Colorado Teacher Paul Clinton is getting his students involved in manufacturing, Via Make!
Paul Clinton started out 19 years ago as a shop teacher. Now he’s an “engineering technology” educator, a title bestowed on him by his Colorado school district that made a commitment to STEM education 15 years ago. Using his high school’s well-equipped fab lab to give his pupils hands-on learning experiences is his chief goal. But it’s not his only one.
He wants to make sure they understand that all those store shelves they see aren’t stocked with items that appeared out of thin air. So he’s having his students carve a clever mold on a CNC machine to make pewter parts and learn how manufacturing works. Here he shares step-by-step instructions for making a student-designed paperweight.
“Students in general have a big disconnect with exactly how products are made,” he says. “A lot of products involve molds.”
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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