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On Sunday November 18th, Eric Schneider, founder and CEO of PATCHR.io was back for the second part of the create your own printed circuit-board (PCB) workshop. After the first workshop, UTeach Makers uploaded their PCB designs that were created in PATCHR.io. Over the past month Eric and his crew reviewed the designs for errors and milled them on their Bantam Tools desktop PCB milling machine.

On Sunday October 21st, Eric Schneider, founder and CEO of PATCHR.io was in-house to teach how to create printed circuitboards (PCBs). This workshop took making with electronics to the next level by introducing the software and skills needed to make a custom circuitboard with LEDs that blink and fade. Eric provided numerous examples of circuitboard that could be worn as badges or pins, such as french fries with yellow LEDs or a light-up Christmas tree.

On Tuesday May 1st, UTeach Maker hosted out monthly cohort meeting featuring the Maker Showcases of our Spring 2018 UTeach Maker Fellows. The evening started off with an opportunity to our UTeach Makers and Mentors to share projects that have been working on in a Maker Playground. Lauren Siegel of MathHappens shared some of her laser-cut manipulative for teaching about mathematics, Alex Morrison invited people to participate in sewable project that she will be hosting at the 2018 Austin Maker Faire, Jason Harron shared 3D laser-cut art based on Voronoi diagrams, Mao Leonard demonstrated projects she has created in Scratch, Halle Herzog dazzled with her brightly colored threaded flowers, and Arami Rosales defied gravity with her magnetic levitated vehicle track.

Shelly and Jason hosted a UTeach Maker Showcase workshop on Sunday April 8th to help prepare our upcoming graduates from the program for their portfolio review. About half of the current cohort were there to discuss what they wanted to include in their maker philosophy, to try-out ideas for their maker-centered lessons, and to work on designing their maker projects.

On Tuesday April 3rd, UTeach Maker welcomed everybody back to Painter Hall for our monthly cohort meeting. It was great to see everybody and hear about the progress that you have made on your maker projects and showcase. Maker Mentor, Patrick Benfield, shared with the cohort about a MakerEd Regional Summit that will be taking place May 5th at Maker Faire Austin.

On Tuesday, March 6th, 2018 Austin was a buzz with the national maker community, as MakerEd.org held their annual meet-up for SXSWEdu. The event was organized by Stephanie Chang from MakerEd.org, who also serves as a portfolio reviewer for UTeach Maker, and hosted at Magellan International School by UTeach Maker Mentor Patrick Benfield. With over 100 local and national maker educators in attendance, the presence of UTeach Maker could easily be spotted as our cohort proudly wore their burnt orange shirts.

On Sunday February 25th, UTeach Maker held a Design. Make. Take. workshop for participants to learn how to custom design their own projects on the laser-cutter. It was great to see 12 of our UTeach Makers in attendance. Jason Harron lead the workshop, where he taught participants how to create a custom vector drawing in Inkscape and cut or engrave it into a piece of birch playwood.

Welcome back UTeach Makers! On Tuesday February 13th, seven new UTeach Makers joined our first cohort meeting of the Spring 2018 semester. We started out the evening by having our UTeach Maker Mentors travel from group-to-group so everybody could learn more about their interests and skills. UTeach Maker Fellows Aminadab Morales and Abdulkarim Bora were in attendance to give advice about completing the Maker Showcase before we all walked to the Fine Arts Library to visit The Foundry.