Sports Map ~ What the World Plays Most!

What sports does our planet full of people most favor?-)

LEGO Brickumentary ~ Sharing a True Toy Story!

A LEGO Brickumentary coming soon; trailer here!

inFORM @ CH ~ Topomorphic Displayfulness!

Lovely inFORM exhibit at Cooper Hewitt Design Museum! A tangible topomorphic dancing display with playful properties...

Math In Your Feet ~ Learning #'s by Dancing!

Thanks to MIT friend Birago Jones for spotting Math in your Feet...

"An integration of two separate but highly complementary paths of inquiry. Percussive dance is a sophisticated, precise, and physical expression of time and space using foot-based dance patterns. Mathematics has been called the ‘science of patterns’ initially developed to understand, describe, and manipulate the physical world. Math in Your Feet leads students through the problem solving process of creating their own dance patterns. Along the way, they increase their understanding of mathematical topics."

Printeer ~ 3DP Tools for Kids & Schools Kickin'

Our MIT Imaging & Fabrication Ventures class alumco Mission Street Manufacturing led by Brian Jaffe and team are now Kickstarting their Printeer!

"Unlike other 3D printers, using Printeer doesn't require advanced technical or engineering skills. For starters, you don't need to learn CAD (computer aided design) software, a professional-grade tool that is required to generate the 3D designs used by other 3D printers. Printeer design software is different in the following ways: (1) It runs on iPad, a platform most kids are more comfortable with than a PC. (2) It can be learned in about 30 seconds. (3) It doesn't require any intermediate steps between design and 3D printing. No PC, no complex software, no fancy configuration settings. Just touch the "print" button and watch it go."

Roominate ~ Building Toys for Creative Girls!

I just heard MIT Professor Emeritus Rod Brooks of iRobot and now Rethink Robotics fame speaking this morning about his venture experiences. He was particularly proud of his MIT alumna daughter's company which is making Roominate -- building toys encouraging all girls to be creative artists, architects, engineers, and visionaries! Alice Brooks is clearly a chip off the old block;-)

"The Roominate line is designed by Alice and Bettina -- two engineers out of Caltech, MIT, and Stanford on a mission to get more girls interested in engineering. They believe that early exposure through toys will inspire the next generation of female technology innovators. They designed Roominate to get young girls to have fun with STEM, while building hands-on skills and confidence."

Steampunk Walking Ship ~ Lego Strandbeest!

24Oranges notes when Lego creation strolls down the beach...

"Inspired by Theo Jansen’s ‘Strandbeest’ -- ‘Beach Animal’ -- Jason Allemann of JK Brickworks has built a creation called ‘Steampunk Walking Ship’ entirely made of Lego components featuring several play features, including the functional cargo crane. “Power and control is provided by the Lego Power Functions system, which includes the remote control, IR receiver, battery box and two M-size motors. The frame, crankshaft and legs are built using Lego Technic elements.”

ScratchJr ~ Kickstarting Young Kids Coding!

Excellent to see progress on Kickstarter for the ScratchJr project from the MIT Media Lab and Tufts which enables Coding for Young Kids!

"Coding is the new literacy. With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) learn to program their own interactive stories and games. [...] Children snap together graphical programming blocks to make characters move, jump, dance, and sing. Children can modify characters in the paint editor, add their own voices and sounds, even insert photos of themselves -- then use the programming blocks to make their characters come to life. ScratchJr was inspired by the popular Scratch programming language, used by millions of young people (ages 8 and up) around the world. In creating ScratchJr, we redesigned the interface and programming language to make them developmentally appropriate for younger children."

Future of Play ~ Sand Garden Born in Boston!

Ruth Graham writes in the Globe about the future of play, How the American playground was born in Boston...

"As children’s play spaces evolve, the spirit behind the original 19th-century “sand garden” is on the rise again. [...] in 1885, one charitable group decided to offer something of an experiment to the local children: a pile of sand, deposited for the summer in the yard of a chapel on Parmenter Street. Little did any of them know how much it would change the experience of childhood in America. [...] The spot -- across the street from what is now the North End public library branch -- was an immediate hit with children, who spent long afternoons digging with small shovels and making sand pies. [...] Today, playgrounds look nothing like that simple sandpile. Over the next century, playgrounds were filled in with dangerous but thrilling monkey bars, swings, see-saws, and metal carousels, all on beds of dirt or asphalt. Then, starting in the 1980s, a new trend began, in which these sometimes rusty and risky structures were replaced by standardized plastic structures, the asphalt giving way to rubber matting. Modern playgrounds have become so predictable, cushioned, and programmed that they are now coming under attack as a symptom of everything that’s wrong with contemporary childhood. [...] The most ambitious play thinkers argue that the ultimate goal should be returning the places we live -- or at least neighborhoods -- to kids. [...] Not all opportunities for play, in other words, need to be look like playgrounds. They don’t necessarily need to be permanent, expensive, or complicated. As Johnson puts it, “We ought to have play that comes and goes. We ought to dump some sand piles in the summer.” What people thought children wanted in the 1880s, it turns out, might be the same thing they want today."

Here's just a couple of the Globe's archival playground pictures!

Hack This Book ~ Art of Tinkering's e-Cover!

Check out the Art of Tinkering's conductive ink cover...

"Its cover is printed with a special ink that conducts electricity, allowing readers to make their own circuits right on the book and get in on all the tinkering fun."

Circuit Stickers ~ Peelable Sticky Chibitronics!

MIT Media Lab's Jie Qi and Bunnie Huang announce Circuit Stickers and advance purchasing via Crowd Supply...

Waldkindergarten ~ Back to Nature Campfire Kids

Der Spiegel's Rupert Neate writes about Campfire Kids: Going Back to Nature with Forest Kindergartens...

"These children are sitting on logs in a forest around a campfire. This no ordinary day care center, this a Waldkindergarten. [...] the risks are outweighed by the "massive" mental and physical benefits of playing outside. "Children who have attended a Waldkindergarten have a much deeper understanding of the world around them, and evidence shows they are often much more confident and outgoing when they reach school." [...] the US and the UK's obsession with health and safety and regulations may have slowed adoption of the idea, but [...] forest kindergartens have proved very popular in Japan, which is also known for its red tape bureaucracy."

And here's what it looks like in short docu by Hubert Ulrich...

"Like" Flying Paper ~ Vote for ArcLight Filmfest!

MIT alumnus filmmaker Nitin Sawhney writes the exciting news re: his Flying Paper documentary about resilient kids crafting kites...

"We have a unique opportunity to get Flying Paper into the ArcLight Documentary Festival in Hollywood as a "Fan Favorite," but we need your help by going to this link on YouTube and LIKING it. Only 5 films competing will win a spot in the festival as a "Fan Favorite" so our participation in this film festival is completely in your hands. Please go to YouTube and "Like" the link and share it with your friends and encourage them to do likewise."

Absolutely! Click thru to YouTube to vote...

R2D2 Timelapse ~ Epic Robo Lego Build!

Kuriositas spots amazing R2D2 Lego Timelapse by Gwen Vanhee with post-production by Alexander Casteels...

MIT Glass Lab ~ Pure Extracurricular Joy & Play!

The MIT Department of Materials Science & Engineering (DMSE) has two primo facilities on our first-floor Infinite Corridor -- the NanoLab and the Undergrad Materials Teaching Facility -- both dedicated to Research & Education at MIT. But as important -- and perhaps moreso -- is our Infinite basement-level MIT Glass Lab, a space dedicated purely for creative joy, something entirely Extracurricular...

Smarter Sandbox ~ AR-Enhanced Playspace

John Farrier at Neatorama spots Augmented Reality Sandbox...

Jay's Joys ~ CNN on ML Alum Maker-Tinkerer

Excellent to see MIT Media Lab alum and JoyLabz founder Jay Silver in CNN piece by Brandon Griggs on How to control a computer with a banana using...

"[MakeyMakey which] seems like a toy, and educators have used it to play games or teach kids about basic electrical circuitry. But Silver believes that his kit can also help engineers test concepts and prototypes more cheaply. "Some people are just totally goofing around (with the kits). Some people are making devices so that their son with cerebral palsy can access browsing the Web," he said. "I don't know which of those two things actually are more important. They're both, to me, really valuable." "The reason I'm making this kit is that I'm totally stoked about what I can do with it and what other people can do with it," he said. "I hope that other people use it in a way that makes them feel alive. And if they are, it doesn't matter to me if what they're doing can be called useful or not." Silver talks wistfully about a utopian future where everyone creates their own unique space instead of settling for cookie-cutter homes or furnishings or decorations."

Flying Paper ~ Resilient Creative Kids Make Kites!

Check out latest trailer from upcoming Flying Paper kids and kites documentary by MIT Media Lab alum Nitin Sawhney and colleague Roger Hill premiering at the London Palestine Film Festival on May 7th, 2013...

"While the record-breaking event is what drives the film’s narrative arc, it is the everyday stories of the young kite makers that will touch audiences through their humor and playful spirit. The film seeks to humanize the conflict through a touching cinematic rendering of the fascinating kite culture among children as a form of creative resistance in Gaza."

Lego Bridge Launcher ~ DIY Stilzkin EXT3 ;-)

Nice Lego Technic build project, the Stilzkin EXT3 Bridge Launcher!

Toa Mata Band ~ Giuseppe Acito's Lego Bionicles

MissC spots Giuseppe Acito's Lego Bionicle Toa Mata Band!