Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Maker education project: "Let's make seats in school."

David Pescovitz at 11:20 am Wed, Oct 10, 2012

— FEATURED —

Book Review

The Man Who Laughs: grotesque Victor Hugo potboiler was the basis for The Joker

Feature

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Book Review

The Twelve-Fingered Boy - mesmerizing YA horror novel

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
Seatttt

NewImage

Are you a teacher seeking a creative, fun, and compelling design/engineering/maker project? Try the WikiSeat Catalyst, a welded steel central structural support for a three-legged-stool! The stool seat and legs can be made out of almost anything you can imagine. (See above.) In 2011, I posted about WikiSeat Catalyst creator Nicolas Weidinger, my Institute for the Future colleague who created WikiSeat as a college project to develop a "platform for open source furniture design." Tenth grade teacher Sean Wheeler liked the WikiSeat idea so much that he turned it into a class project. Now, Nic and collaborator Alaric Moore want to offer a WikiSeat Catalyst to every teacher (and student) who would like to experiment with one. For free. In a couple weeks, they'll launch a Kickstarter to fund the project, but first, they needs to know how many WikiSeat Catalysts they need so they can calculate their Kickstarter funding goal! Want one? Email info (at) wikiseat (dot) org. Nic writes:

If you teach a class — any class — and you want to build WikiSeat into your curriculum, then let us know by (EDIT) Thursday, October 18th, 2012, by noon o’clock-ish…

We hope to get as many of these out to as many folks as possible for one very important reason; making things is awesome, and everyone deserves to have a fulfilling maker experience. To us, no other joy can surpass that of having successfully designed and created an object. Personally, I equate it to teaching a kid to ride a bike, or teaching a friend how to google for an answer to a question for the first time.

We are more than willing to work with you on curriculum ideas, or you can take the project and run with it. If this sounds like a thing you are interested in being a part of, don’t be shy. If you’re an educator, or a student, we aren’t asking for anything, no money, nothing like that. We just want your involvement. You will receive your Catalysts by spring break 2013.

"Let’s make seats in school."

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE:  chairs • makers

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

  • Brainspore

    “Ha, ha, I just made a stool on the teacher’s desk!“