Welcome to part 2 of our first “Tinkering Together” newsletter. In part 1 we shared our experiences facilitating online “Making Faces” workshops. We highlighted equitable facilitation moves and learned some pro virtual facilitation tips from educators, designers, and researchers. This month we’re focusing on how incorporating coding into this experience can help broaden people’s creative and personal expressions.
Join us online and share what you’re tinkering with on Twitter using the hashtag #TinkeringTogether or leave a comment on this newsletter.
Animating faces made with everyday objects
This fall, our team had a couple of opportunities to facilitate a Making Faces workshop. One was a pre-conference workshop for museum educators at the Association of Science and Technology Center’s 2021 virtual conference, and the other was a workshop that we led for Scratch Education Collaborative, a group of educators from 41 different organizations committed to supporting learners from historically marginalized communities in their development of confidence in creative computing.
Making Faces is a tinkering activity the Tinkering Studio developed while tinkering-in-place during the last year. The workshop is typically divided into two parts: first, we ask participants to create a self-portrait using everyday materials and objects of significance, and then, for the second part, we ask them to bring their creations to life using stop-motion app or Scratch coding.
Bring yourself into coding
We wondered: In what ways can making activities be extended through computation? How can we engage meaningfully with making and coding in online workshops?
Participants brought meaningful objects to the workshop to create their faces in the first part of the Making Faces activity, so various stories were already embedded in the faces. For the second part, we encouraged participants to add more liveliness by incorporating Scratch coding and making their face move in some way.
We've categorized a few examples, and here's what participants came up with:
1) Use Scratch “effect” blocks to create facial expressions
“This is me, feeling like I caught a cold. I’m making and drinking lots of honey & lemon tea… Achoo!” - Ryoko Matsumoto, Tinkering Studio
2) Add Scratch sprites to tell stories
“These are all gym gears, if you hit the juke box it creates a beat and tells you to drink water, and if you click on the cup, it makes a drinking sound and empties the cup.” - @WBrownUPC on Scratch
3) Take multiple photos and create animation using "next costume"
“I love bright colors. The hair reminds me of my adventures crocheting with my daughter. The square tiles, ping pong, and tangram triangle have helped our students grasp different math concepts. I love to watercolor with my children thus the paintbrush. The butterfly reminds me how much I love play-doh. ” - @b2s_staff on Scratch
4) Remove something from your face and replace it with sprites
”I wanted my plants to be more interactive! I took away the pupils that I had in the physical world and added leaf sprites that I could animate with Scratch. Whenever I move the mouse pointer, the leaves are just watching me! “ - Steph Muscat, Tinkering Studio
As we finished our projects (some of which were still in progress), we uploaded them to a shared Scratch Studio (studio 1, studio 2). In these online workshops, sharing does not necessarily imply presenting or speaking in front of everyone; sharing can also include posting projects on a Padlet or in a Scratch Studio. These options can be more inclusive and equitable for participants because they open up more ways to participate and share. These platforms enabled participants to share their ongoing ideas and projects throughout the workshop and even after it ended.
We encouraged participants to go through multiple iterations in both the analog and digital parts of the workshop. One participant commented that not gluing down the objects allowed for rapid prototyping with numerous possibilities for his self-portrait. Scratch also allowed participants to easily undo and edit their projects, which is very friendly to tinkering.
Participants’ Comments
Tinkering Together is a monthly newsletter crafted by a community of educators and researchers sharing explorations in designing and facilitating computational tinkering experiences that strive towards equity and joy. This newsletter was edited by: Ryoko Matsumoto (Tinkering Studio, Exploratorium), Deanna Gelosi (Tinkering Studio, Exploratorium), and Celeste Moreno (Creative Communities Group, CU Boulder).