Author: Fei Ren (Page 2 of 6)

Cameo Creations(2/17/14)!

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We made some awesome stickers with silver contact paper and the always fabulous Cameo again this week. There was a clear trend this week as all the boys went for basketball related. Everything from Nike and Jordan logos, to a “BASKETBALL FOR LIFE” sticker. Everyone had a lot of fun experimenting with different shapes and got to learn a bit more about how to weld, group, and ungroup objects in the Cameo Design Studio.

Little Bits Fun with James!

Everyone was bobbing there heads along as James and a few makers created some awesome tunes with Little Bits.

Dracula and vampires, what could be better?

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Check out this awesome comic above, one of our very creative makers made with Pixton last Monday!

Pixton, PicMonkey, KORG, Cameo, and Tons of New Faces!

Hello all, we had a lot of fun at Willow Run yesterday and best of all we saw a ton of new faces and some returning ones as well at Michigan Makers! We had four super fun activities to choose from:

1. Pixton
2. PicMonkey
3. KORG
4. Cameo

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The results have been tallied from last week and one of the top three voted activities was making your own comics! So this week we decided to introduce Pixton, a fun creative way to easily make your own comics online! Pixton allows for tons of customization so each maker was able to make their comic unique and put their own personal touch on it to make it theirs.

One of the other top three voted activities from last week was photo/video editing, so we had the makers experiment with PicMonkey! PicMonkey is an awesome free photo editor online. Not only did some makers edit photos with text, lighting, and overlays, but some made collages as well. And PicMonkey has the awesome feature of allowing you to start from a blank canvas so you can make your own design. Some of our drawing enthusiasts choose this option.

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After being out for a while the Cameo is back is in action! I have three words for you: silver contact paper. And yes it was as awesome as it sounds. The makers printed out their designs on silver contact paper and made them into stickers, how cool is that! While we just worked with cutting out pre-designed objects this time, next time we’ll start having each maker brainstorm their own design and bring that to life on the cameo.

NEW WORLD

cool song i made its a really awesome song so its about me in minecraft doing minecraft stuff! 😀
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW8sq_SP2Tc

By: Andy Tucker

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BEAN BAGS AND VIRTUAL LEGOS

This week our menu included sewing, marble-run-making, choose-your-own-adventure-story writing, bean bag making, and virtual Legos. Virtual Legos? What?! It’s true, right here with Build with Chrome. Unfortunately, we had some difficulties using Build with Chrome on the school laptops. Apparently a certain plug-in for Google Chrome kept crashing, but hopefully, we’ll find a way to fix that.

For the bean bags, very patient students took turns learning how to use the sewing machine to make a pocket. They then turned it inside out so that the seam was on the inside, filled the pocket with dried beans, and sewed the top closed. We need to learn not to throw the bean bags at each other, however. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.

Some students took matters into their own hands and independently made things, which is, of course, fantastic! Here is an example: a stop-motion animation that Vickie made.

The 3D printer that we were all excited to use last class unfortunately was not working for this class. We’ll try to have it fixed before next time.

 

Mitchell Stop-Motion 6Feb2014

Exciting New Happenings at Michigan Makers

Wow it’s been a while since we’ve been at Willow Run because of all the horrible weather but today we were finally back in action with some exciting new changes! We had five super fun stations that each lasted about 15 minutes and then everyone rotated stations so they got do do a little bit of everything. One of our lovely mentor’s Alyssa coined it “speed-making”. We also introduced a punch card, each time you went to a different station and completed an activity you got a punch on your card.
So what exciting new activities did we have this week? Here’s what the menu looked like for today (February 3rd):

Station 1: Origami, Legos, and Drawing with Amelia
Station 2: LittleBits and KORG for digital music making with James and Mollie
Station 3: Badge-O-Matic with Alyssa
Station 4: 3D Printing with Mari and Kristen
Station 5: Sewing Bean Bags with Amana and Meg 

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At the origami station we made a rainbow wheel as pictured to the left. The rainbow wheel makes a great decoration on top of a box or card. We also had a ton of fun designing lego cars like the one below made by a very creative maker. At the origami station there were tons of “How to Draw” books so a few makers started designing their buttons at this station using the drawing books for a little inspiration. 

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I think it’s safe to say the runaway hit of the day was the awesome Badge-O-Matic. No one could resist getting to make personalized buttons! Every Michigan Maker Mentor got a button as well with their name on it so we can all work on getting to know each other better. Check out some of the button designs below! A big thanks to the School of Information for letting us borrow the Badge-O-Matic.


And lastly, we can’t forget we bid a sad farewell to long time Michigan Makers Mentor Meg Morrissey, but for a great reason: she got a new job! Congratulations Meg, we wish you all the best of luck in your new endeavors!

THE 3D PRINTER ARRIVES!

This week, our menu included making marble runs, using Pixlr (an online tool for photo editing), sewing, and writing a choose-your-own-adventure story. Perhaps the most exciting event that happened, though, was the arrival of the 3D printer!

PictureHooray!

To print something on the 3D printer, a student needs to design it in 3D modeling software like SketchUp or Tinkercad. Files that are ready to print can also be downloaded from Thingiverse, like the robots above. When the file is ready, we connect the printer to a computer and run makerware, which allows us to tell the printer what size, where, and in what direction the thing will print.

We’ve had a couple classes with 3D modeling so far, but SketchUp has been frustrating for quite a few students. Now that we understand how we can use SketchUp for printing objects, it might be easier to understand.

PictureKevin worked with SketchUp last week to 3D model the logo for his basketball club. This week he got to print it!

So that everyone could get a chance to 3D print something, each student got to choose to print either a wrench charm or a pair of scissors charm. We were fascinated watching the printer and very excited about what we can make in future classes. Even teachers and parents came in to watch and get excited. We also learned that the 3D printer takes a long time to make things, and only half of the class got to print their charms. Next week we’ll finish printing those and start learning how to make new designs.

UMSI Monthly Profiles MM Mentor

http://monthly.si.umich.edu/msi-profile-alexandra-quay/

MSI profile: Alexandra Quay | UMSI Monthly via kwout

Hey, YCS Michigan Makers! Guess who got profiled in UMSI Monthly? It’s former  YCS MM mentor Alex Quay! Go check out her spectacular profile on UMSI Monthly! Click the interactive photo above to take you there! 

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