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2015 | Book

21st Century Shop Teacher Read chapter Read first chapter

The New Shop Class

Getting Started with 3D Printing, Arduino, and Wearable Tech

Authors: Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron

Publisher: Apress

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

The New Shop Class connects the worlds of the maker and hacker with that of the scientist and engineer. If you are a parent or educator or a budding maker yourself, and you feel overwhelmed with all of the possible technologies, this book will get you started with clear discussions of what open source technologies like 3D printers, Arduinos, robots and wearable tech can really do in the right hands. Written by real "rocket scientist" Joan Horvath, author of Mastering 3D Printing, and 3D printing expert Rich Cameron (AKA whosawhatsis), The New Shop Class is a friendly, down-to-earth chat about how hands-on making things can lead to a science career.

Get practical suggestions about how to use technologies like 3D printing, Arduino, and simple electronicsLearn how to stay a step ahead of the young makers in your life and how to encourage them in maker activitiesDiscover how engineers and scientists got their start, and how their mindsets mirror that of the maker

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

The Technologies

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. 21st Century Shop Teacher
Abstract
The words shop class conjure up a messy place where sawdust and metal shavings pile up on the floor as awkward birdhouses are built up on the tables. Computer lab, on the other hand, brings up images of white floors and walls, whirring fans, and overly-good air conditioning. It is also the last place on earth that you would want sawdust and metal shavings. School districts have been closing out their shop classes, because of perceived lack of student interest or liability concerns, as computer labs become ubiquitous.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 2. Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Programming Physical Things
Abstract
In Chapter 1, we discussed the different ways to think about using hands-on making to learn various subjects. In this chapter we introduce the basic nuts and bolts of commonly used open source electronics (microprocessors, single-board computers, and other components) and suggest paths to get started making things with these technologies.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 3. 3D Printing
Abstract
Chapter 2 covered low-cost electronics that can sense the world around them and control objects that move. There is a second half to this makertech movement: the ability to create just about any physical shape that will fit on the build platform of a 3D printer. If you combine these two halves, you get the capabilities for robots, drones, wearable tech, and the very low-cost science fieldwork described in later chapters in this book.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 4. Robots, Drones, and Other Things That Move
Abstract
Robots have intrigued people long before it was possible to build one. Joan can remember reading Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot when she was little, but low-cost electronics were not available to make them. Now, however, it is entirely possible to build fairly capable robots for a reasonable cost, based on the technologies discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron

Applications and Communities

Frontmatter
Chapter 5. What’s a Makerspace (or Hackerspace)?
Abstract
We talk briefly about hackerspaces and makerspaces in Chapter 1. In this chapter, we go into more depth about what these spaces can be and how people use them. Often community spaces are set up as membership organizations (like a gym). In some cases, the space is sort of a tool co-op, in that people are essentially pooling resources to buy a suite of tools that they could not afford individually. An individual’s garage or basement can be a hackerspace, but the community aspect is what makes it more than a garage.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 6. Citizen Science and Open Source Labs
Abstract
The technologies we have talked about in this book so far can be used for many things. One of the most exciting possibilities of the combination of low-cost custom fabrication and ubiquitous electronics may be the rise of citizen. This chapter uses the term broadly, to mean participation by nonscientists in the solution of difficult scientific problems. The public may be recruited to analyze data by donating time on their computers when the computers are idle, or they may help analyze big pools of data that for some reason are difficult to work with in a fully automated way. They may go out and get data in the field to allow an investigator to have far more reach than he may have been able to get by walking around on his own. In this chapter, we primarily talk about science that includes participation by a professional scientist in some way.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 7. Cosplay, Wearable Tech, and the Internet of Things
Abstract
Most of what we have talked about so far in this book are projects and applications that fit traditional definitions of “electronics,” and you could imagine buying the parts in a store that sold soldering irons. What happens when you cross these types of capabilities with clothing or at least things made (mostly) out of fabric? This chapter goes over the technologies that can create clothing which react to anything a small Arduino-type sensor (see Chapters 2 and 6) can detect. Very frequently, people create clothing that can light up with arrays of LEDs when something happens.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 8. Circuits and Programming for Kids
Abstract
How young is too young to make things? Obviously, little kids have always made things, and probably everyone’s parents have some strange dried-out thing in a drawer as a memento of past artistic endeavors. Where is the line between “playing” and “making”? Or is there a line, and does it matter?
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 9. Open Source Mindset and Community
Abstract
We have been talking a lot about open source technologies in this book so far and have shown you a lot of examples. But what does open source really mean? Why does Rich believe in it so strongly? What technologies have enabled open source development and/or benefited from it? This chapter takes you through Rich’s point of view on the open source movement in general and how it applies to the technologies we are discussing in this book in particular. A lot of software you use at home or work – say, to do your taxes or play computer games – is typically not open source. It is software one company owns. You pay to use it and the company does not let you look under the hood. Free and open source is becoming more common, though, and we will describe both what it is and the benefits in what follows.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 10. Creating Female Makers
Abstract
Engineering and science have historically been mostly male—overwhelmingly so, until very recently. When Joan arrived at MIT, the percentage of women students was about 16%, and it had risen to about 20% by the time she graduated. This chapter starts with Joan’s viewpoint of how this disparity has played out, talks about some statistics, and discusses some projects that are attempting to attract more female makers. There are probably as many hypotheses about why women turn away from math, science, and engineering as there are female technologists. Joan will explore a few of her hypotheses in the next section.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 11. Making at a Community College and Beyond
Abstract
Community (two-year) colleges have often been seen as having a more “vocational” focus than four-year universities. Historically, a lot of hands-on technical training has taken places at the community-college level. Community colleges have been focused on the career-oriented student (whether of traditional college age or older) who wants to get applied, employment-focused training to get started in a first career or to switch to a new one. This would seem to be a pretty good environment to create programs that involve a heavy dose of making things, and as a case study, this chapter for the most part talks a project with the Design Tech Pathway program at Pasadena City College.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron

How Scientists Get Started

Frontmatter
Chapter 12. Becoming a Scientist
Abstract
In the first part of this book, we talked about specific technologies and how to get started using them. Then we gave you an overview of different communities that are successful at making things – the open source crowd, people running makerspaces, educators trying to interest girls and minorities in engineering, and finally traditional educators incorporating making into community college or other adult-education environments. But we have not talked much about how all this ties in to learning science, math, and other subjects.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 13. How Do Scientists Think?
Abstract
You have lost your keys again. You just had them, and you needed to be out the door five minutes ago. The first thing you do is try to remember where you saw them last. Next to the door? You go to the door and then to the kitchen counter, but no luck. Pockets in the last coat you remember wearing? Nope. No one is home but you; they have to be somewhere.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 14. What Do Scientists Do All Day?
Abstract
In this final part of our exploration of how professional scientists work, Joan visits working scientists and engineers. Most people do not often get to see these people at work, either because the work requires a lab that would be pretty disrupted if people visited all the time, or in some cases because a lot of their work takes place in regions that are remote, dangerous, or both. In other cases, the work is just largely internal, with interaction between colleagues from time to time for inspiration. First, though, you need to understand the difference between a scientist and an engineer.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron

Tying It All Together

Frontmatter
Chapter 15. Learning by Iterating
Abstract
One common thread in this book has been the virtues of actually building something and seeing what goes wrong. A lot of traditional education is focused on walking through the “right way” to do something, heavily implying that the body of knowledge that a teacher is describing sprang up originally in just that form. Anyone who has worked on a real engineering project of any scale knows that it is never that way. Good managers put “margin” in their budgets just for the things that they either did not think of or realize they cannot think of ahead of time because the project is exploring new territory, literally or figuratively. Many big failures occur because someone was surprised by something previously unknown, and so an equally big discovery may ultimately arise from the failure. In Chapters 12 through 14, Joan talks a lot about science and serendipity and how sometimes a scientist is just in the right place at the right time (and trained and disciplined enough to recognize what was going on).
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 16. Learning Science By Making
Abstract
Chapter 15 talks about learning by trying things out and gradually overcoming small failures. Chapters 12 through 14 look at a lot of stories of working scientists, engineers, and mathematicians and explore how many of them started out by taking something apart or doing something to see what would happen. In this chapter, we discuss how to harness some of this to teach various subjects, either in a formal classroom or elsewhere. We admit that we have not ourselves taught K-12 students directly. However, we have been consulting on how to use the technologies described in this book and as such have helped teachers and administrators think about how to effectively deploy 3D printing, Arduinos, wearable tech, and the like in a formal educational setting. We have interviewed teachers at several schools for this book (and reported on some of those interviews, particularly in Chapters 5, 8, and 10), and so you have seen some of our anecdotal evidence. We also discuss learning by making at the community college level as a case study in Chapter 11.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Chapter 17. What Scientists Can Learn from Makers
Abstract
In this book we have often talked about the similarities between scientists and makers or hackers. The previous chapter discussed how to teach someone science by making things. But what happens if we turn that around? What can a scientist learn from a maker or a hacker? This concluding chapter looks at this aspect in two ways. First, the pragmatic: what technologies and techniques from the maker community might be useful in the scientific community? And second, philosophically: how are makers and scientists alike—or different? Because we will be jumping back and forth between experiences we each have had and some that we experienced together, we conclude our book together and call out our individual experiences.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Appendix. Links
Abstract
This Appendix aggregates all the links in the book in one place for ready reference. If a link appeared more than once, it is just listed in the place it appeared first.
Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
The New Shop Class
Authors
Joan Horvath
Rich Cameron
Copyright Year
2015
Publisher
Apress
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4842-0904-2
Print ISBN
978-1-4842-0905-9
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-0904-2

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