Male Textiles

This idea is a simple magnetic closure textile project aimed at Male and Female students at KS3 (11-14 years). Spare headphone cable is wound round it and then it is attached to clothing to keep headphones close. I call the project SideWinder


I developed it from a project called 'lightband' for which there are free resources for on youtube and also at www.nelc.net under their 'not a desk tidy' directory of resources

Am supporting teachers trying this over the next couple of weeks with classes. It uses felt for the main material, two layers with a neodymium 10mm magnet and washer fixed between the layers. Simple, effective and capable of infinite variations by students and staff...

Quick Update - And getting what you need...

Long time since last post...
Since then have redeveloped catapult into an adjustable mini version, tried to find a porgrammer for geogebra, Produced a new Textile project aimed at including boys for KS3, and lots more that I will post about in the next few weeks.

But First.... Kettles.
Just bought ANOTHER kettle. Same as the last 5, a leak between joints, usually between plastic and metal elements, allows water and steam to escape, forming hard water limescale deposits which open up cracks even more until eventually it is too dangerous to be used! Back in the late 1980's, I bought a designer kettle and the shop owner told me they would never last as long as traditional ones, he said ' everyone wants water level gauges and such stuff but all these things create seams which fail much qucker than old one piece kettles'. Well he was right, while our choice of kettles has rocketed, The UK Argos website now lists over 120, reading the customer reviews even on their site reveals they all suffer from leaks, because the manufacturers have given us all the things we seem to want, water gauges, coloured lights, soft touch handles, concealed elements etc, but they still seem to break after a few years or less of use. This seems odd when I know people with old kettles lasting ten or more years, the answer seems to be that we buy on features, not longevity..in fact if we have to compromise the features to get a product that lasts longer, we don't want it. But Wait, the famously long lasting Dualit brand also sell a kettle for a not inconsiderable £80, but reading the customer reviews reveals that these also leak... In fact, ironically, the more your kettle costs, the more Argos will charge you (they call it breakdown insurance, I call it swindling) to replace it a few years later when it leaks, even though you presumably thought that by paying more you were gettting something more durable.
Just like in kettles, you can have projects with lots of bells and whistles, or a simple one with a good premise and quality outcomes. Keep it simple and keep it durable... Don't ornament just to make it look great, it may fail on you unexpectedly.