<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">To offer some light at the end of the tunnel: I think those classes have a good chance of coming back, in modernized form. For example, I simply decided to buy fabbing tools for my university research lab in '08, even though it's in computer science. And it has changed the way our students, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, approach the user interface design project challenges we present to them.<div><br></div><div>Take my Weatherella example (<a href="http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/weatherella">http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/weatherella</a>): Five years ago, if students had approached me with the idea of an umbrella that tells you whether you should take it with you ("pick me, pick me!") because it's gonna rain, I would have just asked them to draw a paper prototype, then make a Flash prototype (remember Flash?), and maybe a dumb (nonfunctional) hardware prototype.</div><div><br></div><div>In 2010, when this project idea actually came up, the students built an actual working prototype - 3D printing the handle, milling the PCB, lasercutting the front display cover, Arduino-ing the XBee link to the computer. And they actually found problems with their design (squeezing so much information onto the display only because it was in the online feed that it became illegible from across the room) that they likely would have missed if it hadn't been for the physical prototype. And they solved it by adding a big blue LED ring to the handle that just told the user to take the umbrella with them.</div><div><br></div><div>And our PhD students have been using this infrastructure to create research prototypes they wouldn't have been able to explore otherwise.</div><div><br></div><div>So on a more abstract level, I guess what I'm trying to say here is that universities, with their relative freedom (still) in designing new course contents and acquiring infrastructure (and providing space!) seem like a very good place to approach and ask to set up such spaces and include these "crafting" activities into their curricula. Make a professor the figurehead and he can brush up his profile at the university with all the press this will attract. And it's funny - it's not the ME department who usually comes up with this, but the design / HCI / architecture departments.<br><div><div><br></div><div>Also, it's just adorable to have a super-bright PhD student, who leaves me in the dust when it comes to most coding problems, look at me sheepishly and ask what that whole thing with this LED only working one way round was about again. :)</div><div><br></div><div>- Jan</div><div><br><div><div>On Jul 25, 2012, at 2:21 PM, Christopher T Palmer wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">
<div>
I can see your perspective on this, as that is sometimes my experience in
my classroom, in that limited set of conditions. I do see it in a wider
perspective though in my work making big art to take to Burning Man, and
I am sure that this experience has fed into my system of doom. I also see
it in my "arts engineering" practice, of course.<br><br>
I'd like to clarify though, that one of the points of *this* rant of doom
is the disappearance of, for lack of a better term, "shop"
classes at every grade level. Now that they have closed I bet that
they'll never open again, considering how expensive it would be to
essentially create them from scratch. The current shortages of skilled
labor isn't currently trending toward being fixed. And I can tell you
that showing someone how to hold a hammer, who has never used one, is not
going to get a structure built in a timely fashion, nor is it safe for
the hammer-wielder, or their colleagues, or a business' tenuous grip on
their worker's comp costs. Of course, insert any other tool in place of
hammers...I don't want to just pick on one tool.<br><br>
Or maybe I'm just the Don Quixote of the maker set...that's always a
possibility. <br><br>
ctp<br><br>
ps - I'm in my 40s and can't ask other people for money, so I can't say
that there's any hope for you there, Wendy :)<br><br>
At 01:34 PM 7/25/2012, Wendy Ju wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite" cite="x-msg://551/">It's hard not to read this
article as a "Kids these days!" piece. I have encountered
technically clueless people of all ages. This is not new. My father
used to tell all the jokes that other people refer to as "Polish
jokes" but in our household, they were "Software Engineer
jokes." <br><br>
I will say, though, for people who want to be reassured, that it doesn't
take a long time to remedy a whole lifetime of not tinkering with things.
As a specific example, when they do engineering education studies with
women who enter college without a lot of "making" experience,
they find that they indeed lack the mechanical intuition of their male
counterparts; however, within half an hour of a tinkering activity, there
is no notably measurable difference in performance or intuition. Which is
to say, if you just take the time to point out to someone where they need
to hold the hammer, or which way they need to turn the screwdriver, and
WHY, then they'll know, and they're unlikely to forget. Of course part of
you wonders how people got this far in life without knowing these things,
but I do think it's blowing things out of proportion to think this is
holding humanity back.<br>
<br>
We all have our own blindspots... I, for example, am in my 30's and am
still really unable to ask other people for money, which seems like a far
more important skill than hammering...<br><br>
Wendy<br><br>
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Christopher T Palmer
<<a href="mailto:ctp@ctpdesign.com">ctp@ctpdesign.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
<dl>
<dd>On the article about "why your teenager can't use a hammer"
it's a subject that is very much on my mind and has been for a long time
now. I'd like to get on my soapbox for a bit, and then ask for
help/comments/feedback<br><br>
</dd><dd>I have no idea if I was a normal kid of my times. I was born in 1967.
My father was a machinist for the school of science at a California State
University. I grew up in a making household, and was a maker from early
on. I built kits of all sorts, then I started building airplane kits -
the kind that are a box of sticks and a paper plan. Soon after that I
ditched the kits and designed my own planes based on what I had already
learned. Same with model rockets. Et cetera, et cetera. I got to high
school in 1980 and we still had an auto shop, and metal shop, and wood
shop. I took metal shop, and decided to build a steam engine. The teacher
asked if I planned to use a kit, I said no. He asked if I planned to use
commercial plans, I said no. I drew what I planned to make, and pretty
quickly he knew to just turn me loose and let me run with it. After high
school I started college, and along side my general ed, and major classes
I took machine technology, and welding. I just figured that to be as well
rounded as I could be I should continue academics AND maker skills
training.<br><br>
</dd><dd>Fast forward a few years, and I had started a career in high tech,
but I was continuing to take welding classes at the local community
college. I was taking them at the two colleges that still had programs,
since several others had been shut down permanently. While waiting for
class one night, about 50 people showed up at our school hoping to get
in. The only other welding program nearby had been shut down,
permanently. BTW - these departments were being shut down to make room
for information technology classes. Not computer science, or programming
mind you. Microsoft, and Cisco, and the like were funneling in millions
of dollars to set up programs to train MCSEs and CCNAs and such. All
perfectly fine skills, but to sacrifice these other departments was
completely short-sighted...horribly short sighted. All the while high
school shop programs were being shuttered, along with art, music, and
most everything else deemed not academically or fiscally
important.<br><br>
</dd><dd>I won't go on and on about this here, at least not like I am usually
known to when the subject comes up. I know that we on this email list are
in this little (but ever growing) bubble of the new makerdom. Clearly the
success of Make magazine, and all the stuff associated - kits, books,
blogs, companies, websites, conferences, etc - points to the
re-prioritizing of what came to be pejoratively called "the
trades" or "manual skills", so maybe my next question is
moot. <br><br>
</dd><dd>I'm going to ask it anyway.<br><br>
</dd><dd>What can I do? Or more to the point what ELSE can I do? What else can
we all do? Perhaps we are doing all we can. Maybe my head is out of whack
with the expectation that until machine and wood shops are back in our
high schools and colleges that we are going to stay screwed. Maybe we are
now creating millions of people who will be able to use a hammer, and
screwdriver, and solve mechanical problems, and all that has happened is
we lost one generation...that it isn't a permanently downward slope.
Maybe my teaching, writing, blogging, making, and mentoring is all I can
do, and maybe it's having an impact. I need to say that I don't have
words for the level of passion this mess raises in me, so I feel like
there's no way I can do enough to right these wrongs. Or what I consider
to be wrongs...egregious ones.<br><br>
</dd><dd>Thanks for listening, and feel free to pass this along and post it
places. I need to know.<font color="#888888"><br>
</font></dd><dd><font color="#888888">CTP</font><br><br>
<br><br>
</dd><dd>At 12:04 PM 7/25/2012, alicia wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" class="cite" cite="x-msg://551/">
<dd>In the spirit of making Sketching longer than the weekend, here are
some interesting videos and researches I found. <br><br>
</dd><dd>Why your teenager can't use a hammer - great article from Canada but
I think it's true in America too:
<a href="http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/08/25/why-your-teenager-cant-use-a-hammer/">
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/08/25/why-your-teenager-cant-use-a-hammer/</a>
<br><br>
</dd><dd>Cheers,<br>
</dd><dd>Alicia</dd></blockquote><br><br>
<br>
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