KCI Underground

As part of the sequence of courses we are teaching with the Foothill College Middle College program, we did a design thinking course, where students were put into pairs and asked to design the perfect wallet for their partner. The slideshow below shows some of the projects students came up with. If you want to try this project out on your own, check out the Stanford d.school Wallet Project here.

The KCI Underground MakerSpace is now getting to the point where we are fully operational. Over the past 5-6 weeks, we have been able to run some smaller programs for specific groups, but now we have all of the tools and material to allow individuals to use the space to work on their own projects. At the head of the list are our fabrication tools... The Cricut Maker was the first tool we received in our MakerSpace. This small little machine can cut straight and curved lines on paper, vinyl, cloth, leather and balsa wood. The Cricut Maker can also draw images and label items using the pen attachment. Makers will also find that the Cricut Maker also comes with the ability to import patterns from Simplicity . You can also design items using the Cricut app on tablet or smartphone and wirelessly connect to the Cricut to cut your patterns. You can see the Cricut in action here. In addition to the Cricut, we also have a Zing Orbit Vinyl Cutter, which can cut on a cylinder and can also...

This is the first blog post on the KCI Underground Blog. The Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College is leading the MakerSpace program at Foothill College, but the MakerSpace is a collaboration of many different groups / divisions on the Foothill campus, including: the Business/Social Science, Fine Arts and Communications, and Physical Science, Mathematics and Engineering. Our goal is to meet the needs and provide opportunities to make for Foothill students, students in K-12 schools and community members and others. We are using the term "Underground" to as a reference to the ability to get any where, from any place; using multiple "on-ramps and off-ramps" for Makers using the London Underground Map as a reference model. In the KCI Underground MakerSpace, we will have six general "Making" areas, where Makers can work in. Crafting, Wearables, Computing, Electronics, Computing, Physical Design, and Fabrication are the six general areas where Ma...