Thankyou to @marleyman007 for pinging me this link on twitter it. It made me feel really happy to two reasons.
The first is very obvious. 3D printing making a positive impact, but in a fun and unusual way on peoples lives.
(Photo By Aaron Brown creator of the print)
Based on idea from an organisation called e-NABLE where a network of people interested in 3d printing and in making a difference are designing and 3d printing prosthetic hands for kids, he created this super hero hand based on Wolverine. Now that has to make you get a little buzz of excitement and joy and will surely help people see the 3d printing revolution and suddenly realise its potential.
The other reason this made me smile and somewhat energised is the loop that has now come full circle. As you know I like to share ideas. A few years back in 2010 my friend Scotty aka @starbase37 set up a meeting with John Marley (@marleyman007) and I to talk about tech. John was starting with a pitch for the TV show The Cool Stuff Collective. Scotty had pinter him to my blog as a way of finding out new stuff. That meeting led to John asking me to not just help research but to present on The Cool Stuff Collective as Super g33k 🙂 The one the first two shows we recorded featured 3d printing.
It was September 4th 2010 that I wrote about that. (Is it really 4 years ago!). Now this blog post features something that John has sent to me over Twitter :).
We revisited 3d printing in series 3 too with the reprap. I am very proud we were able to show 7-12 year olds 3d printing on the TV 4 years ago. Image that! some of them are now approaching A-Levels.
The last thing I said on the last show in a round up was that I really hoped that we would get technology properly taught in schools, to allow kids to be able to make and create with tech not just use. That is certainly heading the right direction despite all the arguments about whether coding is coding for codings sake etc. The BBC have new assets and a plan to involved computing more in various programmes including Nina and the Nuerons which is a great place for it to be represented on Cbeebies.
Meanwhile in the past 4 years there has been a massive change in how kids engage with tv and media content. Many of them are self broadcasting things such as gameplay on Twitch.tv or spending a lot of time watching minecraft videos from Stampylonghead
He and his fellow casters have created a style of commentary on games that is about fun and exploration. It has certainly led to the predlets spending a lot of time talking and explaining what they are doing whilst they play, usually with a silly voice and lots of screams and whoops.
I do get asked why there are no more Cool Stuff Collective shows. It is something that would be great to do again. There is more new tech than ever that is accessible to young and old alike. There is room to find things that can be shared, but that can also be used in school and at home. Whether the regular TV format for kids tv is suffering a demise, or if it is just morphing into a more shared online experience is hard to tell. I have an image in my head of a show that truly crosses the borders. I recently added this comment to a thread on Facebook about the coding or not argument and the relevance of TV
” Imagine the show being a catchup on a massive open source application gathering. Live hackathons with audience participation. Bringing everyone into the “project” designers, writers, coders , testers, art and science mixed. Live touch points across the web, assets to share and update. Voting features and project aims up and down.
Take all that stuff tv does for no reason like xfactor votes and direct it to mass creation. It does not just have to focus on code. It could be awesome.”
There is certainly content to be shared, in a different way to the excellent Gadget Show or other Gadget/science programmes. A merging of live and online interaction, even thread of storyline created through synchronous and asynchronous audience participation.
So whilst I get teary eyed (in a good way) looking back at Cool Stuff Collective, where I had some of the best times ever and most fun “working”, I am still very proud of what we covered but I know we (or someone) could cover the new things in a new way. The thing with kids TV is that you have an impact on a cohort and then they move on. If we can reach this current batch of 7-11 year olds and support and inspire them to understand and build with technology then we have a great future ahead of us. For now I will try and catch things here and also longer explanations of the world of tech and evolutions in Flush Magazine and occasionally look at the old footage in the showreel and smile 🙂
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