The Exploratorium's Learning Studio blog | A workshop for tinkering with technology, science, and art » Workshop

Marble Machines – training with the Explainers

Luigi — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:44:57 +0000

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:

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

Exploring reflections: a workshop

Luigi — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:23:48 +0000

Inspired by the awesome Reflections show that is now on display at the Exploratorium, the Learning Studio offered a 3-hour workshop in which visitors built their own “Shiny, Sparkly, Something-or-Others”, as the title said.

This constituted an experiment for us in several ways, and a good first step into the kind of activities and interactions that we would like to start offering in the future.

First of all, it happened in parallel with a current show on the museum floor, and that alone allowed for adjacencies that were a source of inspiration for us, in developing the activity, and hopefully for the participants to the workshop, in coming up with their own creative ideas.

We also combined the workshop with an unusual two-week residency for artist Chris Bell, who had collaborated with us before. We thought he would be a great source of inspiration because of his previous work with lights and reflections off of common household objects, and proposed to him that he would be building and experimenting with an installation on the museum floor, right next to a gallery showcasing similar work by participants to our own workshop. Graciously, and it take a particularly selfless and generous artist to allow this, he accepted, and a great collaborations resulted once again.

So, this workshop started in the Learning Studio with a brief introduction to what we were going to do: essentially explore some of the aesthetic qualities of lights and reflections, and create our own expression of that.

Then we led the group onto the museum floor to have a chat with Chris, while he was starting to work on his installation. This was a great moment in which Chris introduced himself and his work as an artist, and had some very insightful words on his process of creation with such an ethereal medium, with a particular emphasis on knowing “when to stop”, which I think had a great and positive influence on the visitors’ work.

Then it was time to head back to the LS for an initial exploration, using just a light source and a simple sheet of Mylar, in order to start generating ideas, and to familiarize ourselves with what was possible and beautiful with this medium. After a while, we introduced, as usual, a host of different materials, all somehow reflective or translucent, as well as construction materials, wood, tape, motors, switches, etc.

The mood became very quiet and meditative, and the visitors got to work, and soon different avenues of thought took shape. I found it very interesting that often similar initial explorations led to very different end results. Likewise, as is often the case with our activities, the participants ranged both in age (from about 12 to older adults) and gender, and all seemed to be equally engaged in the activity.

Ideas were tried and discarded, problems were solved, and slowly each participant got to the point were they were satisfied with what they had built. At this point we took their creations, which were on independent “shelves”, and took them on the museum floor, where they became part of a collective Wall of Light, which stood on display for all museum visitors to see and appreciate for an amazing full two weeks.

And that concluded the first part of our exploration with light and with different kinds of interactions with the public. In the next days I will talk more about our next steps, which led to some interesting events!

Click on the image for a more complete photo gallery of the workshop.

Chain reaction videos: explainer style!

Luigi — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:12:22 +0000

As promised, here are two videos showing the contraptions built by the explainers during their training with us. Cool stuff!

Chain Reaction training

Luigi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:03:59 +0000

In preparation for the upcoming Maker Faire booth, in which we will be hosting a community-built chain reaction event, we had the pleasure of trying out the activity with the Exploratorium explainers. Due to their busy schedule and the need to have the museum floor staffed, we had to split the workshop in two days, with half the explainers doing the activity on one day, and the other half on the next.

In this activity, we will ask participants to build a section of a collective chain reaction; each section will then join with and trigger the next one, so that at the end of a building session, we will be able to set the contraption off at one end, and it will work its way (flawlessly, I’m sure!) to the end.

As always, the depth of thought and care that this group of educators brings to any activity they participate in shined through, both in the actual construction of the chain reaction elements, and in the discussion we had afterwards.

Now we are definitely looking forward to Maker Faire in a month!

Here are some photographs from both days:

Click image for Day 1 gallery!

Click image for Day 2 gallery!

Tinkering with monks: chain reaction video

Luigi — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:25:36 +0000

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.

Tinkering with monks: light exploration video

Luigi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:58:23 +0000

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.

Tinkering with monks: cardboard automata video

Luigi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:58:33 +0000

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.

Closing discussion

Luigi — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:33:27 +0000

Even the best workshops, sadly, have to come to an end sooner or later. Setting off the chain reaction machine marked the culmination and final act of 10 days of work with some inspiring and dedicated students. On our last day in Sarnath, hours before getting on a plane back to Delhi, we convened the monks one last time.

For this final discussion with the group we asked them to record their own thoughts about the following three discussion prompts.

What did you notice about this method of teaching science?
What did you notice about your personal learning experience?
What did you notice about the other learners around you and their projects?

They discussed their observations and thoughts in table groups of 6-8, then summarized the table discussions with us as a large group. As this was clearly our parting meeting, their tone became a little more formal than usual, and almost reverential: when people spoke, they got up and gave short but well-formulated “speeches”, rather than informal comments. We couldn’t tell whether this was a function of their innate respect for teachers, or because of the occasion of a goodbye. Whatever the case, you might find the following quotes to be a little more formal in tone than usual!

Here are some of the things that they discussed.

What did you notice about this method of teaching science?

“Your method of teaching is excellent, the great Tibetans in the ancient times (and modern times) carefully plan, then do things to achieve the plan. We believe strongly that you have given us a variety of tools to plan and do the projects.”

“Your full engagement in the activities as teachers, and your encouragement, allowed us to learn more things, and learn a lot, from beginning to end.”

“In these ten days we learned a lot about mechanisms, how things work, and where to find them, so we are ready for our future, for how to study these things. This is, of course, your [the teachers'] cup of tea, so your full support helped guide us along the right path for the future. We really want to thank you very much for this wonderful, supportive teaching.”

“We appreciate how fully prepared you were to teach us from the beginning. You come to the class prepared with everything for us to start and learn about these things.”

“This method of teaching may not work for everybody, but for me it is the best thing to gave me knowledge. For example, I learned there is an electric resistance in water. I first thought there was no electric resistance, so Karen and I went to the tea room and tested the water and found the resistance. This little experiment, and what I ultimately did with it, changed my knowledge of resistance forever.”

“One important thing about this teaching is that everyone has done something. We had a good experience that we will not forget for some time. Normally, somebody tells us about the knowledge that we should learn, but here we practically constructed something so when we go to our monasteries we can teach the other monks about this way of learning things.”

What did you notice about your personal learning experience?

“There is a Tibetan saying: when you are learning things it is very difficult. So when you are learning you have to not think about happiness at that moment. When you are doing something, and it becomes a struggle to achieve it there is much anxiety, but once you achieve success, the joy and happiness in your heart is immeasurable.”

“Within these ten days, a relatively short period of time, we learned a lot. I would say we learned nearly 70 per cent of what there is to know about machines and mechanics. If the younger monks would come across this workshop earlier in life I would say they would learn 100 per cent, nearly complete.”

“This knowledge is so big, like the ocean, and our boat is so small, that we feel we learned a great amount with you.”

“I found in myself that I first plan something to do, then when I am not much convinced about the plan I tend to give up. The activities of the workshop didn’t let me work like this, because there wasn’t much time and I needed to work regardless of my initial plan. I found that everything didn’t work out perfectly, but I found that if you start working and experimenting, your project will show you another way, or a solution.”

What did you notice about the other learners around you and their projects?

“It is very important to look around at what other people are doing. When you do, you will know new ideas, new techniques, new tactics, about how to handle things in maybe a different way. This is very important.”

“To learn from other people, and from other groups, to see what they are doing and how they are making things, and taking ideas from other people, this is one really important technique to learn about things.”

“You gave us the freedom to make and do what we want, you didn’t give us resistance, and that allowed our ideas and experiments to flow open wider.”

“These activities supported all of our intellects, based on our individual capacities. Some of us are very intelligent, and some not so intelligent [laughter].”

Closing comments

“Terrible conditions, and tragic situations have been a history for the Tibetan people. That you [the teachers] came all the way from the United States encourages us to do these things. This really going to help our generation, and the next generation. This workshop will be written in the history of the Tibetan people.”

“I would like to say thank you very much for coming here, and doing these things. As a Tibetan, this comes from our hearts when we say thank you for our time together. I would also like to give my respect for all of the teachers for your support of the Tibetan monks.”

Chain reaction finale

Luigi — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:22:53 +0000

On the second day of working on their chain reaction machine (and the last day of building workshops!) we switched session, so that instead of the morning, we had the whole afternoon. We could hardly contain our excitement for what was to come, as the room lay all set up and in-progress from the day before, tables waiting to be completed.

It seemed to us (Karen, Mike, and Luigi) that most of the monks had already settled into their ideas, and had a pretty good sense of what they intended to accomplish, and the associated metaphors that we had asked them to think about. Based on the previous days’ tendencies, we had anticipated that most of the metaphors would revolve around three main themes: Buddhism, Tibet, and animals. Surprisingly, this activity brought out a little more variation and zaniness, with sometimes slightly disturbing undertones. For example, one of the elements in a machine consisted of a Tibetan monk slapping a Chinese person (cringe!). Another one involved an autorickshaw (repurposed from an earlier light-reflection prototype) running over a monk, which would then, by falling over, complete a circuit.

Always very inventive, some highlights included:

A soccer match between Tibet and the US, complete with first and second prize cups, and clapping audience.

A brilliant pulley system, with hand-braided rope, that we had never seen before.

A couple of hand-made gears, which after many iterations, prototypes, and a variety of materials, finally worked flawlessly. Perfect pitch!

Tashi’s creation, as always, was unconventional and a little bit crazy. He went through several different ideas, beginning to build, only to abandon them halfway through when he either lost interest in them, or ran into problems that were maybe too complex for him to solve. At one point he had started to build a model of the twin towers, including a way to make the tops collapse when hit by an airplane suspended on a string! Somewhat to our relief, he abandoned that line of thought, but that meant that he started the second day’s with a blank table. Then in a fit of inspiration, he started stringing foam tubes together, eventually fashioning some sort of crazy oversized monk that would shake uncontrollably and make all kinds of scary and “horrible” sounds, including thunder, clanging bells, dogs chasing after cats, and loud and campy music. Through its shaking motions, the monk figure would cause pieces of aluminum foil to hit each other, completing circuits, and setting the next machine in motion.

A rare treat: the translators, who were by the way such an essential part of our experience in Sarnath, in and out of the workshops, got to collaborate on their own table. They made a brilliant “Tibet express” train, complete with conductive rails!

Finally, the time came to set the whole contraption off. In typical fashion, all the monks crowded around the tables, we started a countdown from five (in Tibetan, of course!), and Geshe Thupten Khunkhen set the first block off. Of course, a chain reaction machine never works smoothly! The snags are part of the fun, and the monks enthusiasm was as high as we’ve ever seen: there were shouts of encouragement, teasing of each other, and joyful yelling when things worked. In fact, the whole experience was so delightful, that we had to set it all up and run it one more time!

And to end things on a great note, we set up an outdoor screening of one of our favorites chain reaction videos ever: Pythagora’s Switch!

We were overjoyed and delighted that, in addition to the monks, a number of local children took time off their bicycle-riding and kite-flying to attend the projection. We couldn’t wish for a better end to 10 magical workshop days.

Chain Reaction contraption

Luigi — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:51:20 +0000

We (Karen, Mike, and Luigi) explored cause and effect today as we started a two-day build of a metaphorical chain reaction. Using Bruno Munari’s drawings as inspiration (including his drawing of a machine for sniffing artificial flowers), we organized the work tables into a snake-like chain for the group to build their metaphorical machines. Ultimately, these will be linked together and set off as the finale of the workshop.

Getting ideas from past projects, a few new building materials, and a variety of evocative objects that we revealed especially for this activity, the monks jumped right in and started designing and building. There is little hesitation with this group as they each gathered a wide variety of materials and carried out a series of rapid prototypes – making observations, and discussing each of these with their partners.

Ultimately, ideas began to form, and challenges emerged that seemed too compelling to ignore. Each pair of monks made good progress in the short two and a half hour session, and it was difficult to get them to take a tea break (and we were quite late for lunch).

The ownership of ideas seems strong with this group, but, the ownership of the artifacts created during previous activities seems less important. Past project contraptions (like the automata, and Mylar Reflection machines) have been quickly incorporated into this final activity. Often, the machines from past activities are dismantled in order to utilize a cam, linkage, or machine system in their current projects. We were a bit surprised when we learned that they were taking apart machines that were not theirs to begin with, and when we asked the monks if this was OK, they looked at us with a sly smile and said “of course”. There seems to be little need for them to own the artifacts of their learning, and as one mentioned “we carry our thinking and ideas with us much easier than our contraptions”.