Fidget Blanket Workshop

Makerspace Urbana and the United Way Emerging Community Leaders had a blast hosting the Fidget Blanket Workshop as part of the National Week of Making! Thank you to everyone who came out to help!

Makerspace Urbana hosted an educational workshop on June 6, 2016 to teach the skills necessary for others to make their own fidget blankets.

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Human-Centered Design Workshops on Urban Flooding


dfaWe’re very excited to announce that Design for America has chosen to team up with Makerspace Urbana for an exciting workshop series. This series aims to teach the human-centered design process to the members of Makerspace Urbana and the wider Urbana-Champaign community(all ages, all welcome). This will be carried out through 4 design workshops on urban flooding. In these sessions, DFA students will work in tandem with Makerspace Urbana members to conduct research using ethnographic techniques, reframe a design challenge, prototype, test their designs and re-iterate them based on user feedback from the John St Watershed Steering Committee. By the end of Spring 2015, DFA and Makerspace hope to deliver an installation type product to be handed over to the John Street Watershed Steering Committee.

The prototyping sessions will be a chance for Makerspace Urbana to mentor DFA members and members of the public in the art of making things through various media such as sewing, digital prototyping, 3D printing and other skills.

 So mark your calendars now! And if you would like to receive an email reminder closer to the first workshop date, sign up here!

The workshop series is funded by a grant from the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Public Engagement.

 

Schedule:

Workshop 1: Understand • Introduction to Human Centered Design

10/4/2014, 1pm-3pm
Digital Computer Lab Room 2320
1304 West Springfield Urbana, IL 61801
  • Talk on what human-centered design is and why it is beneficial in the context of making
  • Introduction of problem statement and key issues surrounding the problem (5mins)
  • Participants will view prior field research footage recorded by DFA students to get an idea of the surroundings and their problems and then craft questions (15mins)
  • John St Watershed residents come to the workshop and share their experiences and problems/ be interviewed. (40mins)
  • Develop insights into the problem (25mins)
  • Create How Can We Questions (20mins)

Sign up: Online or Facebook Event

Workshop 2: Reframe, Synthesize and Brainstorm

10/25/2014, 1pm-3pm
Digital Computer Lab Room 2320
1304 West Springfield Urbana, IL 61801
  • Brainstorming sessions (30mins)
  • Choose ideas (10mins)
  • Forming groups to prototype those ideas
  • Prototyping (40mins)
  • Users will be invited to critique ideas. (40mins)

*This workshop will be facilitated by Julian Bongiorno from DFA National HQ

Workshop 3: Prototyping

11/1/2014  • 11/8/2014 • 11/15/2014 (time flexible)
Makerspace Urbana or other TBD location
  • Consists of DFA students working with Makerspace members every week informally to re-iterate and build prototypes for testing

Workshop 4: Testing and Feedbackeframe, Synthesize and Brainstorm

12/06/2014, 1pm-3pm
Location TBD
  • Participants will learn to communicate their ideas in a compelling way through a pitching workshop. (20mins)
  • Show their prototypes to John St Watershed members to get their own feedback
  • Brainstorm ways to improve their designs (40min)
  • Devise ways to continue with their ideas if participants feel they want to continue with their ideas (30mins)

 

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Outta the Mouths of Babes: Electric Waste Orchestra and Makerspace Urbana Episode!

We were super lucky to have Outta the Mouths of Babes , an amazing local youth radio project, come by with their youth correspondents and explore Makerspace Urbana and Colten’s Electric Waste Orchestra Project. Listen to the awesome results here:

 

And you can see more photos from the event here.

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Unity Community Center Workshop

Last year the Children’s Discovery Museum’s education coordinator (Bethany Thomas) invited us to do a workshop with their Maker Camp. This year we were invited back to have more maker related fun with the wonderful kids at the Unity Community Center. Seven of our Makerspace Urbana volunteers were able to attend and we set up 3 different maker activity  stations for the kids.  One station was our classic soldering workshop!

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Soldering is Easy! And kids pick it up really quick.

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This girl quickly became an excellent soldering teacher after finishing her own blinky badge.

Another was Led/Throwy/Origami.

Maker Camp Bloomington Community Center (3 of 33)

Light up origami time!

The new workshop station we were able to provide this time was sewing custom plush dolls! Huge thanks to Judy Lee from the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab for helping teach and put this workshop station together.

The kids cut out the patterns they created.

The kids got to cut out the patterns they created.

Learned to sew and stitch their pieces together.

Learned to sew and stitch their pieces together.

And ended up with some amazing creations!

And ended up with some amazing creations!

Thanks to the all the awesome kids who made this event a memorable one for all of us.

Full photo album here.

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T-shirts into Tote bags @ the Urbana Market

T-shirts into Tote bags @ the Urbana Market

Makerspace Urbana is super excited to be invited back to the Art @ the Market booth this summer!  While we encountered a semi-tropical storm last weekend:

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we will not be stopped!

Visit us this Saturday, July 19, 8am-noon at the Urbana Farmer’s Market; we’ll be right up front.

The t-shirts beckon:

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Did I mention this is a free workshop?

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Hardware Freedom Day ’14 @ MU

Hardware Freedom Day ’14 @ MU

Makerspace Urbana celebrates Hardware Freedom Day 2014!

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Join us as we get together and do some open hardware hacking. Bring your Arduino board and we’ll show you how to make and program your very own walking robot creation. No programming experience required (but do bring your laptop).

Or come and work on your own project and socialize with fellow makers.

When: 3/14/14 – 11am

 

Where: The workshop will take place at Makerspace Urbana located in the basement room #16 of the Independent Media Center in Urbana. The space can be a little tricky to find but if you enter through the back Bike Project door (near the radio tower) and take your first left, we’re at the end of the hall. If you have any trouble finding us, just call (816) 287-1717.

If possible please let us know you’re coming through one of the following methods:

*We will have some computers for people to use for programming but if you can bring your own laptop and pre-install the Arduino software, that would be great. Or feel free to show up early with your computer and we will help you install it.

Resources:

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Mitch Altman – Variety of Cool Kits Workshop

Mitch Altman – Variety of Cool Kits Workshop

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What:  Learn to Solder, with a variety of cool kits!
You can easily learn all of the skills you need in a short time.
Make a project, and take it home with you!
When:  Saturday, February 15th, 2pm-5pm
Most projects take about 1.5 to 2 hours
Where:  Makerspace Urbana
202 S. Broadway Ave in Urbana
at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (IMC).
Who:  You! All ages, all skill levels — It is fun to make things in the
friendly community of Makerspace Urbana.
Come join us. Everyone is welcome.
Cost:  Instruction is free! We ask that people pay only for the cost of
the parts used — kit prices range from $10 to $20.
 — No need to register — just come on by!

Learn to solder! Mitch Altman will bring kits to make cool, practical, intriguing, hackable things that you can bring home after you make it.

Plenty of cool kits are available to make, including:

  • TV-B-Gone (turn off TVs in public places!)
  • Brain Machine (Meditate, Hallucinate, and Trip Out!)
  • Trippy RGB Waves (interactive blinky lights!)
  • MiniPOV (more cool blinky lights!)
  • MintyBoost (charge your USB enabled gadgets!)
  • Hello My Name Is… badge (Geeky, blinky version!)
  • Arduino clones (make just about anything!)

More info on these projects is available at:
Cornfield Electronics (click on the “projects” tab)
Adafruit
Evil Mad Scientist
Analog Machines

Anyone can learn to solder! Even if you have never made anything in your life, you can learn this very useful and enjoyable skill. It really is fun! Mitch has taught tens of thousands of people to solder all around the world, and he can teach you, too! Add yourself to the ever increasing community!

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Glowing Chucks at Make-a-tion

Glowing Chucks at Make-a-tion

Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  It’s neither.  But everyone that attended our Glowing Chuck Taylors workshop (as part of our Summer Make-a-tion series) certainly gained the power of being awesome!

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Thanks to AdaFruit‘s excellent tutorial, we too were “light” on our feet by cutting out an EL Panel:

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adding an inverter for some much needed power (supplied by a simple coin cell battery):

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and sewing it to our shoe of choice (in this case, a Chuck Taylor All-Stars):

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Check out the finished product.  I dare you to say that doesn’t look cool.

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In fact, this workshop was so easy, we had time to pull apart some old wind-up toys and make these little guys:

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What does it do, you ask?  Stop by the space and find out 🙂

Check out more pictures on our Facebook page here.

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Soldering and Post-It Speakers at Make-a-tion

Soldering and Post-It Speakers at Make-a-tion

We continued our Summer Make-a-tion series in true Discotech style by setting up several workshop stations which allowed everyone to move around as they liked.

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We had our classic soldering workshop which teaches the basics behind using a soldering iron.  The project revolved around putting together a small robot pin by attaching its eyes (LEDs) and a holder for a small coin-cell battery to the body.

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I’m not going to say people learned a lot, but I think people learned a lot.

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And the finished product:

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Pretty snazzy, right?

And if you think this isn’t the most fun you can have in 2 hours on a Saturday, we also taught people how speakers work by making our own mini versions using origami paper, speaker wire, and a magnet.

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We discovered this jem of a workshop at this year’s Allied Media Conference in Detroit.  Props to Mt Elliott Makerspace for being awesome.

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Check out the rest of the photos on our Facebook page.

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