Embedded - 261: Blowing Their Fragile Little Minds

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

Helen Leigh (@helenleigh) is an author, education writer and maker. She spoke with us about making learning fun (and subversive). Her latest book is The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, out in November 2018. The instrument gloves were the mi.mu (full version) and the mini.mu DIY kit (coming soon to Pimoroni and Adafruit). The mini.mu uses the BBC Micro:bit. Helen worked on earlier books including Mission Explore from the Geography Collective. These are out of print but still obtainable (and may be in your local library). She recommends the book The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. For meeting people in education and technology, Helen is looking forward to the next EMF Camp. As far as tech and education conferences, the BETT trade show is interesting. We mentioned “Phoenix” a few times, that is Phoenix Perry who was on episode 204: Abuse Electricity.

Welcome to Embedded. I am Elysia White. I'm alongside Christopher White, and our guest is Helen Lee, author of the upcoming book, The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics. Hi, Helen. Thanks for joining us today. You're welcome. Pleased to be here. Could you tell us a bit about yourself? Sure, so I'm a maker, a long-time maker, and I really like doing cool things with electronics

and new technologies that maybe have a bit of a creative twist to them. I lecture on electronics and playfulness at Ravensbourne, which is part of the University of Arts, London. And I recently just moved to Berlin for the music technology scene. Cool. Well, we're going to talk more about many of those things, including the music technology scene. But before we get into that, we want to do a lightning round where we ask you short questions and we want short answers. And if we're behaving ourselves, we won't ask why and how and all of that. Okay.

Christopher, do you want to get started? Sure. Favorite fictional robot? Ooh. C3PO, because I like how prim and proper he is. Meerkat, platypus, or hedge proper he is meerkat platypus or hedgehog definitely meerkat definitely uh laser cutter 3d printer or a sewing machine oh well we can strike 3d printer straight away totally overrated um laser cutters or sewing machines you know I'm going to choose a laser cutter because actually most of the sewing I do is by hand so there we are that's my answer when you were young

what was your favorite toy um I had a giant stuffed mouse um with buttons for eyes and I still have it actually it's the only toy I have from when I was a little kid. Um, and it has really terrible, um, sewing on the bottom from where I broke it so many times and then sewed it back up again. So you can see the advancement of my stitching and it's kind of cute called Mousy original. Do you like to complete one project or start a dozen? Well, obviously I like to complete a dozen. Nobody's ever answered that before. I often have quite a lot of projects on the go, but I do get them done. I have fairly limited space, so I do tend to have to get them done pretty rapidly. That's not to say there aren't unfinished projects languishing behind shelves

somewhere but i'm usually pretty good at getting them done okay so that's enough for lightning around um i i wanted to ask you about electronics and playfulness and lecturing on that. Is your background in education, playfulness or engineering? Yes. So I've worked in education probably 12 years now. I started out in educational publishing, working for a big educational publisher here in the UK called Macmillan and that's how I came into education. I was a secretary and then an editor and then ended up doing a lot of publishing for various different companies, publishing companies and that kind of naturally led me to play. So I was kind of involved in the play-led movement in the UK around education, which was about learning through play and specifically learning through outdoors play and hands-on things. I mean, the quote-unquote maker movement in education is actually really a fairly old way of looking at education.

It comes, you know, you can trace it back through Pappert, through all the way back to Dewey, him of the library fame, who really believed in learning through doing. And through that grand history of educators and educational thinkers, and through my own experience and practice in the classroom and with big groups of teachers, I just fell in love with the idea of education through play um and i became involved with a i guess like an educational activist group called the geography collective and we wanted to reclaim exploration and play for geography and for education in general. And together we wrote a series of books that were, let's say, kind of cult favorites.

I don't think anyone was doing the kind of slightly naughty things that we were doing in play-based education for a while. So we got a bit of a name for ourselves. National Geographic picked us up. They really liked what we were doing. And through that, I got the opportunity to work on some incredible play-based education projects across the world. into a little bit later so I started off as education I mean I've always been a nerd let's put it out there straight away I've always been a massive nerd like my dad um my dad's computer science teacher when I was growing up and I'll come back to to my dad's role in my education and and my my nerdery later um but I always had this this um interest in tinkering with technologies

and um and I guess not necessarily traditional education but I guess a lack of fear um of technology um just because I grew up around it I guess um and but I never really got the chance to practice it professionally um until um through my playful education work intel education got in touch with us. We're like, hey, we love your stuff. We love your books. We love your approach. Do any of you do anything with tech?

And as a group, as a collective, we were like, well, no, not really. But Helen's a massive nerd. She can probably help you out. And I was, you know, I taught myself to code on w3 schools um i watched lots of youtube tutorials and i'm very much like um what the what they say is self-taught but what i actually um call community taught um you know i'm taught i was taught to solder by a friend and um looked up um all sorts of different things online and kind of learned through doing really. Anyway, so Intel got me in to do this project on quite high technology,

high concept technology on the Internet of Things. And a lot of that project was based in a makerspace in London called Fabla fabla bank which no longer exists sadly but um and i walked in there and i went oh my god i just i felt like i was home like there was all these people like walking around making things carrying things like hacking at things like just just a bunch of hackers and weirdos and artists in one space. And I think that was maybe five or six years ago. And honestly, since then, I've never looked back. I've made it my quest to work in maker education, in electronics, and just kind of find my home.

And in the course of that first project as well with Intel, they gave me a bunch of different micro computers, micro controllers, and I was just hooked. I mean, I always felt like I needed to learn to code and I did code, but I didn't really love it. And as soon as you're like, hey, you can code to make your electronics better. I was like, oh yes, I can code now. Yeah, I would would not I'm still to this day I don't care about web code um I only care about code if you can use it to do a thing in real life so physical computing is just something I kind of fairly accidentally came to but when I saw it it was

just like this missing piece um in the jigsaw puzzle of my life had uh had just appeared in front of me so it was an exciting moment um so I guess when I tend when I start to learn something I tend to throw myself into it pretty heavily and I always have done um so I just spent a long time actively seeking out projects and roles that would allow me to really level up my skills. You know, so, and part of that is me saying yes to things that I didn't know how to do. So clients would be like, oh, hey, you can do this thing.

Have you ever used this technology? And I'd be like, yeah, of course I have. And then spend the next six weeks before the project starts, just literally just diving in headfirst into this world and immersing myself in as much knowledge as I could possibly cram into my skull before the project starts. I guess like part, it's partially optimistic, but also kind of like fear-based learning. Um, you might call that, um, yeah, it's, um, so yeah, electronics, I came to fairly late in life, but maybe, maybe six years ago now. Um, but, but weirdly, um, I found out only recently that my, my father was an electronics engineer when he was young. So, um young. So I grew up knowing my dad as a computer science teacher.

I mean, he never taught me how to solder. He never taught me how to, you know, like, I don't know what voltage was. But I had a conversation with him at Christmas with a mutual friend saying, saying, hey, so, so John, that's my dad. And you were a, you were a communications officer in the army. And weren't you serving during the Cold War? And my dad was like, Yeah. And he's like, so, and you did electronics. And my dad went, Yeah. And my friend went, So what exactly did you do with this quizzical look on his face? And my dad just starts laughing. And I'm like, what? What did you do, dad? And it turns out he made spy devices during

the Cold War. So he'd get like dead dropped in, like blindfolded, chucked in a van, dead dropped into a place, put things in, put spy devices in places or fix things that were already in place, and then get like shuffled back out. I was like, wow. Okay. So this is something that was really exciting to me that I actually never knew about my dad. So I guess even though he didn't teach it to me, maybe I have electronics engineering and tinkering in my blood. So there's so many questions now I have, but I want to,

to ask too, I think slightly naughty. What does that mean? Oh, my Lord. I know that's way back in the beginning. Yeah, it is quite back in the beginning. So we did do some fairlyest end of encouraging children to ask their teacher if they ask all their teachers if they know what their name is, which we made a few teacher enemies from that or encouraging them to actually get involved in activism in their local area to stage sit-ins. We did quite a lot of protests, for example, like protest geography,

for example, highlighting income inequality and what that actually meant in terms of your life in London. So for example, going to different areas, different boundaries, and then chalking on the pavement kind of death statistics from one ward at one area to the next and kind of showing, okay, well,

these people are richer, but actually because of that, they have better educational outcomes, they have better health outcomes, they have better transport. And actually that's incredibly unfair. So when I say naughty, yeah, protest geography plus some other stuff you know um like we did we did body mapping we did um exploratory psychogeography we did um enormous huge scavenger hunts across festivals in the uk um we did one of my favorite projects we did together actually um which wasn't naughty but it was um it was a really interesting way of looking at a city so you know normally when you cross a when you're going on a walk um you would tend to explore the physical topography of a place right so the highs of a mountain the lows of a valley um so we created a series of walks that actually explored data topography so we'd create

these maps these giant maps um of of london that had like say for example like the high point of the highest point of crime and in and down to the lowest point of crime and then we would go on walks to look at the physical manifestations of that data topography. Stuff like the most oppressed place to the least oppressed place, the greenest place to the least green place, you know, that kind of stuff. And that was a really interesting series of walks that kind of makes you look at data differently and also makes you look at your city differently. Yeah, so that was kind of the slightly naughty.

That wasn't super naughty but you know my life my lawyers have advised me not to talk too much about the stuff i did back in my teenage years the data topography box is fascinating because i often sit with google earth and just kind of go in some direction or have some some hook that okay i want to explore this hamburger restaurant as far north as you can get it's usually something stupid i agree it's something stupid but uh you can do these sorts of things with google earth and to go out and actually physically engage with the world based on data that's that's fascinating i've never even heard of that it was yeah it was really

interesting it was um it was a really worthwhile project um yeah it's a lot different than what i was expecting because i i sometimes talk to elementary school classrooms and it invariably ends with the kleenex box disassembled so we can look at the engineering that goes into it and then like the teacher calls me a week later and says, I can never have Kleenex again and I hate you. Yours sounds like more fun, actually. Yeah, I mean, I knowledge of the inequality around us, or simply through walking and talking to people around you. To me, I mean, I guess I probably am a little bit unusual. I mean, that's putting it mildly, but the kind of the playfulness of my engineering projects and the craft versus electronics,

I mean, I think, I actually think it's a harmful divide. And I think that especially, you know, the more you silo different parts of knowledge, the less fruitful it becomes. So if you're just going in one direction the whole time, you're not actually taking advantage of the full breadth of human knowledge and human experience. And actually, I think that's where quite a lot of bad design comes from. I often get asked to do electronics workshops, but I'm equally skilled in, for example, embroidery, and I never get asked to do that. And I think it's, I think that's harmful. And I think to a certain extent, that's actually really gendered. So a lot of my electronics works is purposely rooted in very feminine crafts. There's an amazing book called The Subversive Stitch, which is about, it's a feminist history

of embroidery and how basically everything was ruined by the Victorians. I mean, you know, most things were ruined by the Victorians, let's be real. You know, they were really good at ruining things. But the Victorians kind of, like, embroidery came from, you know, it was actually like a skill that most men and women did and it wasn't really gendered until until the the victorians when it became kind of imbued with the sense of femininity and kind of like quiet devotion sitting in a corner and it became removed from art and skill and actually became this

expression of femininity and and thus less useful well know what? I think that needlework and soldering teach a lot of the same skills. And I think that if you cross over two different fields of learning, you're going to get a much richer experience. And you're going to reach more kids as well. Because if you've got two circles and then you smush them both together, not only are you going to reach the people who are interested in electronics and the people who are interested in sewing but you're also going to open up the minds of both of those sets of people to each other's way of working in each other's um way of thinking i guess i mean i just did a big workshop

at a festival called electromagnetic field which is basically nerd Glastonbury. Happens every two years in the UK. It's really good. Would recommend. And I did a workshop on sewing. And I think we had like 80 people turn up. And the gender divide was 50-50 pretty much. Especially with the kids. I'd say there was pretty much equal

numbers of boys and girls there um and i think that if you do mashups it's just more satisfying and it's more creative and i think there's more possibilities i mean especially when you're talking about you know educating young people um you know they're not going to be doing pcb design until university so like why not give them a bit of a twist on that you don't you don't need to you don't need to spend a really long time um teaching them the intricacies of circuit design when they can be actually doing something more tangible with it so i think the thing I really like about sewing electronics is how visible it is. So when you're making a circuit, you are literally making a circuit. You're sewing that circuit.

You're stitching that circuit. There's no way you don't understand what path the electricity is going on because you've sewn the path that electricity is going on. It's not just like plugging bits into other bits. It kind of creates more of a knowledge of the fundamentals of electronics, in my experience. And similar to your data walks, it provides a physicality to the knowledge

that is sometimes easier to remember. I agree. And in fact, I actually start, as I said, I lecture on electronics at a university in London. And for my first years, I actually just start out with paper circuitry, which is something that you might think of, you know, as a primary school activity or, you know, something that 10-year-olds might do. But you'd be surprised how many people, even people with, you know, A-level physics who are extremely intelligent, actually don't really understand how a circuit works. And by making it so, and by simplifying something so radically, and by making it so tangible, you know, it kind of provides this level of understanding that I think, you know, plugging things in according to color or according to name just doesn't really give you. So, yeah.

This seems like a good segue for your book, which is coming out in November. Could you give us the elevator pitch for your book? Oh, I don't know if I've got an elevator pitch for my book. You're going to need one soon. um so i've written a book on electronics um but it's it's um it's electronics presented through the lens of craft okay so it's a kid's book it's a beginner's guide um we talk about a lot of the basic concepts of electronics but in a very much practiced based craft based way um i think it's probably the only book on electronics ever not to involve either soldering or code.

So that's a thing. There's four sections in the book. The first one is paper circuitry, which is very much the fundamentals. Hey, what is a circuit? What is power? How do you make hey what is a circuit what does you know what does what is power um how do you make things go around a circuit um and then there's five different um craft activities um that have very simple circuitry usually just um one output or one sensor and

one output um some very simple circuitry just to kind of really drill home you know the the basics okay um and and but you're also making things with this it's not just making a blinking light which many of them are oh gosh no it's boo to that it's also making a greeting card yeah they're all really cute so for example there's um a wiggling origami ladybird that's um or a spy bird that um you can send secret messages when you flap the wings i mean all it is is just opening and closing a circuit right but you're teaching that through something that a child actually wants to do um so before I talk a bit more about the book, I wanted to talk a little bit about how I decided on the project for the book. So I didn't choose any of the projects in the book. I have an advisory board of 200 girls between the age of seven and 14. And they chose every single project that was in this book so i guess in february um earlier this year um

we i sent out a tweet saying hey i'm writing this book um and i'd like to get some opinions of people who i'm writing it for um would anybody be interested and i got um from that tweet i got 200 girls plus a bunch of code clubs um and bunch of school teachers who took it to their kids. And they all signed up. And every section I did, say, for example, there were five chapters in that section, five projects, I would send out maybe 20, 25 ideas. And then the kids themselves would vote on them so that meant that everything I was making putting in the book was something that the child the target audience I guess um was actually interested in um and I I think this is an approach that a lot of people have gone

that's really strange um but for me, A, it gives me the feedback that I need in order to know that something that I'm doing is actually something a child wants. Because, you know, I'm not eight. I'm not my target audience. Some of the things that I thought were really cool and that they definitely chose, they were like, that sounds really boring, which is very sad. But then they also chose some amazing projects, which I thought were filler. And then I made them and I went, oh my goodness, I can see why this would really appeal to a child of that age. So for example, Spybird, which is just an origami bird with like an on-off switch when you flap its wings. But for a kid, you know, they really love

doing code and signals and secret messages to their friends. I mean, you know, I think maybe that's a reaction to every aspect of their life being controlled by their parents. They love having secrets and they love doing secret spy messages to each other. But, you know, that's not something that I would necessarily have really considered before they chose it. So yeah, I mean, I tried really hard to make every project in the book, not just, not a thing to teach, but a thing to do. So there's no, there's no worthiness about it. It's just 20 fun things to do, all of which are like under 10 bucks, all of which take less than three hours. You can do them like as a craft noon kind of

nice family activity. But along the way, you learn lots about electronics. But there, you know, you're like, even if you just do them, you don't need to read all the little fact boxes um i've tried you know i've written a lot of textbooks in my time you know that's the bread and butter of a lot of education um writers but i didn't want it to be a textbook and i didn't want it to be worthy um i just wanted them to make things and then explain it afterwards like hey you know you made this cool thing you made the you made this origami ladybird that buzzes around and jumps around hey do you want to know how that works do you want to know why it's doing that or how that component is working um and i feel like that's a far more relaxed conversational way of teaching electronics i mean particularly because it's not a school book you know it's it's a it's aimed at

you know kids and their parents who might want to um who might want to do some some craft um of an afternoon with like a bit of a tech twist to it but um you know they might not necessarily feel like reading a page on ohm's law you know that's not necessarily something that an eight-year-old kid on a saturday afternoon wants to do and they tried to not make it like a textbook, just a fun project, something that they might see on YouTube, you know? So yeah, that was my approach for that. You also have interviews with artists and makers in the book. I do. Yes. How did that come about?

So with my work in widening engagement in technology, something that just works time and time again, it's not necessarily just the materials and projects as role models. Um, you know, kids love to see people that they look up to, right. They like to think how, what can I do? You know, especially these days when it's not like you go into a job for life when you leave school right so actually having that exposure to people who are making a living as artists and technologists and and um and doing these really cool things and and working in jobs that these kids might not have ever even thought as a possibility you you know, actually just really expand your horizons. So I thought, right from the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to

include some interviews with some people with really cool and unusual jobs. So I approached four people from my extended maker community who matched the different sections. So there's a paper circuitry, soft circuits, wearables and very basic robotics chapter. And then I interviewed some really amazing people. So from, from costume designers from Marvel who make incredible, um, technology gloves and grow crystals on, on, um, on their clothes and kind of like imbue copper tape with these spectacularly

beautiful, um, appearances, you know, and, and, but functional as well. Um,

to, uh, Coco, who's my friend and also she's a performance origami artist who uses a lot of technology and robotics in her work um or my friend phoenix who makes robotic games um these these are these are things that a lot of kids would not have been exposed to the idea that actually yeah you can be a technologist and also be really creative you know it's not either or right i mean that's that's probably the main thrust of of everything i try to do is try to say hey why not both like there's this false dichotomy here between creativity and technology and um i think it's really sad and

i think it's really limiting i went to a gig last night actually yeah slightly tangential and i went to a gig last night on robotics and music that was absolutely beautiful um really incredible um artistry on display there and um the there was a guy at the end who was like i can't believe you're using a computer for these things um you know it just make you know like i think that computers the opposite of creativity and um it was the first it was the first time in my life i've actually booed someone like i couldn't help it i just went dude boo like i just i just it just blew my mind and there's this guy he was in the he was an audience member as well you know it was a female technologist sat up there and he was giving

her a piece of his mind and during the questions you know so that always gets my go i'm like it's not a question is it you're just trying to assert your um authority um yeah but yes i did boo somebody yesterday for um for for saying that computing isn't creative so yeah why not both good because it can be all of this can be and the crafting part of it i mean you start out following the instructions do these steps just like they're done but it gives you the tools to go do something neat well actually throughout the book i've really tried to be non-prescriptive even from the beginning of the soft so the first project you do in soft circuits is a series of um samplers um samplers are a um an age-old um method of you know like a display of needlework right

um but each person's sampler and what they choose to put on it and the format they choose to do it in is unique so during my project i try and be like okay this is the way i've done it but i want you to have a real think about how you'd like to do it. To try and imbue each project with a sense of personality that actually isn't my personality. My projects are full of my personality, but theirs shouldn't be.

You know, there are some projects that are just, you know, a bit more step-by-step, like my, I've got a pair of, in the wearable subject, there's these BFF glovesff gloves basically there's two pairs of gloves but and they've got like little led hearts on the back and they only light up if you're holding friends with holding hands with your bff so it's really adorable but but that one

so that's an example of something that you can't really change that much because the circuit's a little bit complex so um but most of the things i try and encourage the reader to really look at the design and themselves and just remix it you know and just to have that confidence even tiny little steps by tiny little steps even like if you follow my instructions but do it on a I don't know square instead of a circle you know just being just having that confidence to play around and saying hey you know what it's okay you don't have to follow my instructions exactly I'm not the be all end all expert in this I'm just someone who has a lot of fun doing it you know let's have fun together um that's that's pretty much more my um my ethos i guess when it when it comes to these projects in the book on the other hand each project did have a troubleshooting

section for because you aren't teaching them theory which limits debugging but the the troubleshooting was pretty thorough and you had a go beyond try something new that requires this information but you to think a lot more about it of course so i mean i've got a very methodical approach to troubleshooting i always say that that's probably my primary skill in electronics is i'm extremely methodical in the way that i troubleshoot um and yeah i mean you say there's actually not that much that there's not theory in there but there is a lot of theory um just sprinkled throughout but because it's it's kind of disguised um in the rest of the project and it's spoken about in quite a conversational manner by the end of it they all know all about parallel circuits and series circuits whether that's for you know putting components in series or batteries in series um you learn about the basics of robotics

a little bit about um a little bit about cardboard engineering so there's there's plenty of little nuggets of theory in there it's just they're kind of hidden a little bit. And that's on purpose. But yeah, I mean, troubleshooting is super important because, I mean, as you know, most projects don't work first time, do they? I mean, I still have moments where I'm sat there going, am I a complete idiot? Like, why isn't this working? and often it's the most simple thing but what i'm trying to teach is a methodical approach to troubleshooting um the way i do it and i said this is how i teach my students as well is um power first okay always check power first which is you know is your battery working i'd say like you know about 50 of the time is battery i mean i gave a demo on stage with this um

emf with this um glove that i've made for image and heap which i think we'll probably talk about later um and and it didn't work on stage i was like what is going on how is this not working this never doesn't work um and my batteries had run out that's that's all it was like the vast majority of things are your battery isn't working or it's the wrong way around. You know, that's it really. It's usually power. And then you go down through the next one. Is the component working? So check power first, then you check component because you've probably may have blown your LED and that's why it's not working. Then check your wiring, especially when using thread.

There's often lots of little different ways it can short circuit. So it's often the wiring as well. And then last, check your code. And I see this time and time again with my students of all ages, from, you know, like junior school all the way up to postgraduate level. They just sat there poring over their code going, what have I done wrong? what have I done wrong? What have I done wrong? Have I done some syntax wrong? And I'm just there like, dude, it's not

plugged in, you know, is often the most simple thing. You've just described embedded debugging perfectly. I mean, I think the only thing I would add in there is after your power check and your component check, you should make sure that the code you think you're running is running. But other than that, yeah, that is so much what we have to do. Then you should go for a long walk. Or it's a USB issue. It's like power or the code hasn't uploaded. Probably.

Yeah. Almost exclusively. But with thread, it is often that there's a little short circuit somewhere that you haven't found. I've actually got a really good tip for sewing with conductive thread, which is in my are when you tie the knot at the beginning, secure it with a dab of clear nail varnish because when that dries, that hardens in place and it doesn't come undone. A lot of conductive thread loves to come undone. And the other is when you're sewing, like all thread, it's made of different strands, right? And sometimes the thread, conductive thread can really fray and so once i've sewed it um to prevent short circuits from fraying thread i just give it a spritz of hairspray and smooth

it in place and that just keeps it in for absolutely ages um so these are my top two tips for conductive thread use um hairspray and nail varnish. Let's talk about the wearable, the glove. I don't know what the name is, but it's a gesture controlled musical instrument. So yeah, I've been working on a gesture controlled musical instrument with an artist, a musician called Imogen Heap. And she's been working with the Mimu team for a little while now. Now Mimu is still in production but it's a wearable MIDI controller. It's less a musical instrument and more a way of freeing up music production. so if you've been to a lot of electronic music gigs which as a london and netherland resident i really have um you'll see like a lot of the performance aspect

is is lost right so you're sat there you're sat behind your laptop and you're controlling these incredible machines but you know it it's you lose something you're from from from when you're performing um as a more traditional like no rock and roll band right so you're not actually connecting in the same way so imogen um has performed all around the world um um and is a grammy award winning um singer um and she does a lot of work with production and electronic music um and it's an incredibly creative world but in terms of performance it can be quite limited so she thought there's got to be a better way than this right there's got to be a better way that i can right? There's got to be a better way that I can, in my live performances, use the power of these amazing software tools like Ableton, for example,

but still kind of forge this connection with my audience in the same way that I would if I was playing guitar and singing in a more traditional way. So they made what is now called the Mimu. a MIMU is is a wearable pair of gloves that connect to a computer and have any number of different gestural recognition that can be mapped to pretty much any kind of output or input on a computer so for example um you could um with different gestures you could start and end a loop and then re-record over yourself you can add delay or reverb you can start a drum sample um you can drum in real time um with your hands and it will then start to play that back for you

so it's a really incredible versatile instrument really it's like an Ableton instrument that allows you to still be a performer right and this was developed over a number of years. It went on Ariana Grande's tour. She performed with it every date. And it's an incredible piece of kit. Now, this incredible piece of kit with, you know, multiple sensors, loads of inputs and outputs, kind of stadium-level Wi-Fi connectivity, like, you know, that is not cheap um it's like i think the the gloves are like two thousand pounds for a pair um and um you know that's great um but i was really

inspired by a performance that i saw of hers um and thought about a way that I could simplify that technology to bring it into the classroom. So a lot of the time when I'm using technology, I love to use creativity and technology, as we've already spoken about, but also a really great way of getting kids engaged in tech is using real world technology, you know, that's a more advanced level that they could create, but also by, you know, but by making a version of it, they can understand how that works and understand kind of maybe the progression that they would have to take in order to kind of work in that world. So I got in touch with Imogen through a mutual friend in the music technology scene and said, and we met for coffee and I said, Hey, I'm loving your work. Um, I'd really like to create, um, a children's version

of this glove that they would make themselves and then perform with themselves. Um, and I think I could make it for less than $50. And she just looked at me and went, okay, um, we have an event in 10 days. Can you make it for them? And I went, Oh, um, okay. Okay. Okay. So I, um, I had to put my money where my mouth was and I did in, make a working prototype in 10 days' time for this amazing group of people. And tested it with kids. We did a workshop. And had a working piece,

had a working child-made, child-designed gesture gesture based glove 10 days later um it was only ever meant as a maybe I can use this in a classroom I really enjoy it but the response to my extremely cheap um extremely adorable glove was um it was huge everybody loved it, and we were like, well, actually, you know what, we'd be totally stupid not to try and actually make this a project and like a product. Um, and this was probably in March this year, no April, I think this year. And, um, and, um, yeah, it's coming out next month. So I think it's probably been the the fastest um technology development process that i've ever been um involved with it's been a a total whirlwind and absolutely amazing fun um so basically it's it's massively simplified so the the original mimo the wonderful it's got

these flex sensors it's got really smart on onboard technology mine uses block code and has an accelerometer in it i mean it's got other sensors too but it's it's it's extremely simple it's extremely simplified um it's got um it doesn't do it doesn't actually it does control ableton but um that's slightly hacky and i'll come back to to that. So what the kids would get in this kit, they get like a screen-printed felt with different sizes of glove on it, which they cut out. Then they sew together the glove, which is made out of this really nice felt. Then inside the glove, they insert a microcomputer called a microbit. And then they sew on the speaker. And I think we've actually made the world's first commercially available sewable speaker.

I think, anyway, which is pretty cool. So we've made this sewable speaker that goes underneath. So they sew it. They wire it up. They wire the microcomputer to the speaker. Then they code it up they wire the micro computer to the speaker um then they um they code it themselves and the first piece of code they put on it is two lines long um which doesn't seem impressive to maybe you are i but like let me tell you it blows their fragile little minds you know we've done this in a lot of classrooms

and like you put these two things on and suddenly the code they have written or actually just dragged across because it's block-based code. They just drag it across to the computer, it uploads and suddenly they shake their glove and it starts playing a tune and they're like, oh god this is amazing like and and the

best thing you know as someone who's teaching this or someone who's been traveling in workshops is like so it takes about an hour and a half for them to make the make the glove and then like upload their first piece of code right after that and this is normally like a runner's a three-hour workshop it's like an hour and a half whereas a teacher you can literally just sit there and have a cup of tea like i don't even have to explain anything to them they're like they see what it does with these two lines and they're like right i am doing the harry potter theme tune i'm going to write all of this code and it's going to do it that's going to choreograph it to a dance and i'm like off you go you know you don't have to teach them that's it's just the moment that sparks their creativity and i was like bam they're gone you know you don't have

to do anything you just watch them um or there's this one kid who made he didn't want to didn't want to make music um so he made a sound effects glove like so for example if you like punch forward it would go pew pew pew pew pew or whatever um and he just runs up to me after he's done the first thing he's like miss miss miss miss i'm like yeah yeah what's up what's up then he's like so what does this free fall thing mean on the code i'm like oh free fall so it's the accelerometer what so basically the sensors inside the microcomputer will and just will know if it's in free fall and he's like like, just looked at me and went, does that mean it could tell if you fall off a building? And I was like, yeah, yeah, it does. And he was like, awesome.

It just runs back off. I was like, okay, okay. And he comes back and he drops and he's like, so I've made this amazing glove. And I'm like, okay, tell me, tell me what it does. And he's like, if you jump off a building, it plays you the funeral march all the way down i'm like oh my god that's so good also don't do that yeah so um so it's one of these it's one of these pieces of technology that just

seems happily to just really kind of connect with the kids. You don't have to teach it. You just show them the way, and then they're sitting there like, okay, good, right, here we go. We're doing Dua Lipa. We're doing Taylor Swift. You know, there's no need to teach. They just go off and do it, and they're like, okay, cool. What's an interval?

Brilliant. We're going to Google it. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. You know, like they're making notes and kind of learning the best way to code. You just basically don't have to do anything. So it's really nice. Bringing that sense of instant gratification and amazement

back to learning computers or learning coding, that's really cool. Because that used to exist when the first computers came out and they were in classrooms and kids would play with the logo. And, oh, I made the turtle do this. Oh, my God, I love the turtle so much. And now a lot of that stuff is missing, I think. Yeah, I do.

I mean, I actually think, so, for me, I mean, my first taste of code was the turtle, you know, loved that turtle. And for me, I kind of lost that sense of wonder you're right i mean that sense of gratification making something do something in that kind of easy um intuitive way and and for me physical computing is something that still does that and particularly with the micro bit so um if any of your listeners aren't familiar with the micro bit, it's a micro computer which is designed for young kids. It's basically indestructible. I frame one at a wall and it's fine. I put it on a washing machine and it's fine. And it was designed by the BBC, I guess, a couple of years ago now. And I use it a lot with kids because it's really intuitive it's got a lot of onboard sensors it's

got some you know like onboard leds it does stuff I mean it's like a very very like my first micro computer you know like um you know you do micro bit and then you might do arduino and then you might progress on to other things um but I think it's a really nice introduction and I also tend to use it a lot with people who have no intention of learning how to code so you can code a micro bit in text but you can code it in MicroPython and JavaScript but you can also just use the block-based like a web interface done by Microsoft microsoft called make code um who have

an amazing team behind them um and it's a super intuitive very simple and in some ways you know a little bit limited um although less and less um so as they as they advance the technology um it's just a really easy way of doing it and i've used it with a few different artists who have no intention of learning really how to code. They just want to use technology to take their projects to the next level. And I think something like the micro bit really enables that.

You don't have to be an expert in order to do something cool with it. And that's something that I really like. You can be creative within half an hour with this little micro computer and you know they're doing something right and and also the the playground sorry this the circuit playground express which is from adafruit is another one that does that same it's got that same kind of ethos like it's got lots of on blow on board like blinky things

cool sensors you can use the same coding platform, which is the MakeCode by Microsoft, to do lots of things with it. And I kind of see this movement towards the simplification or like of entry-level electronics. And like, you know, I've heard some people grumble about it,

but to me, I love it. You know what? Why shouldn't you just use a simpler version of code and some onboard stuff? I mean, not everybody has to be a hobbyist. You don't have to be Michelangelo to enjoy painting your walls. That's a terrible example. Nobody enjoys painting walls. Ceilings.

Yeah, exactly. I've just done a lot of DIY today and my brain's just thinking about paint a lot. But my point is really that actually these kind of simplifications of technology, okay, maybe they hold your hand quite a lot, but you know, that's okay. Not everybody is going to become a coder,

but everybody should be familiar with technology um and i just think more than anything that these um that these these initiatives are really good for the democratization of technology so nobody nobody starts with advanced level i mean you can't do that and that just discourages people too which is completely the opposite of what you want um i totally agree makes Makes perfect sense. Where can people get the kit? Oh, the kit. Oh, yeah.

Good point. I'm so bad at sales. I always forget to say where people can buy my stuff. Okay. So the book is available on Amazon. If you just search for Helen Lee, L-E-I-G-H. I should be up there. And the kit, the glove, will be available through Pimaroni, who are a UK electronics company,

and by extension through Adafruit and various other online retailers as well. So the book will be out in November, the end of November. And the kit from P. Moroney will be out, I think, about midway through October now. So both available for Christmas. Exactly. I have a link to the book because it's pre-orderable and we'll get a link to the glove as soon as we can. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I have a couple of listener questions. Bailey was very excited we were going to talk to you. So I want to make sure we have a little time for her. Making for yourself is one thing.

And your book really goes over you know with your parents or just by yourself but getting an entire room together to make what things do you take into considerations for workshops so that everyone has a good time that's a really good question actually um and i think that's something that i i came to with a lot of experience when i'm designing a good workshop um i simplify simplify simplify um and i also provide diagrams um something that i've learned um even through you know something that that I've learned as a writer is that nobody ever writes the word, sorry, nobody ever reads the words that I write. They just look at the pictures. So make pictures.

Yeah, exactly. So I generally do, you know, like a couple of step-by-step images. And i'll also um encourage people to help each other um so i guess don't be um when you're running a workshop like i'll generally deputize a few people who seem to be getting it um but don't over complicate it um i'd say um particularly for young people never ever do more than one input and one output in fact i say that to my university students as well. I'm like, just do a good thing with one input and one output and you're going to be fine. As soon as you start putting multiple things on there, unless you're dealing with experienced people, you're just going to have a bad time and people are going to feel bad. And also I'd say a good tip for a successful workshop is allowing time for free play and allowing time for embellishment. So, you know, it's kind of sad when you come out of someone, you feel rushed and you don't feel like you've had the time that you could spend on it.

And you don't, you know, and then you get home and you haven't really done anything with it. So it goes on a shelf and it's kind of unfinished whereas if you give them a little bit of extra time at the end of the workshop to i don't know like sew on some embellishment or spend some time just sat there creating stuff with it but with you stood there to kind of troubleshoot or give inspiration i think that's really critical to kind of build in that time for their for them to start on a different you know to start on being a little bit creative with it, but kind of like in a guided, kind of safe situation. But apart from that, yeah, just keep it simple, allow time to play, don't have too many components. That's something that can really trip people up, especially if there are lots of different ones. Just, you know, limit the choice

and do something a bit imaginative with it. I mean, I think the most successful workshops I've run haven't had technology as the point of it. They've just used technology. And I think that's something that a lot of people forget is that technology is just a tool, right? It's just one of many, many tools that humans have created to make their lives easier, better, more fun.

You know, don't make the learning the focus. Make the project the focus, and you're just going to have a better time. Yeah, I understand. Applications are more fun than code, really. Absolutely, and then you learn to code along the way because you're actually like, oh cool, I can do this by

doing this. You know, a learn to solder workshop is less interesting than solder a synth. Yeah, the solder, the badge soldering, I think, has come into play with conferences, which is so much better than learn to solder.

Yeah. In fact, that exact example was from a workshop that I attended a festival recently with one of my favorite maker educators of all time, this guy called Mitch Altman. And he's developed an amazing synth and we sat there and soldered and, you know, some people on the table

had soldered before and we helped each other. We helped the ones that hadn't soldered and it was just a really nice experience. And also I find out that Mitch lives like two streets from me in Berlin. So we're neighbors. Yeah, we're actually going to go to a gig together in a minute. Yeah, I know.

We're almost out of time. Bailey also asked what kinds of conferences you would recommend for somebody who really wants to cross over tech and teaching? Ooh, that's a good question. So I've spoken quite a few times today about something which isn't a conference, but I would really recommend, is the EMF, electromagnetic field, and that's the UK. The obvious one to recommend would be BET, which is the, I think, definitely Europe's possibly the world's biggest education and technology specific trade show. But honestly, it's kind of boring now um it used to be a lot of peer-to-peer teacher tips sharing um and um and a lot of interesting talks but now you walk around and it feels a bit like

here buy a whiteboard you know um and and I think I think i'm actually going to run a fringe event to it this year which which i'm toying with with calling it better but i don't know if that'd be a bit too cheeky um around create around creative technology education um but i think honestly this is going to sound so trite but but I really think that Twitter is a really amazing place for teaching and creativity. I think the crossover between education Twitter, maker Twitter, and kind of the creative education people is immense on Twitter. And like, if you find your right little tribe of people, you can, you know, you can, you can have so much, um, so much experience at your, at your fingertips, um, so much help and so much inspiration, you know, like

Twitter's actually, um, really helped me. Um, and I never feel ashamed to say, I don't know something or go, Oh, I don't get what's going on with my code. Can someone help me out? Or I need some inspiration who's doing some cool stuff in this particular section at the moment. And people are really generous with their time. In terms of conferences, I mean, I kind of hate conferences, to be honest.

So I would recommend you don't go to any conferences. Okay, don't waste go to any conferences. Okay. Don't waste your time on conferences. I would recommend you get yourself on Twitter and start chatting to people. And I would also recommend you go to lots of cool tech festivals. And you know what? Run a talk. Do teach meets.

Teach meets are amazing. They're like just peer-to-peer teachers learning from teachers and i think like a lot of ed tech conferences are just there to sell you something and like i'm so done with that like you know um yeah i've not been excited by an education technology conference in a really long time but i was really excited excited by EMF. So, and I am really excited about TeachMeets and Twitter conversations. So it's not exactly the answer you were looking for, but I hope it was useful.

I think it was. And knowing Bailey a little bit, I think TeachMeets is already in. Yes, yes, that's already happening. So cool. I know we're almost out of time uh helen do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with um so i think really um my final thoughts for this podcast would be don't be afraid to mash up technology and creativity um and um bring play bring play into your technology I think that when you push together two

seemingly very different streams of work whether that's I don't know physics and cooking or whether that's electronics and embroidery. I think that you can have a much richer experience if you pick two things that you're interested in and say, hey, what happens if we push those together? We smush them all up into a ball. Does anything interesting come out? I think that's really what I'd like to leave your listeners with. Just this idea that, you know, things that are creative and things that are technological, they can create something beautiful if you push them together. I think that's great.

Yeah? Yes. Our guest has been Helen Lee, author, education writer, and maker with a focus on creative use of new technologies. Her book, The Crafty Kid's Guide to DIY Electronics, will be out in late November. You can pre-order it already and definitely get it for Christmas. Mini Mew Gloves will be on Peroni, Pironi, Pimarone. Pimarone, yes. Where there will be a link that has it spelled correctly and those will be on order soon as well.

Thank you so much for being with us, Helen. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you to Patreon supporters for Helen's mic, and thank you for listening. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting, and you can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with. How about one from Margaret Mead?

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.