Heather Pang's Blog

In August, while I was thinking about for a simpler laser cut project to teach Inkscape and the laser cutter in my 8th grade history class this year, I happened upon two things at about the same time.

In some ways, National History Day (NHD) is rather “old school,” a science fair style research competition for history. I started requiring my students to participate in NHD because I saw the potential for deep research and thought, a good match with our department history “habits of mind” and a great opportunity for students to pick topics that they cared about.

I have some trouble thinking about the 1970s as far back in history, but the White House History twitter feed gave us this gem last week: Betty Ford's holiday card from 1975 included a pattern for a home made holiday orniment, the Clothespin Cardinal.

So, as a historian and a fan of making, I sewed one last week on our "rain day" (feel free to laugh, but we did have a lot of flooding, and some dangerous travel conditions, so call it an overabundance of caution).

Sometimes a technology skill building activity takes on a life of its own, and this time a simple inkscape tracing project turned into a collaboration with math and a spring board for several related activities.

I finally got around to making Brogan's cool box. And I got it together only braking one bit.

The first picture shows the box starting to go together.

The second photo shows the clip piece, and my one hint is to squeeze the sides before tying to put them into the assembly.

The final photo shows the completed box.