Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The WikiSeat Project”.
This is uh the uh booth for the wikiseat project um, which is which is not only a really awesome project, but a really cool story. So um i’m with nick and sean from wikiseat and we’re going to uh. Why don’t we? Why don’t we show them? What what it’s all about first so so explain what that is cool. So when i was studying industrial design in college, i decided that i wanted to make a seat and the first seat that i made uh. It kind of just fell apart, so i realized it needed a structural support and i built something very similar to this and i used all the same materials for the first seat, the one that failed and used this and it kind of it worked.
You know you could sit in it, it was fairly comfortable and this was for a 10 week project, and that was two weeks into the class. So i i was like what do i do now, and so i built a whole bunch of these and started giving them out to other people, and i was curious. You know if i wanted to build a seat. Do other people want to build seats and then uh, and it turns out that a lot of people did like like a lot right yeah. So a lot of people actually really like building seats, which is crazy because, like i mean it’s cool, we’re tool makers. So we should like that kind of stuff, but and that’s where sean comes in, but let’s, let’s just take a look at some of the wiki seats first, so these are all different wiki seats, each one of them.
You know it’s got a different form made out of different materials, but they all have the same fundamental structure at the base. They’Re all three legs, because they’re all based on the same bracket – that’s right here! So once you found out that a lot of people wanted to make these um, you know, let’s why don’t we have a seat? I want to try it out yeah, so all right, all right, guys, um. Once once we found out that a lot of people wanted to make these uh, you wanted to share it right, yeah yeah. So how did you start doing that so uh? Originally, i built a wiki because you know wiki seats, so every wiki seat needs a wiki um and i put that online and then uh it got picked up by boeingboing and which was totally yeah. I don’t know how it happened. Thanks pesco um, so pesco put it on boing boing and then sean wheeler saw it and he sent me an email and he said well sean’s right there right.
So i saw it and uh. I wanted to build a chair and i quickly realized. I don’t know how to build chairs, and so i quit before i even started, and what i realized was a lot of kids do that they quit before they start they. They don’t know how.
So they don’t do anything and i felt as a teacher i should be a person who can learn how to do something that i don’t know how to do so. You’Re a teacher. What do you teach yeah? I teach uh 10th grade english in cleveland in the cleveland area. Okay, so what does building a wiki seat have to do with english? I think i think the thing it mainly has to do with i was trying to get kids in the mindset of being able to see something they wanted to learn how to do and then learn how to learn, how to do it. Uh – and so i really wanted kids to to embrace this idea of they can do things – they don’t know how to do like kids say i stink at math. I think it’s science um well only until you learn how to do it and then you’re good at it, and so what i want to do is model that, for my kids, so i contacted nick.
We got 100 of these built locally because it’s all open source and i talked to a welder. He built them for me and i brought him into class on the first day of school and said: here’s the thing to build a seat. I’Ve never built a chair before and neither have you so, let’s figure out how to do this and and it was pretty successful right massively successful. So i started teaching my kids design concepts like empathy and form and function, and we started reading ralph, waldo emerson to inspire us and talk about self-reliance and we didn’t like write essays on self-reliant.
We tried to be self-reliant and emerson’s. My boy yeah he’s the man. Absolutely you’re talking to a creative writing major, so you know that’s where i got my bachelor’s in. He is our intellectual founding father, um and, and so i sent my kids away, a hundred kids away and i teach in a public school. We have no budget. We have no shop class, we have no materials, i said: go figure out how to meet the people to help you and find the materials to help you 100 kids went away with nothing.
100 kids came back with seats and one kid when we were looking at them all said we should be in a museum, and so i said how do you do that? Let’S, let’s try to get in the museum, so we did and we had a gallery opening and we started uh blogging and tweeting about it and the ideas really caught on in education, because it’s problem based it’s not a project. It’S a problem and my students learned how to design solutions to people’s problems. If there’s one thing that we really need in education, it’s students who understand that problems are solvable if we can learn we’re learning for the wrong reason in education right now. It’S to prove that we know things we could prove uh.
We should learn to solve problems and the maker mentality. The idea like when i’m here in at the maker faire, the thing i’m most excited about, is, if you need a model for real learning this is it people who want to do things and create communities to make them happen. So i’m here to uh kind of affirm to the maker community that as an educator, i see this as the best kind of learning there is, and that’s great and and and sean for sean. This is his first time at maker faire um.
So i you know, i’m sure it’s been really cool for you to see the stuff that goes on over here, but i think that what’s important is that, like we really need to bridge the gap between, you know formal education and uh and and maker skills, because You know it’s, it’s such a different type of learning and i mean and and it can and it can turn on to you know so many different types of minds, so many different types of children. You know it’s just great. I don’t mean to add on to what you just eloquently said, but uh. You know i have to say that i’m pretty passionate about it as well and you guys are doing good work um so and now and now the wiki seats are in more schools in what cities um right. Now we’ve got wiki seats and about 18 or 19 schools. I think a little over 700 students all across america and a few in canada, and the really cool thing about this is that there’s first graders that are building wiki seats. There’S undergrads in college that are building wiki seats, a lot of middle school and high school, and it’s like math and english and science.
It works everything and the curriculum is sort of in a process of writing itself too, which is kind of crazy. When you think about it as well, it’s very open source teachers are sharing and and we’re learning from each other. It’S really become a community of people doing this. Well, it was wonderful talking to you both um, and i know that you have a presentation to get to so you better make your way over to the stage and uh best of luck to you. Both so uh be well see ya.
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