Flag Day

I am working with Bulwell Academy at the moment to develop a Year 8 project (Age 12-13) combining construction and textile skills
My idea for a flag project came as a way of publicising the new Academy by getting the best 10 students work made full size as 3 Metre tall flags suitable for indoor and outdoor promotion, direct developments of their initial 3 "wire and paper" designs, then this scale concrete and fabric version shown here
The design uses two disposable pudding bowls to make the mould and mould support to cast the concrete base. An M4 bolt with washers is embedded in the concrete, forming a post to screw on the nylon tubing (internally reinforced with a bamboo skewer so it bends most at the top) and attach the sewn flag
The trickiest bit was working out how to attach the flag to the pole, it is a twist of soft wire holding a keyring 'ring' on the mast. Tabs on the sail tie the sail to the mast, and create the necessary tension to give the sail shape, and the final version looks pretty good, if only about 500mm high
Now the practical has been 'sorted' for the most part, the project is passed back to the Teachers to work out how and in what order they wish to run the project for the 200+ students they have

Often new ideas are adaptations of existing ones, but made possible because an assessment is made before starting of the number of students, materials, time and staff skills able to be brought to the project. A good project is one able to be made by a busy teacher with a large number of students per week, not a consultant tinkering in their kitchen!
I am hoping that this project runs before Easter and I can post a picture of the final 200 flags flapping in the breeze ...

Simply Balanced

I am presently developing a micro line following robot PCB, Have just produced a new use for a 555 timer chip, am redesigning a project from my first years teaching some (censored) years ago, and have started wondering how small you can make a programmable vehicle that can be soldered by children with normal levels of concentration....
But this is my latest project.. And there are no wires, chips, smart materials or anything else in sight.. Its called the Wobbler, and is a counterbalancing toy that 'balances' on two wheels, takes minutes to make and only needs a low level of skill with scissors, a screwdriver and any old laminator to make for less than 50p... But with a little planning you can get loads of educational goodness from it..
Science can use it to investigate leverage, Technology to investigate nuts, bolts and different fastenings, maths to investigate weight and balance, or as a filler activity for a group, themed for Christmas or another holiday. It will be available from www.nelc.net for Free as a presentation, Assembly films, three worksheets and exemplar photos

I have started to call my project ideas 80% projects, this means that if the educator doesn't wish to do any self development or investigation to adapt the project to their students, there is 80% of the project in the packs I produce, but if you use it as a core, something to build your own ideas and themes around, it could be as little as 30% of a quick project... and it will be a much better project than one run with just my, (in my opinion, highly professional,) teaching materials...

Copying...or Designing, the role of influence

So here is my design for a guitar stand. I knocked it up in Sketchup because it is one of the free projects for use with the now immininent 'Cadface' (see earlier posts) to demonstrate just what you can do with it. I had previously designed a guitar stand like a frame structure, similar to an A' frame easel. It took ages, so I went back to basics and thought, cheap materials and a laser cutter or jigsaw. I designed this one based on 12mm plywood (Yes I know it will kill some lasers filters to chew their way through 12mm Far Eastern WBP smoky glue bond cheapo ply..) where everything was contained within one shape. Realistically it would be better if the pegs holding the guitar were 22mm dowel, but this also works.
Now I am just Waiting for the first GCSE project to come along, using CadFace, that bears an awfully similar appearance to this... How far removed from this design will tell us how inspired rather than copied the student has been working, andwhether the teacher is aware of my version, how high a mark they will get!
As for me, I first saw this idea on the wall of my Furniture Design tutors office where he had created an arch top folding chair out of a single sheet of plywood, cut with a jigsaw, and with all pieces already in place.... Influence or Copying? (And his chair was much better than this stand!)

Talk To Me!

I have just spent a bit of time fiddling with various tools that allow me to see the visitors to my various websites. It seems that about 8000 seperate (called 'unique users) people a month are visiting my new ajbox site whcih is fairly good given up till today there was little on it!
After today there should be a total of about 50 free resources (250mb worth!) , worksheets, presentations, teachers guides etc etc for the 6 products I am selling through Kitronik of Nottingham...
So here is a request, CONTACT ME! Let me know how you are doing with the products. send me a photo or short vid, how do you like the resources? Let me have an image of a coloured / assembled version that I can put up to inspire others!
It is a sad fact that often the only time website writers hear from somoeone is when they write something contentious, or if there is a complaint or query. I was staggered to see that my ajbox resources have been downloaded over 500 times in the few months they have been live, but there have been only ONE email about them! And that was to ask where the link to them had temporarily gone!
So if you want plenty more totally free, utterly brilliant and decidedly fab resources... get in touch!

WordWand

WordWand will be available in the new Kitronik Catalogue arriving at some 2500 schools during the first half of September 2009
It consists of a PCB with components and a huge array of free downloadable resources from my www.ajbox.co.uk website
Wordwand can be programmed with up to 16 characters, depending on your programming skills, but works best with about 4 characters in a message. The free resources will include a basic and in-depth presentation, 2 page starter and full 10 page Teachers guide, 5 sample programs in Circuit Wizard format (You will need version 1.5 onwards to view) and also sample programs in the free 'Genie Design Studio' program that is a free flowsheet editor and programmer that is virtually identical to the flowsheet programming within Circuit Wizard
I hope that having a useful project that is customisable to each student, comes with lashings of free resources and is relatively cheap, PIC will start to be used in many more schools in the UK. At its best it is a wonderful project where creativity and problem solving combine to produce an effective learnng tool, at its worst, as shown to me by a friends son who did PIC at his school last term, it is a bent piece of plastic with 4 lights that flash for no reason whatsoever that the pupil cannot fathom a real use for!

Who owns what?

Was surfing today, looking for useful apps and came across a new site...

Apparently a new way to search through the gazillions of free 3D models on the Net. So I did a search for a few obvious things and there were spaceships and chimpanzees and bridges etc.. A lot of the stuff is serious commercial models costing anythign up to £1000's because the work which goes into them.
Then like all good Bloggers everywhere, I typed in my name, and got THIS
This is a list of all the FREE models I placed on Google Sketchup Warehouse. Now that is fine, I put them online knowing they would be free to everyone to download from 'warehouse', but I did not expect them to appear on a third party site like this, freely searchable alongside paid content. Maybe I should, information we upload often includes 'ownership' clauses that essentially gives it away. this applies to the images in this blog as much as those 3d models.
So when you develop work with your students, and place it on a showcase online, be aware that it may pop up somewhere unexpected! But that's the net for you...

Prototypes look rough...

A common topic of discussion with staff accompanying students to my events is the lack of persistence in many students when faced with a problem to overcome. This is noticeable in a generation who interact with a commercial world which intentionally makes their products, even the project ones, deliberately easy to keep young people attracted to them. A new game my Daughter has, Viva Pinata, constantly guides and hints as to the best path or action and you can't really get it wrong.
The 'Lego' mentality ( Where you build a Lego kit following detailed instructions but never remake it into anything else) of many children where everything needs to be easy to do has led to the gradual reduction and rejection of real crafts and activities from their lives, and a greater learning curve for children and adults when they are asked to build something and perfect it. In fact many people are so concerned not to lose face by doing something that might not work, even though this is a valid stage to getting something to work, that they need a great deal of persuading and encouragement to keep them going and belittle their own efforts.
This has implications for designing activities for students and is a fine balance between making a 'press out kit', what I disparagingly call 'Crayola Craft' where nothing is left to chance and individuality and experimentation gets the boot early in product development, and supplying something which will work if you persist for long enough...
Which neatly bring me to this picture below. This rather rough lash up is the proof of concept for a new KS3/4 electronics project where students assemble a kit then experiment to program it so when waved through the air, the LED lights blink rapidly in a programmed sequence and persistence of vision means you will see words written in the air. My client, and educational supplier, wants proof it will work before placing an order... so I have persisted for some 4 hours to build it and test it... Still not there yet, I need to change the LED's for much brighter ones as the image does not persist long enough to see it clearly, but many of today's children would just give up now, they tried, it didnt work as expected, and can I have my Crayola kit back please because I KNOW it will work first time and will not make me look bad in front of my friends....

BoomBox and new PIC kits

Today I pressed the production button and Kitronik will be able to supply you with BoomBoxes for the end of June. (see details at www.ajbox.co.uk )

Your school / college may have recieved a flyer from Kitronik already which also features the new Circuit Wizard PIC system, Pic Genie.

I have been experimenting with this (free to all registered users) updated version of Circuit Wizard and can report it is an excellent product. There are already at least 3 competing educational systems out there for schools wishing to do PIC, but the sheer rock solid integration of PIC into Circuit Wizard, including full real time simulation, programming and side by side running the flow chart (windowed) and PCB to see what is actually going on, is unbeatable in my opinion, and gives far greater accesibility with amazing possibilities for teaching electronics at all levels.

In fact, I was so impressed, have developed a new PIC Genie project for schools which will be launched this September in the main Kitronik catalogue. It is an innovative new project, one of three PIC projects I am presently developing, applying PIC technology in innovative ways to create kits and projects students will actually want to own...
. In September you will be able to buy the first kit, use Circuit Wizard or the imminient free programmer for Genie to program it, and run simulations on screen of the circuit for teaching. You will also get my trademark very high quality teaching resources free so you won't feel that you have to wade through a 64 page manual (You know who I am talking about!) to find out how to use it effectively.

Many schools see PIC as a bit of a black art when in reality it can be easier than setting up a 555 timer, and if it hasn't felt that easy so far, then Circuit Wizard and the new kits from Kitronik should change all that for all schools.

Announcing CadFace Sketchup Plugin

This is the big one Clyde Davies and I have been working on for almost 2 years...
CadFace is a plug in that works within Sketchup to give you super quick, super simple CADCAM files from the free or full versions of Sketchup

With CadFace you can design clocks, signs, pencil holders, puzzles etc.. there will be free design projects for schools on the CadFace site very very soon, and with one click of a menu within Sketchup, save a CAD file of that flat face which works in ANY CAD PROGRAM on the planet!

We have set up a UK distributor for individual and site licenses, and are open to offers from other territories... Contact us at ajbooker@yahoo.com
We expect to release a limited functionality free demo in 2 weeks time, and the full version will be available during October 2009, along with worksheets, teachers guides and other info
Send us some feedback and watch out for that free demo!

Announcing Sketchup Training Suite

A set of 10 e-learning films and Sketchup models for learning Beginner to Intermediate level skills in Sketchup, available to buy NOW as a single and site license from www.ajbox.co.uk
Check out the film for full details!
(If you would like an email of the full quality 800x 600 pixel film, contact me at ajbooker@yahoo.com)

BoomBoxes are GO!

By the end of June, www.kitronik.co.uk will be the first stockist in the UK of my new BoomBox concept. For now, full details are on my www.ajbox.co.uk website

Boombox is a corrugated card box net which folds up to have three built in compartments for a speaker, battery and PCB, a hole for a 3.5mm plug and a built in removable speaker grille.

extremely cheap to buy, can be painted, annotated, drawn on and generally customised as required. Use in a custom graphics project to make a product or as promotional items to sell at a school fair

BoomBox is designed to fit the most popular school MP3 amplifier kits, and looks fabulous for minimal effort

The front speaker grille is perforated so you can remove it and use the four corner holes to mount your own design of grille
For schools wishing to do something a bit more exciting and creative than a plastic box again for amplifiers, or maybe you want to shorten your existing amplifier project... Then BoomBox will be what you need. The cardboard box even makes it sound better than a loose speaker alone

QTC's magnetic attraction

Have been prototyping ideas for a client using Quantum Tunelling Compound (QTC) and SuperMagnets. Sounds very high tech but effectively its using the 'pull' of these super powerful magnets to squeeze some QTC to make electricity flow through a circuit. This means the QTC is being used as a pressure switch.
Even better is that QTC is cheap, about 35p (UK) for enough to work in my light bracelet, with the magnets costing about 40p.
I have agreed with the client to develop projects where the total cost of components / materials is no more than about £1.40. This rules out most gearboxes, and anything complicated so I am left with basic materials to make unusual projects.

£1.40 a project works because if it is easy for students to make, and personalise then it is far more likely they will bring in money to buy it, while if it costs £4, usually a state school will recycle the materials if possible. So investing £50 ina class project, confident of getting most of it back if taught well is better than having stuff left over every time.

It may seem odd to spend hundreds of pounds paying someone to develop a project that cost less than two quid (£2 UK), but cheap projects don't mean cheap thinking, usually it means full price cogitation to make something that we can all afford to use in class, and therefore develop both the teachers and the students skills in one affordable stroke!

One step ahead?

In last nights episode of the Simpsons, Marge told Bart she could make money by giving piano lessons, "but you don't know how to play piano!" said Bart....
"I only need to keep one lesson ahead of the pupil" replied Marge.
Often a common approach in education where experience and knowledge should power the best education, not a quick flick through the textbook moments before the bell!
As a consultant I can help you hone your skills, link to other areas and consider how to build on what you know... I have occasionally just gone in and run an event by myself. they work, and have the desired effect, and I am delighted to be paid for them. Preferably though consulting involves interaction with the students and teachers, both building up solid transferable skills... and gaining in confidence. Confidence does not rub off by standing next to a Consultant, it happens through working with them!

Sketchy Physics

Have spent a few hours playing with a free Plug-in (add on feature) for Sketchup. It enables realistic simulations of movement to be created in Sketchup. It is not very sophisticated and would be laughed out of most 3D conferences but it is fascinating what you can do with it.
Here is a film showing balls falling through poles. The speed of the film is recorded directly off my computer, the more that you simulate at one time, the slower everything goes it seems, but I have not explored the program in depth yet.
The normal Sketchup trick of reducing the window size makes no difference here as it is the physical calculations of the items movement and interaction that slow things down, and that is the same, regardless of the window or image size.
Another interesting feature is the apparent lack of random elements. When you run the simulation, everything always ends up in the same place it seems.

Ideas develop when many people think about them

Have just finished the Draft project files for the PigBang vacuum bazookas for the Nottingham e-Learning Centres. (Should be available by end easter Holiday UK) To test the idea out with a different set of young people than I have used so far, I took three bazookas and all the bits to a Scout group in my area. Lots learned about running the project which is incorporated into the final draft... But also some amazing innovation.
The basic thing fired by PigBang is a piece of foil wrapped round a marble to give a flared hollow cone shape that fits nicely in the pipes. You can also use a Ferro Rocher chcocolate but inexplicably these always go missing when I leave the box open..
At the Scout session I demonstrated the foil and marble version, but also gave them plastic straws and some other bits. One innovative young thinker bundled the straws together into a very light but stiff cylinder, held it together with a couple of rubber bands and sleeved it all in foil.. With a marble on the end it became a superb test load in the bazooka.
I spoke to someone yesterday who wanted to know if Pigbang would be a kit project that you could explicitly follow stage by stage. I am personally against that but I do provide such instructions if required. The young Scout showed that being too prescriptive narrows peoples chances to experiment where for sure, they will sometimes get it wrong, but they also get it right as well... and in ways their teachers, leaders and consultants could not have predicted!

Why no photos?

There are few outcome photos on this blog because clients tend to keep them and they often have students in them for whom I do not have photo release forms. therefore you get a lot of Sketchup and flat graphics because they communicate the main ideas well without my competitors ripping the idea off after studying them with a magnifying glass!

But for fun, here is an image from a new set of films about higher level Sketchup skills. It includes a film on how to make, stage by stage, this lovely retro 'Space 1999' style calculator bangle..Groovy!

I have this idea...

Usually I am fortunate to work with clients who understand my more zany ideas, confident from my previous successes that the new ones, yet untested, will work. Sometimes though I have to prove it first!

This catapult is an example of just such an idea. I have designed it to be built from a single sheet of plywood and standard parts from any builders or large DIY shop.

I reckon it will throw a load equal to half a brick about 150 metres or more. Right now the main parts are marked out in permanent pen on a sheet of ply leaning against my house, awaiting a chance to saw them out and assemble the thing for testing! My hope is that when I have proved that it is economical, easy to build, effective and safe (How can an 11 foot catapult be officially safe?) then clients will let me run it with a whole year group as a day building or week long learning project..

Some say if you build it they will come, with an 11 foot catapult, you build it and they run!

Trial and Error

So here it is... An image from a pack for a client. Nottingham e-Learning centres have commissioned a Pilot pack of materials for their website to encourage greater traffic to a section. I have been putting this Pilot together for a few weeks on and off but it is based around a simple idea I saw elsewhere, a vacuum bazooka

As I have said before, it is not enough to see an idea in a book or article, you need to actually know how it works because as a teacher in a classroom you do not want to be fiddling with settings the first time through

That is where consultancy comes in. the Pilot pack will contain Photos, Films with titles, me doing a talking head about the project, 2 worksheets to get you started, a 5 page manual and proof that the thing works! When it is all uploaded you will have a kit to run the whole thing where you can combine my skills in experimentation and creativity with yours in class delivery of your own students, and we are all a winner.

The Internet is full of 'all you need to do is' text statements of supposedly wonderful projects, perhaps we should have an agreed listing of what class projects should contain so that there is a minimum standard, then we can leave behind all those awful online 'lesson plans' which for many subjects take ages to source the materials, trial the lesson and work out the bugs!

Juggling, The most important lesson!

Can you Juggle?
GCSE Students know, theoretically, that there is an end date coming and have some mental list of what they need to do to finish their work, but when the time comes it is those who are prepared who succeed. Those already with skills in ICT or hand working are able to produce quality work, and this is the important bit, quickly and efficiently. I know that given 5 hours, I can make a wonderful 3D model, light it and output a film... but what is really needed is something good enough in 1 hour so i can move into something else.
In a weeks time I am running 2 half day INSET's (Teacher training) in using Sketchup. One will be focused on using tricks and tactics to quickly create quality visuals from Sketchup in as short a time as possible.
So what's juggling got to do with this? Well, those who can't juggle. when questioned why , start by saying they don't have the skill, then after a few more excuses they inevitably end up with... "Because I haven't practiced".
ICT is especially cruel for this because it requires memory of where tools are and what they do, combined with experience of using them. There is no substitute for time and therefore I hope that next weeks INSET will result in staff practising themselves, becoming expert, and inspiring GCSE students to produce good and quick results. A whizz bang graphic is only part of a portfolio... and therefore should only have part of the time spent on it so encourage your students to practise now, so they can knock out that required visual quickly when the time comes.

Let it rip...

Sometimes it is nice to just knock out a drawing or design just for the fun of it. This is a chair I designed way back when I studied furniture design for a few years. My friend can make you one if you are interested, but it will cost you £1000 delivered!

I used numerous tricks within sketchup and in a DTP program to get the final image.

Contact me if you want to know how its done, or want to buy half a dozen chairs and the matching table...

Keep it Simple!

It takes a lot of effort to make something complex, but sometimes it takes just as much to make something simple.



I have an idea for a project which requires various sized catapults as part of an all day physics, technology and social skills event I am offering to my clients. The medium and large catapult designs, as outline ideas for students to improve further, were relatively easy to design, but until now the tiny version eluded me. You cannot just miniaturise the thing because the laws of physics do not scale equally and the bits can be too fiddly to allow it to be built, plus something unbreakable in 50 x 25mm softwood wil be rather fragile when a lot smaller. Look at model steam engines which may be 1/50th of the size of the real thing, but can still pull many people on a track.



Yesterday I came up with this design...

It is just a wooden stick (actually a tongue depressor!) with sticky rubber pads on it. Would take about 5 minutes to make tops, if measured carefully. Capable of firing a 'payload' of a blob of blutak about 2 metres. Angle is adjustable by sticking the feet elsewhere (comparison tests anyone?) and is super cheap to make. You could also put your own markings on the stick to give a range indicator.

It also gives a stable base for firing as many small catapult designs suffer from slipping as the pressure is applied while the rubber feet used here, aided by your finger pressing down hard on the end, keep it in place.

There is an old story that the Americans spent millions perfecting the pressurised ink ball point pen that would write in zero gravity on space flights. The Russians used pencils instead. Whether true or not it demonstrates that just because we can reach for the sunminiature hinges, bolts and exotic materials, doesn't mean we always have to !