If Bruce Lee Was a Maker

Tasker Smith is a technical instructor at MIT's Pappalardo Lab for Mechanical Engineering. As you'll hear through this interview, his background has a striking resemblance to television's Adam Savage of MythBusters. That is, he's held roles in all sorts of environments: performance, toys, consumer products, and lucky for the young mechanical engineers at MIT he wound up eventually making his way to higher education, cultivating young talent to be as skilled technically and emotionally to enter a world of professional engineering as they can possibly be.We talk about approaches from the lab that I think will be of interest to everyone, but especially those educators who are serious about maker education, and the role that pre-engineering programs play in schools and afterschool all over the country. If you're looking for tips and best practices, just curious what goes on in the Mech E lab at MIT, or excited to learn more about how Tasker went from studying theatre arts to modelling toys, stick around.A special treat from this episode, Tasker offers a set of files for the poster panels that come up toward the end of the interview for listeners to grab and repurpose in their own shops and maker spaces. Do check out the shownotes at NoSuchThingPodcast.org to find that gift from him.Links from this episode:Pappalardo Lab on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pappalardolab?lang=enJapanese drawers links: http://digg.com/video/japanese-joinery-drawersTasker's Make Mag Leather Article: https://makezine.com/2018/07/09/use-3d-printing-shape-leather/Z Corporation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_CorporationContinuum Innovation, Boston: https://www.continuuminnovation.com/en/Caine's Arcade: https://youtu.be/faIFNkdq96UStatasys: https://www.stratasys.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

The show is about learning with technology, the realities and exciting potential.Enjoying the show? Please take a moment to rate us, and leave a review wherever you've accessed the podcast. Find our listener survey at facebook.com/nosuchthingpodcast drop a like on the page while you're there.The music in this podcast was produced by Leroy Tindy, a guest in episode zero. You can find him on SoundCloud at AirTindi Beats.The podcast is produced by Marc Lesser. Marc is a specialist in the fields of digital learning and youth development with broad experience designing programming and learning environments in local and national contexts. Marc recently served as Youth Studies Practitioner Fellow at City University of New York, and leads a team of researchers and technologists for NAF (National Academy Foundation).Marc is the co-founder of Emoti-Con NYC, New York's biggest youth digital media and technology festival, and in 2012 was named a National School Boards Association “20-to-Watch” among national leaders in education and technology. Connect with Marc on BlueSky @malesser, or LinkedIn.What's with the ice cream truck in the logo? In the 80's, Richard E. Clark at University of Southern California set off a pretty epic debate based on his statement that "media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in nutrition." * So, the ice cream truck, it's a nod to Richard Clark, who frequently rings in my ear when I'm tempted to take things at face value. "Is it the method, or the medium?" I wonder.The title, No Such Thing, has a few meanings. Mostly, it emphasizes the importance of hard questions as we develop and document the narrative of "education" in the US. For Richard E. Clark, the question is whether there's such a thing as learning from new technologies. For others, it might be whether there's a panacea for the challenges we face in this field. Whatever your question, I hope that it reminds you to keep asking--yourself, your learners, others--what's working and how so.* Clark, R. E. (1983) Reconsidering Research on Learning From Media. Review of Educational Research 53(4) 445-459. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.