Tag Archives: @donbuckley

February 27, 2022 · 12:42 pm

Gathering my notes and tweets from yesterday’s mycelium workshop at @GenspaceNYC (organized by @STEMteachersNYC)… #STEMintheCITY #scichat #STEMed

Yesterday, I met up with Tracy Rudzitis and Don Buckley for a workshop at Genspace in South Brooklyn. Here’s some info about Genspace copied from their website:

Genspace is the world’s first community biology lab — a place where people of all backgrounds can learn, create, and grow with the life sciences.

Since 2009, we have served the greater New York area by providing hands-on STEAM education programs for youth and adults, cultural and outreach events for the public, and a membership program to support New York’s community of creatives, researchers, and entrepreneurs. Our programs demystify scientific processes, provide a platform for innovation, and cultivate the next generation of life sciences leaders in emerging global technologies, such as biotechnology, neuroscience, epidemiology, genomics, and many more.

The mycelium workshop yesterday was organized by STEMteachersNYC as part of their annual STEM in the City initiative. Here’s some info copied from STEMteacherNYC’s website’s About section:

STEMteachersNYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting a community of STEM teachers across the NYC region. Our mission is to cultivate excellence in STEM teaching and to promote deep understanding and success for students through innovative, teacher-led professional development. Our weekend workshops are offered during the school year and multi-week workshop intensives occur in the summer, led by master teachers. We welcome and encourage teachers from across the globe, the US, and the local New York City area!

** Here is more info about the STEM in the City initiative and some upcoming opportunities: https://stemteachersnyc.org/category/stem-in-the-city/

I am totally grateful that STEMteachersNYC organized yesterday’s site visit! Tracy and I are self-proclaimed PD addicts, and while we have participated in many online offerings over the past two years, we much prefer being in-person, exploring together, and continuing the conversation at a local watering hole. When we entered Genspace’s lab, we were able to examine a bunch of materials and projects laid out for us. Don and I particularly loved the examples of leaves imprinted with artwork to highlight the process of photosynthesis(!!). I always appreciate an opportunity to explore a lab/makerspace to see how supplies and works in progress are organized — and I’m now considering ways to hack my tables to include storage below. Also on display at Genspace was the OpenTrons Project robot liquid dropper that began as an independent exploration in the lab but is now commercially available!

Mycelium is a biodegradable fungal material, and during a brief presentation before the hands-on portion of the workshop, we talked about how mycelium is used to create shipping packaging (in lieu of plastic or styrofoam), faux leather, building material, art objects, and more. I know many maker friends who have been integrating mycelium into STEM and STEAM projects (Corinne Takara, Erik Nauman, Chris Sweeney, Tracy Rudzitis…), but I have never experimented with the mushroom spores, and I’m excited to start! Tracy brought some 3D-printed plastic molds designed by her students in Tinkercad to fill with the mycelium mixture; She was inspired by Corinne Takara who has experimented with biomaterials for years and espouses growing materials rather than simply purchasing or consuming non-biodegradable materials. You can read more about some of Corrine’s work in this post: https://grow.bio/blogs/grow-bio-blog/giy-maker-spotlght-corinne-takara

Here is a tutorial for getting started (thanks for the link, Tracy!): https://grow.bio

Here are some tweets posted during yesterday’s workshop:

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September 25, 2017 · 12:35 pm

Yes, I actually spent time gathering my tweets from @MakerFaire NYC weekend. #MFNY17 #MakerEd

Since I can’t get Storify to embed properly into a WordPress.com site, and I still do not self-host a WordPress.org site, I am gathering below my tweets from the last few days at Maker Faire NYC and some Maker Faire meetups.

Thursday, September 21

I went to the Maker Faire NY “Real World 3D Printing” Panel at Fat Cat Fab Lab hosted by Matterhackers and Ultimaker. It was great to reunite with other independent school technologists and fellow Ultimaker Pioneers, Ian Klapper (@ian32one), Rurik Nackerud (@okay2fail), and Sarah Rolle (@artdabbler13). I’m ever grateful to Liz Arum (@lizarum), the fabulous Education Community Strategist at Ultimaker North America), for suggesting I join the Pioneers, sending me updates about awesome meetups and conferences, and encouraging me to submit a 3D project for the inaugural Design Challenge Starter Pack. I love that my 3D Mandarin Seals project is immortalized in print among other inspiring projects from educators and artists! Here are some of  my posts from the evening:

#NYCIST friends at this @MatterHackers @Ultimaker Pre-@MakerFaire 3D-Mixer. #MakerEd

A post shared by Karen (@karenblumberg) on

Friday, September 22

I attended the 3rd (and my 3rd) annual Make: Education Forum at the NY Hall of Science where I reunited with teacher friends from the NYC Department of Education, technologists from other independent schools in New York and around the country, and exhibitors I met previously at previous Maker Faires or conferences. At the forum, Dale Dougherty, CEO and Founder of Make, exuded inspiration, genuine excitement, and kindness as he launched the day, introduced each speaker, and moderated the Q&As. Here is the schedule of speakers from the day. As per previous years, Dale offered attendees a backstage tour of the Maker Faire after the forum. Below is the description from the website — it’s a great event to attend if you can swing it!

Co-hosted with our partner, New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), the event is Friday, September 22, at the New York Hall of Science, home of World Maker Faire New York, from 10am to 4pm. This year, our focus will be on computational making, rethinking professional development for maker education and how making is not just about creating a makerspace but creating a maker culture.

Hear from educators, makerspace organizers, librarians, local and federal state department representatives, and youth organizations who have developed models and platforms to serve this agenda. If you are an individual who is either formally or informally supporting and/or creating project-based learning programs for kids that support general STEM areas, as educational policy makers, superintendents and principals, or youth programing coordinators, please join us.

Here are the tweets I shared during the day:

After the Make: Education Forum, I made it to a Maker Educator Meetup  hosted/sponsored by Maker Promise, Autodesk, and MackinMaker at NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Makerspace. Here a tweet with photographic evidence via Mara Hitner (@3DPrintGirl):

Sunday, September 24

I made it to another Maker Faire NYC! Every year, I try to organize a block of tickets (through the Technology Department budget) for colleagues to visit the Maker Faire on Sunday, as there is a reduced Sunday group rate of 4 tickets for a total of $100. I also recommended people use their personal Professional Development monies if they want to get their own ticket to attend on Saturday. Additionally, I suggest they volunteer and attend for free (!) via the Make Faire Traveler Program. Here are my tweets from Sunday’s Maker Faire:

PS. I want to keep track of these tweets from others as well:

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July 31, 2015 · 7:07 pm

Just visited the inaugural @littleBits retail store with @donbuckley! Here are photos:

The first littleBits store opened today, and I was so excited to visit the space with my former boss and mentor @donbuckley! It’s so well designed! This pop-up store’s location is 355 West Broadway in the SoHo district, and it will operate there for the next 7 months. The actual grand opening will be in mid-August. Read more about the opening here: http://www.psfk.com/2015/07/littlebits-store-retail-electronics.html 

Besides being able to buy pieces in the retail section, there are demo areas peppered with inspiring projects next to correlating paper recipe cards (with starter instructions on one side and a shopping list on the other) and an open lab area in the back where you can work with a littleBits ambassador in a lab coat to build something amazing. There’s a wonderful opportunity to either leave your creation behind or take it with you (and you pay for all the pieces). Either way, there’s a wired photo org area where you can document your masterpiece and share it with the wider littleBits community online.

Creative opportunities abound here! I’m hoping to organize teacher outings to come and play. @AyahBdeir, superstar founder of litteBits, was at the store today and chatted with me and Don for a while. I’ve been a fan of Ayah’s since her TED Fellow days, and it’s been amazing to watch her build her dream company. littleBits’s flourishing business, perpetually expanding product offerings, growing popularity, and spreading community are a joy to observe through their kicking Instagram account. Check it out here: Instagram.com/littleBits

littleBits Store info:
355 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013
917-924-2302 ext 102
Hours: Mon-Fri 11am–7pm, Sat-Sun 10am–7pm

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June 13, 2013 · 12:04 am

Teaching an #OS4GPD online summer course with @DonBuckley: “Intentional Curriculum Design and Design Thinking”

Above is an interview with me, Don Buckley, and Susan Booth (@SusanMBooth), Director of Professional Growth and Learning at Online School for Girls (@OS4G). Susan invited Don Buckley and me to teach an online professional development course this summer entitled Intentional Curriculum Design and Design Thinking, and this video interview is an introduction to the class. It makes for 10-minutes of fodder if you ever want to make fun of my facial expressions and frenetic hand gestures.

I’ve given presentations online, and they ranged from less awkward to more awkward. However, neither Don nor I have ever led a true online course. It’s been a challenge to transfer/translate that which we’d normally present or discuss in person to an asynchronous digital environment. The class is powered by Haiku, and I’ve gotten pretty good at learning the interface, organizing pages, creating various content blocks, and altering the page layout. I’ve never worked in a school that employed a content management system, so it’s been a pretty interesting experience to navigate the online learning environment.

For the class, we’ll be using shared boards on Pinterest to gather student work and an edmodo group as a place to prototype full-class and smaller-cohort discussions. Also, people will be tweeting with the hashtag #OS4GPD.

I love collaborating with Don. He is one of the smartest and most interesting people I’ve ever met, and I’m lucky to have had the last seven years with him as my boss, mentor, and friend. His next adventure is a non-profit he started, Tools at Schools, to bring Design Thinking to education. You should listen to his TEDxNYED talk below:

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