I started my first site visit walking into buildings along an alley in a part of town I'd never been to before, asking for a business nobody seemed to have heard of, until I saw my student, Thomas Boudreau, hard at work in the doorway of a building that looked like a miniature airplane hangar. This first visit set the tone for my subsequent visits: confusion, getting lost, but then discovering businesses I'd never even thought of existing, where people are making exciting things and students are getting right in the middle of it.
Thomas, it turned out, was using lithium grease to clean and re-lubricate the ball bearings in linear beds (or possibly linear guides, but my notebook says "beds") taken from old CNCs (that's "Computer Numerical Control machines", in, like me, you have never heard of these before), so the company he is interning for, CNC Parts Department. Thomas introduced me to his mentor, Lynn Kramer, owner of the company, and the two of them gave me a tour of the facility. Everything was big, made of metal, and, to this particular humanities teacher, a bit dangerous-looking. When I reached up towards one of them, Lynn immediately told me "not to touch anything. It was full of stuff and immaculately tidy, the way good workshops tend to be, and they showed me the machine they were in the process of fixing and repainting, which Thomas would be working on for his entire internship (as well as cleaning many, many linear beds). When she showed me the machine, I initially thought she was talking about a freestanding control console - I didn't realize she meant the metal behemoth sitting in the middle of the workshop.
For his project, Thomas will be creating a guide to cleaning and refurbishing linear beds for future interns, as well as (if it turns out to be possible) taking enough photos to produce a time-lapse video of the refurbishing of the big CNC in the middle of the workshop. You can read more about what he's doing on his blog here.
Then, I headed down the street to see Jason Reichel at the Maker Place. I'd been planning to stop by the following morning, but when I drove by the Maker Place on my way to Thomas's internship, I figured I'd stop by early. Despite my unexpected arrival, Jason didn't miss a beat, signing me in and taking me through the many work rooms of the maker space, including a design space, woodworking, two more CNCs (it was a big day for CNCs), a laser-cutting room, a textile room, a quilting machine, and lots more. Out back, I met his mentor - I was slightly perturbed to find him dunking a wine bottle in a bucket of water, but this turned out to be one of many onto which they had just stamped a metal seal and metal lettering. I'd never given thought to how they press metallic lettering onto bottles before. Now, I still don't know how to do it, but I know I could get it done at the Maker Place.
I'd interrupted Jason in the middle of installing ceiling fans - on a ceiling at least twenty feet up, and once he had the mechanics in he'd be installing the wiring. In addition to his multitude of other jobs, his project will be to design and carry out a project of his own, film the process, and post a how-to video on instructables.com, sharing his knowledge and providing further publicity for Maker Place. You can find out more about Jason's internship on his blog here.
That was day one - though I should mention that I'd already spent the morning at KIPP Adelante middle school in Downtown San Diego, with the students who will be interning with my former employers, the Innovation Unit, in England. They'd already had a "design thinking" workshop on Friday, in which they'd observed critique in Bobby Shaddox's class, and designed, prototyped, redesigned, and pitched new critique structures. They came up with three exciting structures none of the teachers in the room had ever seen before, in only six hours! Today, they were checking out their first non-HTH school in preparation for their trip (in England, they'll be working with principles, teachers, and students at schools that are interested in introducing more project-based learning). You can read more at Dean's blog, Sydney's blog, and Megan's blog!
Day 2 started with a trip to Ethertronics to visit John Bridgens and his mentor Jeff Shamblin, the Chief Scientist. Ethertronics make antennae, primarily for cell phones - which means they usually consist of silver paint covered in an ultra-thin layer of gold and encased in plastic. The site has all kinds of cool stuff - my favorite is a machine that looks like a spiked CAT scanner with spiked walls on either side (they are foam spikes, which absorb radiation to avoid any radiation reflection - which test the radiation patterns of cell phone antennae. The best thing about this is that they can test the cell phone with a "phantom head" - a plastic head that they fill with liquid that, in Jeff's words, "mimics the consistency of the brain". They use this to see how holding the phone up to your head will affect the radiation pattern. Ethertronics create antennae for Samsung Galaxies, and Jeff let me have a couple of Galaxy components with embedded antennae! John is currently in the process of developing his intern project. You can read more at his blog here.
I finished Day 2 with Jason Cuevas at Instant Customer, an online marketing company whose services range from opt-in mailouts (that is, emails you sign up to get) to workshops and live-streamed videos on marketing techniques. Jason and his mentor, Oliver, took me on a tour that included the company's TV studio, where they will be giving an eight-our webcast launching a new product for authors. Jason will be running the social media "back channel", fielding and passing on queries, and removing inappropriate comments. You can read Jason's blog here - and Oliver suggested he could help Jason use the studio to make a video blog for one of his entries! Jason's project is to create a new, updated set of marketing templates for the company.
On an unrelated note, in all the excitement of the day, I left my notebook on top of my car at some point, and late in the day got a call from someone I'd never met - he'd found my notebook in the street! (This is why I write my email address and phone number on the inside of my notebook). I asked him to leave it in a local music store for me (it was the only establishment I could think of that was near to where he was) and picked it up later. My notebooks are pretty expensive, and I sometimes wonder if they're worth the cost. All I will say is that my notebook now has the tire marks to prove it was run over by a car, and, though the spine's been torn completely, all the pages are intact. Photos below - click on them for explanatory captions:
Thomas, it turned out, was using lithium grease to clean and re-lubricate the ball bearings in linear beds (or possibly linear guides, but my notebook says "beds") taken from old CNCs (that's "Computer Numerical Control machines", in, like me, you have never heard of these before), so the company he is interning for, CNC Parts Department. Thomas introduced me to his mentor, Lynn Kramer, owner of the company, and the two of them gave me a tour of the facility. Everything was big, made of metal, and, to this particular humanities teacher, a bit dangerous-looking. When I reached up towards one of them, Lynn immediately told me "not to touch anything. It was full of stuff and immaculately tidy, the way good workshops tend to be, and they showed me the machine they were in the process of fixing and repainting, which Thomas would be working on for his entire internship (as well as cleaning many, many linear beds). When she showed me the machine, I initially thought she was talking about a freestanding control console - I didn't realize she meant the metal behemoth sitting in the middle of the workshop.
For his project, Thomas will be creating a guide to cleaning and refurbishing linear beds for future interns, as well as (if it turns out to be possible) taking enough photos to produce a time-lapse video of the refurbishing of the big CNC in the middle of the workshop. You can read more about what he's doing on his blog here.
Then, I headed down the street to see Jason Reichel at the Maker Place. I'd been planning to stop by the following morning, but when I drove by the Maker Place on my way to Thomas's internship, I figured I'd stop by early. Despite my unexpected arrival, Jason didn't miss a beat, signing me in and taking me through the many work rooms of the maker space, including a design space, woodworking, two more CNCs (it was a big day for CNCs), a laser-cutting room, a textile room, a quilting machine, and lots more. Out back, I met his mentor - I was slightly perturbed to find him dunking a wine bottle in a bucket of water, but this turned out to be one of many onto which they had just stamped a metal seal and metal lettering. I'd never given thought to how they press metallic lettering onto bottles before. Now, I still don't know how to do it, but I know I could get it done at the Maker Place.
I'd interrupted Jason in the middle of installing ceiling fans - on a ceiling at least twenty feet up, and once he had the mechanics in he'd be installing the wiring. In addition to his multitude of other jobs, his project will be to design and carry out a project of his own, film the process, and post a how-to video on instructables.com, sharing his knowledge and providing further publicity for Maker Place. You can find out more about Jason's internship on his blog here.
That was day one - though I should mention that I'd already spent the morning at KIPP Adelante middle school in Downtown San Diego, with the students who will be interning with my former employers, the Innovation Unit, in England. They'd already had a "design thinking" workshop on Friday, in which they'd observed critique in Bobby Shaddox's class, and designed, prototyped, redesigned, and pitched new critique structures. They came up with three exciting structures none of the teachers in the room had ever seen before, in only six hours! Today, they were checking out their first non-HTH school in preparation for their trip (in England, they'll be working with principles, teachers, and students at schools that are interested in introducing more project-based learning). You can read more at Dean's blog, Sydney's blog, and Megan's blog!
Day 2 started with a trip to Ethertronics to visit John Bridgens and his mentor Jeff Shamblin, the Chief Scientist. Ethertronics make antennae, primarily for cell phones - which means they usually consist of silver paint covered in an ultra-thin layer of gold and encased in plastic. The site has all kinds of cool stuff - my favorite is a machine that looks like a spiked CAT scanner with spiked walls on either side (they are foam spikes, which absorb radiation to avoid any radiation reflection - which test the radiation patterns of cell phone antennae. The best thing about this is that they can test the cell phone with a "phantom head" - a plastic head that they fill with liquid that, in Jeff's words, "mimics the consistency of the brain". They use this to see how holding the phone up to your head will affect the radiation pattern. Ethertronics create antennae for Samsung Galaxies, and Jeff let me have a couple of Galaxy components with embedded antennae! John is currently in the process of developing his intern project. You can read more at his blog here.
I finished Day 2 with Jason Cuevas at Instant Customer, an online marketing company whose services range from opt-in mailouts (that is, emails you sign up to get) to workshops and live-streamed videos on marketing techniques. Jason and his mentor, Oliver, took me on a tour that included the company's TV studio, where they will be giving an eight-our webcast launching a new product for authors. Jason will be running the social media "back channel", fielding and passing on queries, and removing inappropriate comments. You can read Jason's blog here - and Oliver suggested he could help Jason use the studio to make a video blog for one of his entries! Jason's project is to create a new, updated set of marketing templates for the company.
On an unrelated note, in all the excitement of the day, I left my notebook on top of my car at some point, and late in the day got a call from someone I'd never met - he'd found my notebook in the street! (This is why I write my email address and phone number on the inside of my notebook). I asked him to leave it in a local music store for me (it was the only establishment I could think of that was near to where he was) and picked it up later. My notebooks are pretty expensive, and I sometimes wonder if they're worth the cost. All I will say is that my notebook now has the tire marks to prove it was run over by a car, and, though the spine's been torn completely, all the pages are intact. Photos below - click on them for explanatory captions:
Tomorrow I'll be at the naval hospital in Balboa Park to visit Aaron Gallagher - I probably won't be able to say much about it due to security restrictions, but I'll report on anything I can!