The Exploratorium's Learning Studio blog | A workshop for tinkering with technology, science, and art » Video http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:59:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Keyboard touchscreen and Scratch http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/10/19/keyboard-touchscreen-and-scratch/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/10/19/keyboard-touchscreen-and-scratch/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:59:38 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=629

Adam Somlai-Fischer, creator of the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Prezi presentation software, recent Osher fellow, and all around great guy, showed us how to simply and quickly hack a cheap USB keyboard to extract the inner pressure-sensitive “film” and turn it into a low-fi touchscreen by taping it to the computer screen. He showed us some simple programs that use the hack written in Processing, but they turned out to be too dense for my programming-impaired brain to satisfactorily modify.

However, having been playing with Scratch lately, I immediately thought it would make a great interface for it, and that it would be super simple to program for it too. A couple of hours later I had put together a simple but satisfying little game I call Going Bananas!

If you want to play with it with the keyboard, just press keys a, s, d, f, g, h, j, k, and l to launch bananas towards the monkey. Don’t let the monkey get too hungry, or it will die! Or course, it’s much more fun when you can poke at the bananas directly on the screen, so find an old (but not too old!) keyboard, break it open, tape it to the screen, and play it as it was meant to be played!

Learn more about this project

]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/10/19/keyboard-touchscreen-and-scratch/feed/ 4 Marble Machines – training with the Explainers http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/09/28/marble-machines-training-with-the-explainers/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/09/28/marble-machines-training-with-the-explainers/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:44:57 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=605 As has become a sort of yearly tradition, we hosted a three-hour training with the new batch of Field Trip Explainers, who will be starting to work on the museum floor in a couple of weeks. This is a particularly fun and creative group to work with: their ideas are always clever, the mood happy, and the insights that transpire in the “debriefing” session afterward always worth listening to and taking note of.

Click on the image below to be taken to a gallery of their work and creations:

Marble Machines training


And here’s a sweet video of their wonderful contraptions:


]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/09/28/marble-machines-training-with-the-explainers/feed/ 3 Maker Faire 2009 time-lapse http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/06/12/maker-faire-2009-time-lapse/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/06/12/maker-faire-2009-time-lapse/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:20:49 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=538 Well, now that it’s over, it’s time to reflect on what an amazing ride Maker Faire was this year.

We organized a 3,600 square feet booth, including exhibits, snack activities, demonstrations, prototypes, and two PIE activities: a giant marble machines fort, and an even bigger enclosure where we let visitors build their portion of a collective chain reaction machine.

Photos from the event are coming soon. In the mean time, enjoy these frantic movies: they are two time-lapse movies, each compressing a full day of chain reaction workshop in less than a minute. You will notice the ebb and flow of visitors, and twice during each movie, the crowd building up to watch us set off the whole reaction, and then us taking it all down and starting again. It makes me tired and happy just looking at it!

Day 1:

Day 2:

The big set-offs were web-cast live on Saturday! You can see the archived versions here:

]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/06/12/maker-faire-2009-time-lapse/feed/ 1 Bowling ball launcher http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/05/21/bowling-ball-launcher/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/05/21/bowling-ball-launcher/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 17:19:04 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=536 In the midst of preparations for Maker Faire’s chain reaction collective build, we’ve been tinkering with various ways of having a grandiose finale to the whole shebang, one that would pack a lot of impact, while still being faithful to the materials and aesthetic of the rest of the activity (cardboard, paper, home-made contraptions, household items, etc.). After several ideas and prototypes, we settled on an awesome ping-pong ball launcher, powered by a falling bowling ball. This short video documents some of our prototyping process, as well as the fun we have while developing ideas!

]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/05/21/bowling-ball-launcher/feed/ 6 Chain reaction videos: explainer style! http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/05/05/chain-reaction-videos-explainer-style/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/05/05/chain-reaction-videos-explainer-style/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 23:12:22 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=491 As promised, here are two videos showing the contraptions built by the explainers during their training with us. Cool stuff!


]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/05/05/chain-reaction-videos-explainer-style/feed/ 0 Tinkering with monks: chain reaction video http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/03/02/tinkering-with-monks-chain-reaction-video/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/03/02/tinkering-with-monks-chain-reaction-video/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:25:36 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=401 The final project of the workshop, on video. We set the whole contraption up and ran it twice. This video is a combination of both runs, as it was difficult to get all the shots in one run. It was hard to fight my way through the monks crowding their contraptions and cheering them on!



Some highlights include: water being used to complete a circuit; a soccer match between the US and Tibet, an elephant-powered ball-kicking mechanism; hand-made gears; a monk slapping a Chinese [cringe!]; a solar system; a monk being run over by a rickshaw; suicidal penguin switch; the Tibet express bringing Tibetans back to a free country; a rubber-band twang switch; 30 joyful and beautiful monks!

You can read more about this activity in these posts.

]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/03/02/tinkering-with-monks-chain-reaction-video/feed/ 1 Tinkering with monks: light exploration video http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/02/27/tinkering-with-monks-light-exploration-video/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/02/27/tinkering-with-monks-light-exploration-video/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:58:23 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=398 Once again, two days of exploring light, reflections, mylar, mechanical movement, and caustics exemplified by one particularly playful and delightful final contraption. It’s a disco light!

You can read more about this activity in these posts.

]]> http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/02/27/tinkering-with-monks-light-exploration-video/feed/ 0 Tinkering with monks: cardboard automata video http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/02/19/tinkering-with-monks-cardboard-automata-video/ http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/2009/02/19/tinkering-with-monks-cardboard-automata-video/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:58:33 +0000 Luigi http://apps.exploratorium.edu/blogs/ls/?p=394 Three days of tinkering with Tibetan monks condensed in three minutes of video. Enjoy!

You can read all about the cardboard automata activity, as we implemented with with the monks, in these posts.

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