"MakerFaire" entries

White House Science Fair praises future scientists and makers

If we want kids to aspire to become scientists and technologists, celebrate academic achievement like athletics and celebrity.

There are few ways to better judge a nation’s character than to look at how its children are educated. What values do their parents, teachers and mentors demonstrate? What accomplishments are celebrated? In a world where championship sports teams are idolized and superstar athletes are feted by the media, it was gratifying to see science, students and teachers get their moment in the sun at the White House last week.

“…one of the things that I’m concerned about is that, as a culture, we’re great consumers of technology, but we’re not always properly respecting the people who are in the labs and behind the scenes creating the stuff that we now take for granted,” said President Barack Obama, “and we’ve got to give the millions of Americans who work in science and technology not only the kind of respect they deserve but also new ways to engage young people.”

President Obama at White House Science Fair

President Barack Obama talks with Evan Jackson, 10, Alec Jackson, 8, and Caleb Robinson, 8, from McDonough, Ga., at the 2013 White House Science Fair in the State Dining Room. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

An increasingly fierce global competition for talent and natural resources has put a premium on developing scientists and engineers in the nation’s schools. (On that count, last week, the President announced a plan to promote careers in the sciences and expand federal and private-sector initiatives to encourage students to study STEM.

“America has always been about discovery, and invention, and engineering, and science and evidence,” said the President, last week. “That’s who we are. That’s in our DNA. That’s how this country became the greatest economic power in the history of the world. That’s how we’re able to provide so many contributions to people all around the world with our scientific and medical and technological discoveries.”

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The maker movement's potential for education, jobs and innovation is growing

"MAKE" founder Dale Dougherty was named a "Champion of Change" by the White House.

Dale Dougherty, one of the co-founders of O'Reilly Media, was honored by the White House as a "Champion of Change" for his work on "MAKE" Magazine, MakerFaire and the broader DIY movement.

The long slow make

How will a "long, slow make" transform our society?

I sat down with Anil Dash to get some long-term thinking on the Maker movement.

Tinkering with technology education

The maker movement's many entry points create a welcoming environment for tech education.

The maker movement offers an appealing invitation to technology for a broad audience that includes both women and men, seniors and children, technologists and artists.

2 makers, 2 robots, 2 visions

An errand car and a ball-shaped 'bot illustrate Maker Faire's robotic diversity.

In advance of the upcoming Maker Faire Bay Area, here's a look at two vastly different robotics projects: one aims to change the world while the other wants to roll around (and inspire some healthy creativity).

Four Short Links: 16 March 2011

Four Short Links: 16 March 2011

Javascript Fiddling, Securing Web Traffic, DIY Jumbotron, and Kinect Tesla Fun

  1. JS Fiddlean online editor for snippets build from HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The code can then be shared with others, embedded on a blog, etc. (via Darren Wood)
  2. SideStep — Mac OS X program that automatically routes connections through a secure proxy when you’re on an unsecured wifi network. (via Gina Trapani)
  3. Junkyard Jumbotron (MIT) — lets you take a bunch of random displays and instantly stitch them together into a large, virtual display, simply by taking a photograph of them. It works with laptops, smartphones, tablets — anything that runs a web browser. It also highlights a new way of connecting a large number of heterogenous devices to each other in the field, on an ad-hoc basis.
  4. Kinect-Controlled Tesla Coil (YouTube) — “now say: Fools, I’ll Destroy You All!”. (via AdaFruit)

Innovation, education and Makers

Thomas Kalil: What would education look like after a Maker make-over?

During a recent workshop, Thomas Kalil of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy explored the impact of the DIY mindset on education and industry. The full text of Kalil's talk is included in this post.

A World's Faire for Makers

A preview of Maker Faire New York.

The first Maker Faire on the east coast takes place this weekend on the grounds of the New York Hall of Science in Queens, the site of the 1964 World's Fair. Here's a preview of talks, events, and performances.