Category: 2019

Cue Robot – August 1; Deconstruction Night – August 8

Our last two Discovery Lab sessions are August 1 and August 8.

The special workshop on August 1 will explore the Cue Robot and its capabilities. These impressive characters can be coded using a Scratch-like interface and come with a variety of attachments for special missions.

Our final night we are looking to tear into a variety of electronics and appliances to see what is inside.

August 8 we cap the summer off by opening things up to look inside. We’ll have old computers, video players,small appliances, and whatever else we can get our hands on to pull apart and poke around inside. We will provide as many tools as we can get our hands on, but if you’d like to bring a few toolswith you (screwdrivers, pliers, …) that would be welcome. Make sure they are well-labelled and easily identifiable.

Discovery Fair Saturday August 3

What does a summer of Discovery look like? Come check out the Discovery Fair Saturday August 3 from 10AM to 1PM in the lobby of Clippinger Labs on the Athens Campus of Ohio University. There will be a combination of hallway activities and projects spanning the range of 3D printers, Maker Cart Constructions, Arduinos, Cardboard construction and engineering and anything else we’re inspired to bring. There will be a special appearance of the WOUB Learning Lab and their robotic friends. The event is supported by the Ohio Valley Museum of Discovery, WOUB Learning Lab, State Farm (Discovery Lab materials) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. If you are interested in showing off your latest or favorite project, contact Mark Lucas at lucasm@ohio.edu. We’d love to see what everyone is doing!

Parking (https://www.ohio.edu/athens/parking): The large lots in front of Clippinger (83 and 84) no longer exist (though it is cool to look at the new Chemistry Building going up!) Parking is available in Lots 86 and 88 directly behind the Clipping and in the Lots 87 and 93 by Ping (meters are 24 hours-7days a week but unmetered lots are open on Saturday – just read signs carefully). Lot 134 by Walter Hall is also an option.

Programming Night – June 20, 2019

Thursday June 20 we will have a focus on programming in addition to our standard stations (3D printing, doodle pens, Maker Cart, …). Those of you who submitted 3D print jobs June 13 can pick them up on the 20th.

We will have a workshop on programming with Scratch, a graphical programming created by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab (I still love the name and the idea that you can get a PhD from this group!). Scratch provides a great entry path into programming, but is also capable of quite sophisticated work. The general block-programming format has been replicated by a lot of different groups.

For those of you new to Scratch, we will provide an introduction and several challenges to try out in Scratch. For those who have already spent some time with Scratch on their own or in school, we will have available Cue Robots (which can use a Scratch-like variant or javascript for programming) and Micro:bits, which are an Arduino like microcontroller which can naturally interface with Scratch 3. (Micro:bits can also be block programmed independently or programmed in MicroPython.)

We will have a some “communal” scratch accounts available for use, but if you’d like to save and share programs under your own space, you can head to scratch.mit.edu with your parents and create your own account.

Getting Ready for Summer 2019!

Plans are shaping up for Summer 2019! We are excited to officially become Discovery Lab as we become a part of the programming for the Ohio Valley Museum of Discovery. We will continue to meet in the basement of Clippinger (Room 036) on Thursday evenings from 6-8PM with possible special events on Tuesdays and/or Saturdays.

We will kick off on June 6 and go until August 8 (with plans to take Thursday, July 4th off). And save Saturday August 3 for the Second Annual Discovery Fair, a chance to show off things you’ve done during the summer.

For those new to AthensMakers/Discovery Lab, we strive to create an environment where kids 6th grade through high school can gather to explore a wide range of STEAM-based (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) activities. You can wander the web site to see what kinds of things we have done in the past. They include things like 3-D printing, Arduino Microcontrollers, construction projects with the Maker Cart, green-screen and stop motion videography, and more! This year we intend to run a combination of open exploration space in parallel with workshops where those who chose can learn new skills in a guided environment.

At this time the programming is free, though there may be some special workshops advertised that require a special fee to help pay for materials the students take with them.

And as always we encourage parents to hang out and learn alongside their kids!