D model on the phone itself, simply by taking a long video.

I am interested in using 3D models of spaces and environments for education. After some moderate successes during the pandemic, I feel that these spaces can help students empathize and relate to different environments differently than seeing text, photos, or even videos. The perspective is not forced, it’s novel/exciting, and it hints at content creation inside virtual spaces. The physical spaces our students have access to varies widely, and avoiding those limitations is something I’m quite excited about but don’t yet know how to fully take advantage of.

In case the above embed does not load for you, here is the link: https://poly.cam/capture/888518EF-6D3B-4CD0-BA35-647FE2FBFEA6

Also here is the exterior of the building: https://poly.cam/capture/66A2B978-2DA3-463C-BE29-8DF1C7AF287A

Some good resources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/photogrammetry/
https://www.reddit.com/r/3DScanning
https://poly.cam
For the latest in NeRF search for “Instant-NGP”, but fyi it is not quite non-coder friendly yet. here is a simple explainer video though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXOjV7EHbk

Online Events: Together While Apart

Carrie — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Written by ChatGPT, Prompt/Edit by Carrie

Over the past two and a half years, our team at SteamHead has had the opportunity to participate in, present at, and even host various online events. While it was a difficult adjustment to go from in-person events to virtual ones, we were grateful for the chance to continue sharing and collaborating with others in the education, maker, and hacker communities.

Through this experience, we have learned a lot about what works well in a virtual setting, some of our top examples are:

Big Blue Button conference software builds communities on the fly through new ways for attendees to interact with each other and speakers.
Recorded talks coupled with live interaction boosts production quality AND speaker/attendee interaction.
Well known but worth a reminder: word clouds, polls, and live surveys (such as Mentimeter) help to engage, and to break up long periods of speech.
Virtual environments like Mozilla Hubs can facilitate more interaction between participants.
Making recorded talks accessible after a conference can reach new audiences - different styles of people tune in after hours vs those that attend online conferences!

As the world reopens, we are excited to meet in person again, but we are also grateful for the new remote tools and skills we have acquired. We are looking forward to seeing what new opportunities and connections will come from this experience, and we would like to give a shoutout to all the organizers, presenters, and attendees who have made it possible.

Hackers on Planet Earth, New York, NY - https://hope.net/
Make: Maker Kits, Bay Area, CA - https://makezine.com/article/maker-news/plan-c-live-educational-kits/
MetaEdu, Taiwan - https://www.metaedu.org.tw/events/pause-to-regroup-maker-education-revolution/
Informa Connect: International Schools, Singapore - https://www.informaconnect.com.sg/conferences/
Make: MakerCamp, BayArea, CA - https://makercamp.com/partners/make-fashion-edu/
MakeFashion Edu Virtual Gala, Mozilla Hubs - https://steamhead.space/vme/
Maker Music Festival, Online - https://www.makermusicfestival.com/
Office of Educational Technology: Digital Learning Accelerator - https://tech.ed.gov/launching-a-digital-literacy-accelerator/
Make: MakeHalloween, Bay Area, CA - https://makezine.com/article/maker-news/happy-halloween-maker-camp-spooktacular/
Maker Ed Convening, Bay Area, CA - https://makered.org/convening-2020/
High Tech High: Deeper Learning, San Diego, CA - https://deeper-learning.org/
High Tech High: Deeper Learning, China - https://deeper-learning.org/dlg/

International Baccalaureate IDUs: I&S+Math

James — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

I.B. teachers, trying to come up with an IDU concept? I have three suggestions here, and one is from an AI! I worked as a Tech Integrator at an I.B. school in Shenzhen, China. Our hallways were filled with students of different backgrounds and cultures, and the program turned out to be an excellent fit for the school and the teachers. One aspect of I.B. that was often challenging for new teachers was the Inter-Disciplinary Units (explanation added at the bottom if you’d like it - TL;DR it’s a project that spans two subjects. Think math isn’t useful? Try combining it with any other subject to see it’s immense use!).

It was a challenge to come up with interesting ideas that both teachers could equally support and would achieve the IDU objectives.

Here are three inter-disciplinary units that could be run between the Individuals and Societies course and the Mathematics course in a high school with an International Baccalaureate curriculum. These feel like classes that don’t intersect, until you see some obvious examples:

Climate change and carbon footprint: This unit could explore the environmental and societal impacts of climate change, and how calculus can be used to measure complex measurements used to understand these issues. Simple Hawaiian Climate Example and Lots of Complex Examples
Social inequality and economic mobility: This unit could examine the ways in which social and economic factors can impact individuals and societies, and how mathematical concepts such as probability and statistical analysis can be used to understand and address issues of inequality and mobility. New York Times Tool and Lesson Example
Political polling and Decision Making: This unit could examine how polls and surveys are used to gauge public opinion and inform decision making in the political realm, and how mathematical concepts such as sampling and statistical analysis are used to interpret and present the results of these polls. Example: Just to be genuine, I couldn’t find an example easily! So I asked ChatGPT how it could be done; teaching algebra with a “voting systems” project. Pretty good answer!:

ChatGPT: One way to teach basic algebra using a lesson on voting systems and methods is to start by introducing students to the concept of algebraic variables, which are symbols used to represent unknown quantities. You could then have students use algebraic variables to represent different voting methods, such as first-past-the-post or proportional representation.

Next, you could have students use algebraic equations to represent different voting scenarios, such as determining the number of votes needed to win an election. You could also have students use algebraic equations to compare and contrast different voting methods and understand how they work.

To make the lesson more interactive and engaging, you could have students work in small groups to create and solve their own algebraic equations related to voting systems and methods. You could also have students present their findings to the class, encouraging them to use mathematical language and concepts to explain their thinking.

What are IDUs?

Please forgive the academic-lingo here. Inter-disciplinary units are educational units that involve multiple academic disciplines, such as math, science, and social studies. The purpose of inter-disciplinary units is to help students understand and apply knowledge and skills in a way that is more closely connected to the real world. By bringing together ideas and concepts from different disciplines, inter-disciplinary units can provide a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of a topic and help students see the connections between different areas of study.

In a high school with an International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, inter-disciplinary units may be used to help students develop the skills and knowledge required to meet the IB Learner Profile, which includes characteristics such as being a risk-taker, a reflective thinker, and a communicator. Inter-disciplinary units can also help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are important for success in both college and the workforce.

Credits: Diffusion Bee on Thufir (image), ChatGPT online (Algebra example), James Simpson (author)

My stab at a citation: Simpson, James, ChatGPT online, Diffusion Bee on Thufir. “International Baccalaureate IDUs: I&S+Math”. SteamHead Blog. 2023.

Student Group-Work Issues and Solutions (ai generated)

James — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Two SteamHead educators discussed collaborative project options between classes, and worked around some typical issues with student group work. Let’s tune in: Professor Sassoubre: …I’m doing well, thank you. I understand you wanted to discuss a potential collaboration between your high school design class and my university engineering students. Is that correct?Mr. James: Yes, that’s correct. I think it would be a great opportunity for both groups of students to learn from each other and work on a project together. However, I’m a little concerned that the high school students won’t have much to contribute to the project and will just be receiving advice from the university students. I want to make sure that all of the students are motivated to work on the project and feel like they are contributing.

Professor Sassoubre: I understand your concern. One way we could address this issue is by using the “Design Thinking” process developed at Stanford University’s dSchool. This process involves conducting interviews and empathizing with the needs and perspectives of the other group. By doing this, both groups of students can learn from each other and contribute to the project in meaningful ways.

Mr. James: That sounds like a great idea. I think the “Design Thinking” process will definitely help the students collaborate more effectively. But I’m still interested in finding a way for the students to work on a physical project together. Do you have any suggestions for that?

Professor Sassoubre: One option could be to have the high school students focus on the design and aesthetics of the project, while the university students focus on the engineering and technical aspects. This way, both groups can contribute to the project in their areas of expertise and learn from each other in the process.

Mr. James: That’s a fantastic suggestion, Professor Sassoubre. Thank you for your insights. I think this will be a great opportunity for both groups of students to learn and grow together.

Professor Sassoubre: I agree, Mr. James. I’m looking forward to seeing what the students come up with. Let’s set up a meeting to discuss the details of the project and how we can best support the students in their collaboration.

Mr. James: Sounds good to me. Thank you again for your help, Professor Sassoubre.

Credits:
Dialogue by ChatGPT
Dialogue Prompt by James, a summary of a Brain Jam discussion by Sassoubre and James
Image by Thufir, running Diffusion Bee
Image Prompt by James

Brilliant.org Use Case

James — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT

As a middle school technology integrator, I have recently been using the website Brilliant.org in my teacher’s classroom and have had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I have found the learning games on the website to be extremely engaging and effective at teaching complex concepts to my students. The interactive nature of the games makes them feel more like fun activities than traditional lessons, which has helped to keep my students motivated and engaged.

However, one of the main drawbacks of using a website like Brilliant.org is the lack of social interaction that comes with learning online. While it is certainly convenient to be able to access the games from anywhere with an internet connection, there is no substitute for the kind of in-person interaction and discussion that takes place in a traditional classroom setting. I have found that my students are less likely to ask questions or engage with the material as deeply when they are working on their own, rather than in a group setting.

Overall, while I have had largely positive experiences with Brilliant.org as a teaching tool, I do think it is important to supplement online learning with more traditional forms of instruction in order to provide a well-rounded education for my students. With planning, I would use a combination of online resources like Brilliant.org and in-person classroom activities to create a dynamic and engaging learning environment for my students.

Ideally this would take the form of a project based learning plan where the students were encouraged to find concepts they needed to understand on Brilliant.org. However, Googling for information works really well in those situations and book learning is rarely needed in such a direct manner. For now, Brilliant.org fills a better role than books for required topics and test preparation, and I highly recommend it for that purpose.

article credit:

James (prompts, opinions, editor)
ChatGPT (copywriter)
Splinter (stable diffuser)

prompts:

copy: write a three to five paragraph review of the website brilliant.org, from the perspective of a middle school teacher feeling positive about the learning games, but negative about the lack of social interaction that comes with using a website to learn instead of learning in a classroom
image: a grade 6 student using a macbook and a website to study geometry

Field Trip Quadratic Voting

James — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I recently taught a lesson on quadratic voting to my middle school students. Understanding non-traditional political and economic systems is important to me, because I think it creates better world citizens. These topics should be baked into lessons throughout K-12.

In this lesson, each student was given 10 votes that they could use to vote on a virtual field trip destination. The voting was conducted using the quadratic voting method, which allows individuals to assign more weight to their votes by using more votes. Here is an awesome tool - https://quadraticvote.co/ - to quickly run a quadratic vote, but I recommend going in-depth with your students on various voting methods if you have time.

One of the virtues of learning quadratic voting is that it allows for a more nuanced representation of individual preferences. Rather than simply stating a preference for one option over another, individuals can express the intensity of their preference by using more votes. This is lauded as allowing for a more accurate representation of the collective will of the group. I love it because it causes voters to see multiple sides of an issue: you aren’t always for or against something, but rather have a gradient of pros and cons to consider within yourself. (Sidenote, this is what I love about calculus, it improves your ability to make decisions weighing in your various emotions and time values).

Politically, quadratic voting can help to mitigate the influence of “swing voters” who may hold disproportionate power in traditional voting systems. By requiring individuals to use more votes in order to exert greater influence, quadratic voting helps to ensure that the outcome of the vote reflects the preferences of the majority rather than a small number of individuals.

Overall, the lesson on quadratic voting was a valuable learning experience for my students, as it taught them the importance of accurately expressing their preferences and the value of considering the preferences of others.

references:

Vitalik explaining quadratic funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssr0CHg6YSE
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic\_voting
A simple tool to conduct a vote: https://quadraticvote.co/ (though personally I made a shared excel file so we could all see the entire process)

credits:

Words: M. James on the keyboard
Image: R. Thufir jamming with Diffusion Bee for the image

SteamHead Courses on "The Shelf"

Mapet — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT

SteamHead and MakeFashion Edu courses have moved to this site, SteamHead.space! Find it under “The Shelf”. The new course has more media and formatting, which makes it super easy to read quickly and pull out the resources you need for your class that day. Teachable has been awesome, but is primarily is for video / talking-head content. On our site, we can deliver printable PDFs and easy-to-read course plans to you! We do love video, btw, and you can see our best videos at YouTube.com/SteamHeadProductions Here is a great set of two videos to watch around Fashion Tech in the classroom, and see the channel for runway videos with amazing student outfits lighting up the show:

The Teaching Plan

The Result

See you on the new platform! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact us.

Getting to know the SteamHead Team: Twila Busby

Mapet — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

We’d love for you to get to know the SteamHead team better. In this series of posts, we ask the great people behind SteamHead some questions about the organization, the pandemic and their hobbies!

Next up is Twila Busby.

What’s your favourite student project and why?
I can’t remember the project piece, but I will always remember a young designer telling me that the MakeFashion Edu Runway Show was the “best day of her life”! I think kids do not have enough opportunities to create something wonderful and share it with others (besides their class and teacher). So when they can show and talk about their work with adults who are interested, I think that is very motivating for them.

What’s the best part about working in SteamHead?
The community and the support to do good things with kids.

What are some things you’d like people to know about SteamHead?

Send money so that we can extend our reach and spread the word!
We try to be intentional in what we do, even with projects that seem whimsical.
We love to learn and are never satisfied with the status quo.

What do you miss the most that you weren’t able to do during the pandemic?
At first is was just not being able to travel and gather together and see students in person, now it is not being able to see their faces because of the mask wearing.

What is one positive thing that came out of the pandemic?
The chance to slow down and prioritize. Using Mozilla Hubs as an exhibition venue.

How has the pandemic affected the way things in Steamhead are being done?
Much more remote work and thinking about two tracks of curriculum; virtual and in person.

What’s one topic that you could talk about for hours and hours?
K-12 Education and Learning

What’s your favorite season and why?
In Tucson, it is fall because the weather cools down a bit, but it isn’t cold. Other places it would be spring when everything starts blooming.

What show/video/thing are you bingeing on right now?
Just finished Netflix’s Baking Impossible, where a baker and an engineer are paired up to use edible ingredients to create something that passes stress tests, such as shake tables, obstacle courses, floating. I like shows where people demonstrate great skills.

Learn more about Twila by reading her profile here.

Digital Literacy Accelerator

James — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

SteamHead has been accepted to the Digital Learning Accelerator which is supported by the US Department of Education. It is a 4 month program, and we have three educators that will share and develop the MakeFashion Edu program’s focus on advocacy. In a MakeFashion Edu season, students identify issues that they personally care about, research them, and then build fashion tech outfits to represent and call attention to their causes.

This research, which occurs primarily online, of varied topics within a single classroom, is of particular interest to the Department of Education. SteamHead is joined by 9 other organizations that are approaching the issue of digital literacy from different angles for individuals from primary school to adult ages.

The recent propagation of digital sources of information as primary motivator for the opinions and actions of American citizens has gained attention during the COVID pandemic, and SteamHead is proud to researching and developing proposals, and sharing our experience in the arena of digital literacy.

From the U.S. Office of Educational Technology

Goals of the Digital Literacy Accelerator

The Digital Literacy Accelerator has one overarching goal — to identify interventions that have a pathway for improvement and success in the school driven digital literacy space. The interventions should target one of three user groups: Grades 6-9; Grades 9-12; and Adult Learners.

The Digital Literacy Accelerator hopes to accomplish this goal through these specific aims:

Surface innovative ideas and strategies that support learners in evaluating and combating misinformation and promoting civil discourse in digital spaces, while allowing the most innovative ideas to start a path to success beyond the Digital Literacy Accelerator.
Provide diverse teams with an opportunity to develop and demonstrate a “proof of concept” of these ideas, by providing teams with access to convenings, experts, and resources to strengthen their skills in design thinking and early phase development.
Provide tangible early proof points of success in either of two forms: 1) either showing signs of promise for school-driven (in-school, after-school, or at-home) interventions or tools that can move the needle on learners’ digital literacy or 2) key learnings for future iterations for improving skills related to digital literacy.
Engage and motivate a diverse cadre of postsecondary students and young professionals to address issues related to digital literacy and pursue work in educational technology.

Getting to know the SteamHead Team: Carrie Leung

Mapet — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Starting it off with our co-founder, Carrie Leung.

What’s your proudest SteamHead moment?
Hard question, it’s like asking what’s your favorite movie! If I really had to say one thing, it’s that I know we created lasting change in the education community of Shenzhen that can be evidenced today - still going strong and continously evolving on it’s own (without us being there). The SteamHead community as a network has put makerspaces in schools, carved out roles for educators in the Maker Movement, celebrated student work at the School Maker Faire and MakeFashion Edu Runway events, inspired teachers and students (and these can be anyone - moms to grandparents to students) through opensourcing our methods, playbooks, resources and just simply by getting people into the same space. I experienced first hand through all the challenges and successes, that a group of people with a shared vision can definitely make a lasting difference.

What’s your favourite student project and why?
The first season of MakeFashion Edu left an immense impression on me. The season one cohort was magical for all of us. We felt like we were a team, we felt like our individual stories were being heard, we felt like each challenge made us stronger, we felt like our academic learning had relevant real world meaning behind it. Lucas, loved design, hid his talent for the fear of ridicule (bc boys shouldn’t like to design clothes) became an essential go to for help among his peers. Hayle, HATED math, started applying it to get her runway piece off the ground (by season two she conceded she needed math). Angela, Amy, and Lily learned not only to code and solder, but also finding their voice to speak about what their piece symbolized and why it should matter to all sorts of adults inlcuding the media. Coco became our engineering guru - helping everyone (including boys and older students) with their pieces. Peers that weren’t friendly before were now on the same team. While all of this magic was happening on the classroom level, the same was going on with the adults. It was a multi-school effort and the teachers, parents, and experts came together to share, learn, and put on the extravenganza. Socio-economic walls were broken down and a lot of great memories were made.

What’s the best part about working in SteamHead?
Hands down the people. Without the students, parents, educators, industry leaders, researchers, media folks there would be no SteamHead. SteamHeaders span across the globe, topics, skill sets, age, backgrounds and we support each other as needed. We are all moving in differenent ways toward the common goal of making relevant education assessible.

What are some things you’d like people to know about SteamHead?

SteamHead runs 100% on volunteers donated time, expertise and resources.
Until 2020, we operated with no exchanges of money. It was a thoughtful decision to help us and those who want to engage with us to focus what was important. This takes an immense amount of work and time to faciliate. In 2020, we decided to take money donations and exchanged our expertise for income in aid of emergency situations in schools in a timely manner.

What do you miss the most that you weren’t able to do during the pandemic?
I miss the SH makerspace in Shenzhen. I miss the SteamHead residents that come and stay for months at a time. We learned so much from each other. There are so many fond memories of that open space of meeting folks from all walks of life. We’d tinker together, ponder change together, and if things were aligned sprouted actions together. So many great things came to be with just being in an often hot and crowded space and some tools create together.

What is one positive thing that came out of the pandemic?
So much of what we do is hard to articulate. The world often wants metrics and evidence to prove things are achieved. I understand that. But there are so many things we do, our goals, and our vision - how does one accurately measure it? How do you measure the impact a teacher has on a student just by believing in them? How do you measure the agency a child develops by being allowed to run their own project? How do you measure the affect a mother has on her children as she starts to understand project based learning folds in a plethora of under valued critical skills for her kids? How do you measure the pivot to- one of understanding and questioning- instead of fear and insecurity when a student is posed with a challenge or a person that is unfamiliar? The most important takeaway from the pandemic is that it showed what we are doing at SH works. It proved to me that the things we build, teach and share whether tangible or intangible makes us positively contributing human beings. We acknowledged the situation and tried one solution after another. And when I say we I mean everyone in our network. I had young students confidently step up to the challenge of being head of household because their parents were essential workers. Citing the project management skills came in handy! I had students asking for help because they become local community leaders while their guardians worked. There were teachers sharing methods and resources. We had experts like Mike Shaw spin up a quick video on how to maximize online tools to help teachers that weren’t technical. We had a business donate a car so we can deliver kits to schools kids stuck at home. All the skills and mindsets we advocate at SteamHead, yea, it was utilized in full force in 2020.

How has the pandemic affected the way things in Steamhead are being done?
We’ve always had a “cloud community” our network being loosely connected online - this is now stronger. Support in the form of materials and tools are now donated with money equivelants. We believe a degree of online learning is here to stay forever, we have reallocated a bulk and time of resources in bringing our content online for free. This in fact has creately positive affects due to the fact we can reach more teachers and they can build on our materials. Our events like the School MakerFaire and MakeFashion Edu runway shows have pivoted us into the realm of the metaverse and virtual reality. It has been really fun and having a timeless showcase is a great way to share. This will be a component that SH will keep forever as it has the same positive affects of putting our content online for free.

What’s one topic that you could talk about for hours and hours?
History, humanities, and current events through the lens of economics and finance. I feel economics, monetary protocols, etc are a huge contributing factor in how it has shaped us as a species - I can talk about this forever! (People just glaze over when I start, and my friends kind of roll their eyes at me lol)

What’s your favorite season and why?
Oooh, I know this isn’t an answer, but it really depends on where I am. For example, if I’m in SF then it’s during Indian Summer Sep/Oct/Nov. If I’m in Shenzhen then Fall or Spring. Dry season for sure if I’m in Costa Rica. Wet season if I’m in Thailand.

What show/video/thing are you bingeing on right now?
Inside Job. An adult cartoon on Netflix. If you like Ricky and Morty - this tracks!

Learn more about Carrie by reading her profile here.

MakeFashion Edu: Website Gets A Fresh Update

Mapet — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Say hello to the newly updated MakeFashion Edu website!

The team has worked hard to give the website a fresh and modern look and at the same time highlight all the important aspects that make MFEDU a roaring success. Photos of designers, mentors, runway shows and behind-the-scenes give the visitors an in-depth look at what MFEDU is all about.

The clear and easy navigation allows visitors to quickly see the highlights of the initiative. There is a dedicated menu for all the runway shows. The runway show galleries showcase the amazing pieces created by the designers and their models on the runway.

Another important part of the website is the Run the Program section. This is where we share more information and guidance to educators, mentors, makerspace facilitators, school leaders or anyone interested how to get the program running and its benefits. We’ve included additional resources like videos, posters, and social media posts to get them started.

At its core, MakeFashion Edu’s goal is for student makers to learn design thinking, technical skills, practical building skills, and most importantly using these skills to express themselves and tell stories for themselves and their communities. We hope that this improved website makes it easier to send this message across to visitors who are looking to make great things.

Avery Kuo

Avery — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Avery Kuo is a high school senior (Class of 2022) from Pleasanton, California. One of her close family members was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Having witnessed the impacts of cancer personally, Avery aims to use her strengths, computer science and mathematics, to better women’s health.

In the summer of 2020, Avery extensively researched the correlation between menopause and different diseases. The loss of estrogen during menopause leads to a sensitive hypothalamus, which increases the risk of cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease.

Memory Device for Bags

Avery reached out to groups of women in menopause to learn about their greatest side effects. The overall consensus was that they would most often forget the location of personal items, such as keys and phones. With the guidance of Carrie Leung, Avery’s mentor, she designed and prototyped a small device, featured in virtual reality at the Maker Exhibition in February 2020, to assist women with short-term memory loss. When the bag is moved (tilt sensor activated), the device checks its vicinity for the items connected to it. If the items are nearby, the LED lights will turn green, otherwise, they will turn red.

Phytoestrogen Diet Tracker App

In addition, Avery created an app that records meal histories and their corresponding phytoestrogen levels. There is a database in the app with different foods and their phytoestrogen levels. Users can record their meals, and they can access their previous meals by entering a specific date. The app will also inform users when they meet their phytoestrogen level intake each day.

Bra Design

Avery designed an affordable bra the would pair with the app by taking the temperature of the user to track hot flashes, inform the user if they have met the threshold for phytoestrogen intake, and noninvasively test the user’s estrogen levels.

Social Media Work

As the social media outreach intern, Avery curates posts for MakeFashion Edu accounts. She promotes the MakeFashion Edu mission by sharing the works of student makers across the world.

When Avery is not researching, learning about and creating wearable technology, she is either training at her Taekwondo studio or teaching self-defense in her community. She represented Team USA at the 2018 World Championships in Argentina, provided free self-defense lessons to children in her community during the pandemic, and is currently the Co-President of the Amador Valley Self-Defense Club at her high school.

What's New in steamhead.space

Mapet — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

After months of brainstorming and hard work, we are very excited to announce the launch of the newly designed Steamhead website!

The goal of this design revamp is to provide visitors an easier way to learn about SteamHead’s initiatives, our mission, and for educators to have easy access to great resources. Our aim is to make the website easy to navigate, user-friendly, and unique.

It is important to us that Steamhead’s main initiatives - Makerspace, MakeFashion Edu, Neighborhood Earth, and Productions, are featured and that visitors are able to find useful information about the projects and achievements.

We are especially proud of The Shelf --- Steamhead Makerspace’s virtual front room shelf which contains stuff that are fun and teacher-tested! On The Shelf, we feature inspirational projects and a place where you can shop for tech supplies and merchandise.

Transparency is important to us which is why we have added more information about Steamhead’s operations and our annual filings and reports available to be viewed by anyone interested.

We hope that you like the new website. We will be updating and adding more resources in the future. For any questions, comments or feedback, please send us an email.

Keep making great things!

Nano Classroom Economy in a Makerspace

James — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

A SteamHead member and teacher managed a grade 5 makerspace class, and her students learned some financial literacy through using nano cryptocurrency.

For those who aren’t familiar, nano allows for fast and low-cost transactions, and is very cheap to purchase so the real-world fiat value is not as impactful on students as physical money might be. I thought it was a great tool to teach her students about financial concepts like budgeting, saving, and investing. Interesting to me - she did not hold lectures on these topics specifically, but rather blended them into her regular plans (if any of Carrie’s plans could ever be referred to as “regular”!).

To get started, she gave each student a regular and equal amount of nano to use as “payment” for classroom supplies. As her class was in a makerspace and focused on building projects, these supplies were important for students to obtain. Want more glitter for your cardboard racecar? Gotta check the pricelist.

Initially, the students could only use their nano to purchase supplies from the class shelf, and actually kept the balances on a paper list instead of doing real transactions. But after a week, she introduced a classroom bank which paid interest on deposits. To manage her time, she also started offering jobs to a few students who were responsible for running the bank, which paid a salary in nano. The concept of wallets was introduced, and the few kids who knew them were responsible for updating balances. For some 11 years olds, it was a piece of cake. For others, they wanted nothing to do with it.

After a month, she added another layer to the environment by charging “rent” for desks. This gave the students another expense to manage and helped them understand the concept of fixed costs. She also started allowing the students to transact with each other, rather than just with her as the teacher.

By the end of the semester, the students had gained a solid understanding of financial concepts and were using them in the pursuit of their projects. It was so rewarding to see how engaged and excited they were about learning about personal finance.

Guess where they did most of their work? The floor! No rent for floorspace! I wasn’t there but I imagine there was literal shouts of joy when they figured that one out, it must have been chaos! I wonder if anyone was already locked into desk contracts?

Overall, using nano as a teaching tool was a great success. It allowed the students to understand financial concepts in a practical and hands-on way, and I’m so SO confident that the skills they learned will serve them well in the future.

Quadratic Voting in the Classroom

James — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

John Dewey felt that education environments should be democratic, in order to give a democrat nation it’s best citizens. This made me consider informing my educational philosophy with my latest thoughts on democracy. Recent events in the US have made me consider alternatives to “first past the post” voting systems, and “non-proportional representation”. To me, these are USA voting processes that could be improved to make our nation more democratic.

So, what did this mean for my virtual reality galleries for students, with a cryptocurrency driven auctioning system for the best gallery spaces?

Initially we tried making group decisions about the gallery space. Would it be a building, a natural gallery like a park, or something abstract like a tunnel of light? Hearing everyone’s voice on the matter was quite challenging, and making group decisions on those ideas was even harder! Simple shows of hands didn’t work well because we had too many options and each student usually liked more than one option.

I found inspiration on an article from Vitalik Buterin called “Quadratic Payments”. In it he specifies some voting techniques that I found quite attractive, and genuinely feel would be an improvement for a democratic voting system. Thus, in class, we used Quadratic Voting! This is a system of voting where you get multiple votes, but must pay an increasing amount for each vote. Each student got to spend 10 nano, and 1 vote cost just 1 nano, 2 votes cost 3 nano, 3 votes cost 6 nano, and 4 votes cost 10 nano.

Check out my Google Sheets Quadratic Voting Template (disclaimer, I made this during class, it’s not fantastic, but got the job done). First, we recorded our votes on this sheet (I know, it could benefit from being anonymous). Then we calculated how many nano each student spent on their votes, and they sent that back to our class wallet. Someday maybe we’ll use the Bitcoin Lightning Network and Satoshis, but for now it’s all nano.

I wanted to embed the votes into the transactions, and I think I could have done it by making a wallet for each vote, but I wasn’t sure how to enforce the increasing cost of each vote into the transaction. Maybe some type of app could help with this?

I also think a Quadratic Microsoft Forms would be very useful, so that this style of voting could be used as quickly and commonly as a show of hands, embedding it into the thinking processes of my students. Hit me up @JamesLearns on Twitter if you have any recommendations!

MakeFashion Edu: LED Diffusion for Wearables

James — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Deeper Learning Conference

James — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Storytelling through Fashion Technology with MakeFashion Edu

SteamHead is presenting a Deep Dive session at the 2021 Deeper Learning, where they will hold a MakeFashion Edu workshop. Participants will discover ways in which they can reach all students through the exploration of fashion tech. They will work in teams to go through a design thinking process (based on Stanford D-School), ideate and create a meaningful fashion tech piece using various levels of technology and revise with self and peers. The Deep Dive will end by exhibiting all the pieces in a virtual gallery and a ready to share fashion lookbook.

See it in Action: Fashion Elements

James — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Carrie Leung, a fashion tech educator and founder of MakeFashion Edu, recognized the need for an accessible and comprehensive online course to help teachers start their own fashion tech programs in their classrooms. In response, she and the team at SteamHead created “SteamHead’s Introduction to MakeFashion Edu,” a free online course designed to give teachers all the startup information they need, including materials, instructions, and even self-paced learning opportunities for students.

The course is aimed at K-12 school teachers, but anyone with an interest in fashion tech is welcome to take it. One of the ways Carrie made the course even more accessible and engaging for students was by creating a series of YouTube videos to supplement the online content. These videos included step-by-step demonstrations of various fashion tech projects, as well as tips and tricks for working with different materials and tools.

Carrie’s videos have been praised for their clear and concise instructions, which make it easy for even those with little to no experience in fashion tech to follow along and complete the projects. They also allow for self-paced learning, as students can watch and rewatch the videos as many times as needed to fully understand the concepts.

One of the most popular aspects of the course is the vast collection of resources made available for teachers like the project instructions, templates and material lists. By providing this information, the course takes the guesswork out of starting a fashion tech program and allows teachers to focus on the most important aspect which is teaching.

Carrie’s passion for fashion tech education shines through in “SteamHead’s Introduction to MakeFashion Edu.” Her dedication to making the course accessible and engaging for all students is truly admirable, and it’s clear that her YouTube videos have been an invaluable addition to the online course. With the help of this course, teachers everywhere can bring the exciting world of fashion tech to their classrooms.

Here are excerpts of the videos, please find our full course at https://steamhead.space/steamhead-online-learning/

Inventing Pinball

James — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Hardi Huang and company created their own pinball machine from scratch! Check out Hardi’s blog for the details on the electronics and circuit design: http://hardihuang.info/blog/2021/03/02/pinball-machine-demo/

One mother of the students involved with this project called me with thanks for SteamHead in providing a place where her son could be expressive, challenged, and empathetic. Where else besides a makerspace can you find those skills in such high demand, and a community that cheers each other on to exhibit them?