Education Day at the Bay Area Maker Faire 2013

On May 16, two days before the Bay Area Maker Faire, Sophia Bender and Christian McKay from the IU Creativity Labs presented two hands-on projects to educators who attended the Educator Meetup at Maker Faire’s Education Day.

Sophia ran an e-textile table, where educators learned about the educational potential of e-textile materials, sewed their own soft circuits, and saw a demonstration of a program for the LilyPad Arduino ProtoSnap Board. Educators used conductive thread to sew an LED and a switch into a square of fabric, and then lit up the room!

The e-textile station was busy all afternoon, with at least 15 educators sewing circuits, and many others stopping by to observe and chat. Sometimes they would ask for advice about running e-textile activities for youth, some told Sophia about plans to use e-textiles in their classrooms or after-school clubs, and one teacher remarked, “The LilyPad is the Arduino for pretty things! Arduinos don’t have to be only for those ugly robots!”

At Christian’s table, the educators got to play with Makey Makeys and create their own interactive books, using graphite pencil lines and their own bodies to control events occurring on a computer. To find out more about Christian’s interactive book project, check out his blog post about it here: http://bpsmakes.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/digitally-interfaced-book-paper-graphite-makey-makey-scratch-and-imagination/