It’s been a bit challenging for me and others who have never taken a physics or computer science course, as it sometimes feels like learning not one but two languages at the same time. Yet it’s interesting to be going through what we hope some of the kids who come to the Tinkering Studio experience when they get a chance to experiment with electricity boards or SCRATCH in a way that’s different from how you might learn classroom setting. Ryoko and I traded excited looks when Micheal brought up a double-throw double-pull switch and it’s been fun to try to figure out how the computer code would look represented in scratch blocks.

So far we’ve gone over vocabulary terms, made an LED blink on and off, and explored some of the library of user-submitted programs. But the last class was the best and most difficult as we each took a robotic toy and tried to get the arduino to control the movements. It was a bit reminiscent of Micheal Brown‘s twisted toy workshop that we had last year in the tinkering studio. It was pretty tricky as we had to navigate using relays, transistors, and many different colored jumpers but everyone at least got something working. We have three more classes, so by the end of the semester, we should all be working hard on all kinds of crazy projects and ideas.