Family Maker Day at WNYC’s Greene Space

A family that makes together has more fun together.

On Saturday, April 25, Team Blinky hosted its first Family Maker Day in the Greene Space with Note to Self, formerly New Tech City.

The event was a huge success!

We had over 70 kids and adults in attendance, working together to make simple circuits out of play-doh and copper tape. Blinky nametags dazzled us from the stage.

Not only did everyone make something special, but they did it by combining familiar (paper, markers, feathers, etc) with unfamiliar tools (LEDs, and batteries). By the end, every family was coming up to ask for extra copper tape to take home and make something new. A grand marker of success.

My biggest goal for the workshop was to prototype a learning experience focused on intergenerational learning. Much of this was inspired by Ricarose Roque’s work on Family Creative Learning at MIT where kids and parents make and become inventors together. Building on the concept of creative learning for computing, she expands this idea to leverage family space as a mechanism to promote 21st century skill development and self-efficacy. Check it out – she’s doing some *really* cool stuff.

Coming soon:
A post on the process of designing the workshop and more on how ideas of intergenerational learning impacted the design.