Entries by Jonathan

So. Many. Robot. Puppets.

Well. It’s happening. It’s taken us a while to really get geared up, but now suddenly dozens and dozens of Connected puppets are out in the world. Thanks to our new friends at Northumberland Libraries we’ve been out west to Haltwhistle, up north to Wooler, and a couple more schools roped themselves in for good […]

More puppets!

We’ve been delighted to welcome more puppets to the Connect network this term, with workshops running in several schools. Our pace of delivery is picking up now, with our colleagues at the Life Science Centre slotting loads of sessions in for the new year. If your school (or library, community centre, or other venue) is […]

We don’t talk about Pluto

If you haven’t seen this image doing the rounds – sorry, we don’t know who originated it – you very likely recognise the situation anyway. It’s been several months and this song is still everywhere. Including, it turns out, space. Above, our favourite pastiche version, We Don’t Talk About Pluto. Very, very well done Jon […]

Mechanisms

Connect is an Internet of Things digital making project, and it’s easy to assume that coding is the hard part. But if we’ve got Connect’s coding system right – and we don’t yet know if we have, but bear with me – then the most challenging part becomes the mechanism. We’ve known this for some time, […]

Connected, at last

It’s happening. It’s genuinely happening. More than that – it works! This half-term we’ve been testing out parts of Connect with some willing guinea pigs families at Battle Hill Primary School. There are a lot of hidden technical bits and some really quite shaky code involved in keeping Connect devices talking to each other (I’m allowed […]

Gearing up for remote workshops

As our partner primary schools well know, the sharp end of NUSTEM starts with in-school workshops. We do many other things, but workshops are a key part of us meeting and working with schools and teachers, showcasing how we think practical investigation and careers ideas can be incorporated into science lessons, and prompting dialogue to […]

Garageband

This is mostly a post to test that things work, but since we’re here: if you happen to have an iPad kicking around, Garageband (free download) is amazing. This is my 4 year-old getting properly absorbed by it. We had a lovely time playing with live loops and this drumkit sequencer, grooving away and chatting […]

Theory of Change paper published

You might have noticed common threads appearing through our work over the last few years. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working towards the development of an overall theory of change to guide our projects and delivery. Increasingly – as you’ll know if you work with us directly – we’ve been talking about it too. You […]