Concept¶

Ask for help to numbers as a source for your expression

Big room (Low floor, high ceiling, wide walls) tutorial serie of parametric design for digital fabrication.

Their activities are intended for study and tinker with some digital drawing skills with an AAD (Algorithm aided design) approach and a "multiple path/style" block coding language.

Even there are some introductory courses or activities already, this activities were made inspired by some activities during the fabricademy course, offering an alternative path for exploring parametric design via scratch-like language.

The project is intended to have the following activities:

Introduction and set-up tips
Basic tesselation and parameters modifications for 3d printing over fabrics (Tutorial for use computational couture assignment)
Basic tesselation for zero-waste nesting + Interlocking for seamles patterns (Tutorial for use with circular open source fashion assignment)
2D drawing explorations for inflatables design (Tutorial for use with Soft Robotics assignment)

First of all I want to thank all the feedback received, after the project pitch presentation. I will try to answer this questions and define better the project in the next lines.

First Feedback

"I like that you propose a modular structure to learn and prototype wearables. I like also the block look of it. Start simple and add modules."

"Who is the main target group?you mentioned some, but is the idea that they use this for starting the prototyping at home? do you want to work also with kids?

Is it a kit/game or a workshop with several topics and selected activities? For who are you developing the project? Is it going to be to help Educators craft workshops or makers to develop projects? From the example looks like you are referring to kids. If this is the answer test this activity that you have ready with some kids at the fab lab and take note of their feedback"

"Luis, you know I love your project, and I believe that Fabricademy offers many alternatives for creating safe educational workshops for kids. If you’ve found a way to link it to computational thinking as well, that’s a huge plus. I suggest thinking about a collection of activities that could grow, either modularly or in complexity.

"What will be the outcomes? a set of block-codes that teaches the concepts? manuals on how to use block-codes for fabrication? workshops that you will execute too? do you aim to create kits that use the block-codes to fabricate?"

"https://doplay.es/" (A educational STEM Workshops project)

5 Ws who, what, when, where, why¶

how is what you will start defining in your process pages

who¶

The project is intended to an especial type of teacher/educator, the maker one. It's a very specific kind of teacher, the laboratory teacher, the fablab's not-formal educator, the parent who teaches his kids at home and has digital fabrication machines.

The kids are a secondary user, very important one. At some point they are the justification for improve the teaching/classes-design techniques of the adults.

what¶

Workshops manuals and samples. It includes some editorial products that includes some instruction for a complete course, like the set-up for the computers, some methodological aspects, description of the software and tools, some general recomendations and tips. And also for each session, the title and description, the set-up of the tools and space, the learning objects, the list of materials, samples, and expected learning objectives.

when¶

The product doesn't have an specific time of use. And this question can be answered of different view points.

In my experience and in agreement with other educators in personal communication, the minimun age for start coding and working with computers is from 9 years old, including block coding. For me the reasons are related with focus tolerances and with fine movement control and reading capacities.
For teachers using the materials, they can guide once they have made the activities at least one time before. But is recomendable to have experience with mathematics, logic, creativity and design topics.
There's no t an specific hour, day, month, or date for usign the materials, but if I can recommend something for every learning session, doesn't matter the topic, I would say after eating and resting for best experiences.

where¶

This course materials are though for been applied in a fab lab educational environment

This can be a fab lab inside schools of any level and area, or other fab labs with acces to Snap! (it can be offline) and digital fabrication machines.

In conclusion, the product occurs virtualy in Snap! and physically in a classroom with access to digital fabrication machines (Filament 3D printer, Laser cutter, etc.)

why, what for¶

Since I started to work and research in educational design for making products and workshops, soon I started to know more about learning by doing products and projects. There I've found a wonderfull community and projects, including the fab lab network and fabricademy.

Over the years of working in the area, I started to focus in the block-shaped coding languages (like scratch). I've found there, oportunities for mutlimedia, physical computing, and digital fabrication projects.

Also, during the fabricademy course I had the oportunity of explore wider the capabilities of parametric design for textile and fabrication applications. The tesselation ideas on zero-waste patterns, the design research on 3d printing over textiles, the inflatables design were some of many ideas that can be aplicable for block-coding digital drawing/modeling.

I considere all this as an oportunity for build a bridge between block-coding languages and some of the fabricademy activities, thinking in a project that can be of interest not only for the fabricademy and block-coding comunities, but for the whole learning by doing community.

As an important part of building this bridge, I choose to contribute with some learning material that helps to unveil the possibilities that offers this combination of technologies, of interest for any maker educator.