3. Pedagogical theories and socio-emotional learning

This week I worked with the laser cutter. This extended into my class, where students were working with the laser cutter (if they desired, and also lots of other materials) in order to

Questions

1. Think on one or two educational activities in which you could integrate laser cutting at some stage of the activity. Explain briefly the activity. Do not forget to clear indicate the learning outcomes.

I am actually currently using the laser cutter as part of an activity. The students are creating creatures, using whatever they want + the circuit playground, which they know how to connect servos to to move, light up LEDs, make sounds, and react to events. In previous years, they have used the laser cutter, so a few students were very excited to use the laser cutter to create a lasercut creature that could hold the Circuit Playgorund inside it or on top of it.

Using the laser cutter made them more excited about the creatures generally, so they were more excited about the programs they were building for the creatures as well. Design can engage the students in the work they are building with learning goals unrelated to the laser cutter.

It also means that they have a chance to integrate things they’ve learned throughout the years.

1. Reflect on your own practice. When you prepare a lesson activity what are the things that you take into consideration? What are the critical aspects? What additional aspects do you need to take into consideration if you utilize digital fabrication processes?

Things I take into consideration when building a lesson activity * What are the different interests students can bring to the project? (Basically, are there wide walls) * What are the different levels of engagement they can have with the project? (Basically, are there low floors and high ceileings) * What information about how much the students know will I be able to get out of this assignment? What am I trying to check that they know? * Is this a thing I expect them to be able to do with what they know? Do I expect them to extend, or am I trying to zero in on a specific concept? * How open-ended should this project be? Am I trying to get at something very specific, or allow them to be creative with what they know?

Digital fabrication doesn’t change this very much, honestly. It is usually a step beyond the actual learning goals of the assignment – the creature assignment was to check that they understood how to use the things we’d learned about the Circuit Playground and not what they know about the laser cutter, or anything involving cardboard or any of the materials they are using to make the creature in the first place. However, if it allows them to bring more engagement to the project, it is often worth it.

1. Reflect on your past educational activities. How have you considered Socio-Emotional learning (or soft-skills) when preparing the activities? How do you integrate these soft-skills in your education? Could you provide some concrete examples? How have changed your perspective on socio-emotional learning / soft-skill / horizontal competences after this lecture.

Before this lecture, I was already bought in to the importance of soft skills. All classes require students to learn how to persevere through hard problems, and many require them to understand how to work well with others. This lecture was helpful in giving SEL a specific definition.

I do know that SEL is worth explicitly teaching. I have a hard time doing so, however, because I think most SEL concepts are hard to give specific instructions to? Like, please make sure everyone gets a chance to do something. Please listen to each other. When you feel frustrated breathe, take a walk to step away, or something of the sort. Different things work for different people. Being specific helps give ideas, but mostly I think you teach SEL by being explicit that it is a sort of skill, and then letting the students practice it. It’s a lot like making in general that way.

Notes on using the laser cutter

Important safety note – do not cut things like styrofoam with the laser cutter.

Makercase

• Gives you width / height / depth - change things to see which
• Fingersize decides how wide it will be
• Download svg

Adobe Illustrator

• Presets
  • RGB color mode
  • Inches
  • Size should be slightly larger than the object you’re making
• Stencil an image to copy paste
• Layers, add a layer
  • One for the image you’re cutting
  • One for the image you’re drawing
  • Lock it
• 2 pen tools
  • Double-click is straight and double-click to curve to place all the anchor points
  • Image trace automatically does this
    • Window - image trace window (2 above layers)
      • Can check preview to see it
      • Advanced
        • Ignore color - Otherwise will trace the white and black
      • Threshold between black and white where it makes the trace
      • Expand
• To get rid of things
  • White selection tool
    • Find what you don’t want, delete delete
• Copy/paste to different layers if you want different
• To cut it needs to be RGB red and 0.001 weight. To do that with the black outline
  • Pathfinder unite shape — click and drag through shapes to combine them
  • Click on the stroke, make it red, no fill
• Then, you can have another layer that does engraving
• If you want it in an ellipse
  • Put it on the ellipse tool, click on the canvas once and will give you a size reference
    • Or if you want to cut it out, hairline outline
• Placing in the top left corner gives you the most option

Laser Cutter use

• There’s a manual!
• Turn the key to start it up
• Important that the material is as flat as possible
  • Can use blue tape to tape to the edges
• Direction keys to move the laser pointer
  • You can see the laser on the material
• AF buttons stand for autofocus
  • Press both and let go — it will look for the surface of the material and stop a specific distance
• Move the laser cutter as close to the top left corner of where you’re starting as possible

Printing

• Don’t look directly at the laser
• File print on Adobe Illustrator (make sure to press “Print” not “Done”)
  • Print Preset goes to Laser cutter — it takes about 5 seconds for it to load the setting
  • Pressing print sends to Job Control
• In job control make sure you’re connected to the printer
  • If the ready filter button is red you’re not connected
  • There’s a USB looking button you click to connect
  • All of the files get sent to the queue — you can delete what you know someone else had
  • Drag your file on to the target which is in the top left corner
• Choose material — top left
  • Paper
  • Cardboard
  • Wood
  • Thin plywood
  • Cutting, speed, width
• Check that the art piece is in the crosshairs
• Click play at the bottom
• The machine will turn off in about a minute, wait and then pull it out.
  • Try to make sure it cut the whole way though — if it didn’t, you can just cut agai

The project

We need a place to keep track of lots of different kinds of small papers. Our FLA teacher teaches in the same class we do, so he showed us how to make a box to keep track of the papers. We had to turn down the velocity slightly to get a clean cut because we need to clean the lens, but that’s the only real issue we ran into.

Gallery