Austin Mini Maker Faire 2013!

Today’s guest post comes from one of Austin’s most beloved educators: Kami Wilt, director of the Austin Tinkering School. She is currently reprising her role as producer of the Austin Mini Maker Faire, and here she shares the latest news about my favorite event of the year. Read to the end to find out how you can enter to win a family pack of tickets!

We’re super excited to be putting on our second annual Austin Mini Maker Faire on May 5, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Palmer Events Center. 

Last year our first Austin Mini Maker Faire had over 2,000 attendees, more than twice as many as expected. It was a DIY extravaganza of hands-on projects, robots, electric vehicles, glassblowing, and so much more. This year we have over 100 Makers signed up, and we expect 5,000 attendees. (Not so mini, you might say!)

The Faire will feature:

• A Robot Petting Zoo
• Steampunk Village
• Mega Swap-o-rama of clothes-hacking and fabric arts
• FIRST robotics stage with robot battles and more
• Tinkering: Open Shop
• Eco makers of all sorts in our Sustainable Village
• Young Makers and Education area
• 2 stages, each with a full schedule of performers and speakers with a Maker element
• A 30' x 30' inflatable Planetarium
• Austin Bike Zoo, premiering their Interactive Carnival and Bike Wonderland
• 3-D printers, weaving, soldering workshops, homemade telescopes, and much much more!

 

In the years to come, we look forward to the cross-pollination and inspiration that will happen as our Faire grows and as schools and the community learn to utilize the event as a learning tool. Already, educators have begun to gear projects of all kinds toward the opportunities our Faire provides to “show and tell” in extraordinary ways. 

Can’t wait to see you all at the Faire!

Kami Wilt

Enter our drawing to win a family pack of tickets to the Austin Mini Maker Faire! Just leave a comment below telling us which area of the Faire most interests you or another member of your family. For another chance to win, share this post on your Facebook timeline before noon on Thursday, April 18, 2013. The winner will be randomly selected and will receive 2 adult and 2 child passes, a $34 value.

Update on 2013-04-18 17:18 by Teri

We have a winner: Lolly Walter, who shared this post on Facebook, has won four Faire passes for her family. Thanks to everyone who left comments and shared with friends. You can still save on tickets by buying them in advance through the Austin Mini Maker Faire site. Hope to see you all there!

The magic of making

In the most interesting presentation I attended yesterday at SXSWedu, Dale Dougherty made an impassioned and convincing case for informal learning, particularly in the form of “maker education.” The conference so far has been heavy on presentations promoting digital technologies and their many uses in education, and while I am all for using the latest tools when they can help meet the needs of learners, I will admit that it felt like a breath of fresh air to hear about kids in schools and other settings making real, physical things with their own hands.

Dougherty is the founding editor and publisher of MAKE Magazine and co-creator of Maker Faire, the “Greatest Show and Tell on Earth,” which began in the California Bay Area in 2006. Last spring he helped launch the Maker Education Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing “a new generation of ‘makers’ who are creative, innovative, and curious.” He is also one of the leaders of Makerspace, which helps and encourages people to establish dedicated spaces for making in their schools, libraries, and neighborhoods.

In his keynote address, “The Magic of Making: Engaging Students as Makers,” Dougherty described the future of education as “IFFY”: Informal, involving Friends and Family, and centered on You and your goals. Making is by nature IFFY, he said, and when schools devote space, time, and resources to open-ended, project-oriented making of all kinds, they transform themselves into the centers of authentic learning that our communities desperately need. Projects like these provide the most natural and effective kind of learning assessment: students have tangible products they can show and stories they can tell about the problem-solving, design, and building process. One of Dougherty’s current goals is to “scale up” the creation of Makerspaces and maker programs to give all kids, at every socioeconomic level and in every community large or small, the chance to discover that they, too, are makers.

Later, Dougherty joined the local maker community for an interactive evening cohosted by the Austin Hardware Startup Meetup and Austin Mini Maker Faire at Capital Factory, a tech startup incubator, accelerator, and coworking space in downtown Austin. To a standing-room-only crowd filled with representatives of ATX Hackerspace, Round Rock’s TechShop, San Antonio’s Geekdom, and other Central Texas maker organizations and individuals, Dougherty spoke of Maker Faire’s success in bringing together people who do very different things (e.g., embroiderers, robot builders, kombucha brewers) who don’t necessarily know each other or believe they have anything in common. It also “flushes people out of their basements and garages,” where they have been pursuing their passions in isolation, and helps them share their skills and joy in making with other makers and the world.

Following Dougherty’s informal talk, he engaged audience members in a lively conversation about ways to strengthen, expand, and diversify the Austin maker community. Suggestions included developing networks of mentors and designing maker spaces to be friendlier to women and others not traditionally comfortable in these kinds of places. Dougherty emphasized summer camps as opportunities to practice maker education in less restrictive conditions than most schools can provide and encouraged camp directors to network with each other to establish as many maker experiences as possible for kids in Austin and beyond.

In wrapping up, Dougherty encouraged everyone to get involved in and help spread the word about this year’s Austin Mini Maker Faire, which takes place May 5 at the Palmer Events Center. Faire producer Kami Wilt announced that the Call for Makers is open through March 15 and that earlybird tickets are already on sale. Sponsorships are available at various levels. Alt Ed Austin is a proud sponsor of this all-ages, homegrown event, and I invite you to join us there to experience the magic of making.

Giveaway: Mini Maker Faire passes

One of the coolest community events of the year, the Austin Mini Maker Faire, is happening this Saturday, and you have a chance to win two free tickets! Read on to find out how.

Kami Wilt, the event’s producer (also known as the genius behind the Austin Tinkering School), describes the Mini Maker Faire as “a one-day, family-friendly event to make, create, learn, invent, craft, recycle, think, play, and be inspired.” It’s not only a showcase for the DIY spirit, as exemplified by the 65 diverse and amazingly creative makers participating, but also a one-day school of sorts, where kids and adults can learn new skills, both useful and purely whimsical.

Full disclosure: I am volunteering at the event, and Alt Ed Austin is one of its official sponsors. Why? Because it’s a natural fit: the schools, camps, and other programs featured on this site embrace hands-on learning, and the AMMF is a celebration of that learning-by-doing model. Truthfully, though, I got involved mostly because it’s going to be tons of fun!

Tickets at the gate are reasonably priced ($10 for kids 18 and under, $15 for adults), and even cheaper in advance ($7 for kids, $10 for adults). But one lucky reader will get two free passes (good for either kids or adults), compliments of Alt Ed Austin. Just leave a comment below, telling me which maker booth, workshop, or special presentation you are most interested in visiting at the Faire. The winner will be selected randomly from all relevant responses submitted by 9:00 pm today. The winner will be announced in an update to this post as well as on the Alt Ed Austin Facebook page.

Good luck, and see you at the Faire!

UPDATE: Randomly selected using a fancy little Excel formula, the winner is Lawrence Manzano (commenter #4). Congratulations, Lawrence, and enjoy the Austin Mini Maker Faire! Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing and visited Alt Ed Austin.

The chance to feel frustrated

I’m pleased to welcome the illustrious Kami Wilt, of the Austin Tinkering School and Austin Mini Maker Faire, to Alt Ed Austin’s lineup of guest bloggers. Here she discusses the challenges and rewards of frustration. She'd love to hear about your experiences, so I encourage you to leave Kami a comment or question below.

Recently I was leading a class and was, as usual, doing several things at once: plugging in the glue guns, showing someone how to test his battery with the multimeter, getting out the sharpies for the kid who has to decorate every inch of available space—the usual. This is the kind of usual that I totally love.

True to the tinkering ethos, we had an outcome in mind, but we left it open-ended as to how to arrive at that outcome. In tinkering, we try to create projects where kids are encouraged to design and create and problem-solve on their own. We consciously choose not to create too many projects (though sometimes they have their place) that are just follow-along-with-the-teacher activities (“Cut here, fold there, and now we all have a toy car that looks exactly the same! Wheee!”).

Anyway, I had a kid who was stuck. He hadn't been stuck for long. But he was stuck, and the expression on his face read, “Frustrated.” He was SO CLOSE, and I wanted so much to take his project out of his hands and just get it working for him. In fact, the urge to just get it going and spare us both the experience of feeling frustrated and stuck for even one second was almost unbearably uncomfortable. But I decided to ride it out for just a few moments more. Interestingly, he didn't disengage or walk away from the table. I stood next to him and quietly looked at his project with him. I didn't talk a lot or offer suggestions (and he didn't ask for any). I'm sure you can guess the moral of this story: After a few moments of rumination and meditation, the next step revealed itself. His excitement and ownership of the project were not infringed on by me, and now he has a cool experience in his memory bank of working through frustration successfully.

Why is it so hard for us to let our kids feel frustration? It makes me break out in an icy sweat sometimes, and I supposedly have experience in these matters. Luckily, I have my mentor, Gever Tulley, who created Tinkering School and Brightworks in San Francisco, to inspire me and keep me motivated to create experiences where kids have time and space to work on projects (and all the accompanying successes and failures) in their own way, free from an overabundance of adult imposition. An ability to manage and work through frustration is essential to almost anyone in our world who gets anything done. As I overheard one kid say to another recently, “A genius is someone who tries something and if it doesn't work out, he tries something else. And if that doesn't work out, he tries something else. And if that doesn't work out, he tries something else.” Couldn’t have said it better myself!

I think we disrespect children when we assume they can't handle a moment of frustration. It can be really beneficial for a child to have space to think through something on her own, without having an adult jump in and prod her along. We adults can at times be overzealous in our roles as supervisors and facilitators of experiences. As Gever said in one of his great TED talks, “We, the adults, are superheroes, endowed with the power of supervision. Let us use our powers wisely and be amazed at what children can do.”

Kami Wilt