Every morning, one of our students presents a New York Times article and we talk about why it is relevant. Here are the articles (and presenter names) from this week: Wednesday, September 22 (Erick): US Says BP Well is Finally ‘Dead’ Thursday, September 23 (Kerron): Plant-Derived fuels could be certified for flights within a year

With our public Cornhole Showdown event two weeks away, and the boards 95% complete (all they need is some touch-up and a clear-coat!), we spent one day doing a “blitz design” of a poster advertisement. The poster needed to communicate the “nuggets” of information for our event (an auction and Cornhole play-day), because the more people who come out, the more people know about Studio H and the more people there are bidding on our boards to fund our next project. Before starting, I gave

Today we welcomed our first official “guest lecturer/speaker” to Studio H: Ben Nicholson, a high school friend and overall scientific genius. His accolades include degrees from Cornell and MIT, experience working in municipal wastewater management, chemical engineering, biodiesel and alternative fuel sources, and involvement in 4H and the California Avian Bowl in his younger days. Ben is now in Business School at the University of California Davis and is visiting for the week from the San Francisco Bay Area. Ben gave us two fascinating presentations:

Every morning, one of our students presents a New York Times article and we talk about why it is relevant. Here are the articles (and presenter names) from this week: Monday, September 13 (Danielle): New Schools in South Africa Serve the Underserved Tuesday, September 14 (Alexia): 3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution Wednesday, September 15 (Stevie): Metric Interstate Divides Arizonans Thursday, September 16 (Anthony): Furniture Takes a Manly Turn

Every morning, one of our students presents a New York Times article and we talk about why it is relevant. Here are the articles (and presenter names) from this week: Tuesday, September 7 (Wilbert): US Asks Educators to Reinvent Student Tests, and How They Are Given Wednesday, September 8 (Tyceus): In a New Role, Teachers Move to Run Schools Thursday, September 9 (Cameron): Forget What you Know about Good Study Habits Friday, September 10 (Rody): Packaging Is All The Rage, and Not in a Good

Richard Serra’s sculpture (his verbs inspired our Cornhole graphics!) A few decades ago, large-scale sculptural artist Richard Serra wrote out a list of “action verbs” that defined his work. Most of his sculptures are huge twisted and angled pieces of Core-Ten steel (seen above), installed as walls and jutting pieces that form interesting spaces both indoors and out. Of his long list of verbs, we chose 13 as a great launchpad for the graphic design of our cornhole boards: To hinge To join To knot

Our Cornhole boards are complete! After about four days of concentrated woodshop time and a lot of tool demos, each of our students now has a finished Cornhole board that they built with their own hands (students will be paired to make a set). Based on the measured, drafted shop drawings of the boards that we did a few weeks ago (below), we went into the shop and began laying out our sequence. We had donated plywood and lumber from the local Bertie Builders Discount

Every morning, one of our students presents a New York Times article and we talk about why it is relevant. Here are the articles (and presenter names) from this week: Monday, August 30 (Erick): Wind Turbine Projects Run Into Resistance Wednesday, September 1 (Tyceus): New Chance for Peace Thursday, September 2 (CJ): Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battles Friday, September 3 (Jamesha): Cleaning the Henhouse

Our first day in the woodshop was a success! After the requisite and thorough safety pep-talk and going over basic terminology (i.e. kerf and gullet, as seen on the board above), we did some demos on each of the big machines (table saw, band saw, chop saw, sanders, drill press) before introducing our Shop Certification Project. Matt’s drill press demo The simple object could be made in a day and would require the accurate use of each of the big machines. Below is an image

Our Studio H space is very open and communal, and on blue-sky low-humidity days, we like to open up our big roll-up garage door. Most days, though, it is closed, and the inside face of it is white and boring, divided up by columns of metal ribbing. So, we decided to do a 1-hour competition to design a colorblock scheme for the door, which is divided neatly into five columns and six rows for a total of 30 squares. First, I gave a brief into