Che café, Guatemala City (Guatemala snapshot) Café cash register cat (Guatemala snapshot) Issuing an apology on behalf of the New York Post Filter can separate water from Coke American cuisine Che café, Guatemala City (Guatemala snapshot)
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 21, 2013 11:15 am A little eatery we walked by in Guatemala City, with Che Guevara photos and flags outside. The Cuban revolutionary lived in Guatemala City for some time during the early 1950s, when the democratically-elected leftist president Jacobo Arbenz was implementing land reform, and sticking it to international corporations like American-owned United Fruit Company. And in fact, ...
Read in browser Café cash register cat (Guatemala snapshot)
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 21, 2013 11:04 am Above: Misha, the manager of Fernando's Kaffe, my favorite place for coffee in La Antigua, Guatemala. Seriously, she runs the joint. After the barista made me my espresso, the barista pushed keys next to the creature's paws and tail to ring up my drink without moving Misha; the cat sleeps right through everything. * Taken ...
Read in browser Issuing an apology on behalf of the New York Post
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 21, 2013 08:38 am Someone wrote a fake letter of apology from the New York Post's editor and inserted it into a bunch of papers around NYC.
Read in browser Filter can separate water from Coke
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 20, 2013 06:21 pm The sheer awesome filtration power of the
OKO filter is on display here as a fellow from Japan's RocketNews24 uses it to separate the clear, relatively benign H2O out of the Black Waters of American Imperialism.
Read in browser American cuisine
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 20, 2013 03:17 pm Planning a weekend brunch? You're in luck! The new Mountain Dew Kickstart is a crowdfunded highly caffeinated pseudo-juice that PepsiCo is marketing as a great breakfast drink. Then, swing round to your local county fair and get Chicken Charlie to sell you a nice takeaway package of his deep-fried cereal to accompany things, and well, ...
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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