STEAM Camp Curriculum Planning

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Philosophical Why

  • We are developing a way to fund and scale open source product development
  • We want to transition the economy from proprietary to collaborative development, marking the next stage of human economic history
  • We want to transition STEAM education from the military to peacetime economy
  • We believe that a democratic society requires transparent technology, and that open source provides that transparency
  • We believe that people can regain control of technology, which is currently beyond control
  • Showing people that they could build themselves - and build their world - is a way to build one's self-esteem and self-determination ability - which is critical for gaining freedom from political manipulation
  • We want to show people that they can build the world around them - if they collaborate and work with open source, modular, scalable design
  • We can teach basic productive STEAM skills - which when scaled up - lead to practical product development
  • We believe in creating a world where making a living is not a core preoccupation that prevents people from following their true purpose.
  • We believe that modern technology - if transitioned to open and collaborative - is capable of producing a lifestyle where only a small fraction of our time is spent on 'survivining' - and a vast majority is spent pursuing our true purpose.
  • We belive that transitioning from proprietary/patented to truly collaborative society can solve many pressing world issues by nurturing a mindset of growth and abundance, not competition.
  • We believe that our current world is far from being able to cooperate - and becoming supercooperators is one of the next critical milestones of human civilization.
  • We believe that lifetime design is critical for people getting off the treadmill - where planned obsolescence and poor quality means constantly buying new goods.
  • Lifetime design is not only good for the environment, but critical to the long-term sustainability and regeneration of the planet.
  • We believe that Distributed Market Substitution is inevitable once open source hardware technology reaches a sufficient state of development to empower local microfactories with the best product design.
  • A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein

General Messaging

The OSE Steam Camp is a 9 day immersion that introduces students to a breadth of practical skills on their journey to creating the world around them. We teach a crash course of practical skills in open source, collaborative development.

Students learn to design and build common objects by building small working CNC tools using the OSE Universal Axis robotics construction set - including 3D Printer, circuit maker, and small CNC mill. Students learn an entire design-build workflow that enables them to design and buid common goods such as a robotic vacuum cleaner, a Raspberry Pi tablet, and an aerial drone. By combining advanced modern technology and open source design workflows - we unleash the power of creativity. This is critical in creating the circular economy based on modular, open source design - where local communities can begin to build the common objects that they use every day.

This is an invitation and challenge to you: will you change your local community to local production, closed loop material cycles, and open source design that leads to transparency and abundance? It is up to all of us to develop this together - and the OSE STEAM Camp is your chance to begin on this journey. We believe that the way to a better world starts with communities recapturing the possibilities of productivity on a small scale - fueled by open source design and open source microfactories.

In the STEAM Camp - you will build upon existing open source projects to make a real product - which will then be improved in future STEAM Camps. You can start making ans selling these products, as we will teach you the basic workflow of starting an open source hardware enterprise.

High Level Vision View

Practical producer training for the concerned citizen, leading to Distributed Market Substitution of common goods, and thereby the circular economy and lifetime design.

Presenter View

Join a collaborative open source group who develops real marketable technology, and teaches the design process as a way to fund the endeavor. Get paid for open hardware development in the process.

Overview Schedule Narrative

We learn basic design and prototyping skills with hands-on immersion - to enable us to get involved meaningfully in open source product development.

Direct relation to OSPD comes from learning a broad toolset that covers 4 Construction Set components (Universal Axis motion system, Universal Controller for automation, open source electric motor for power, and battery pack for energy) and 3 toolsets (3D printing, circuit making, milling). From this, we have 80% of the goods on Amazon, and direct link to enterprise development.

Summary:

  1. Day 1: 3D Printer - basic printer build using the Universal Axis and Universal Controller.
  2. Day 2: Circuit Maker - another snap-on toolhead for the Universal Axis, converting 3D printer to circuit making machine that enables us to build our own microcontroller as easy as 1, 2, 3. This can be done using an XY plotter - as a PCB Circuit Plotter.
  3. Day 3: Making a Brushless Electric Motor - using 3D Printer and Circuit Maker. We couple this to the Universal Axis for circuit making by plotting or milling. Now we have motors for 3d printers, drones, and appliances. Now we can take appliances out of the waste stream.
  4. Day 4: Battery Packs - we need renewable power! We build stackable battery packs for all the above devices - which are stackable for making our own cordless welder. On Day 4, we domonstrate how we can stack all our battery packs, and connect them to the Universal Controller that turns the battery packs to a welder. This shows that we can do more together than alone - both physically and metaphorically.
  5. Day 5-9 - Project Days, with Day 9 being the Product Demo and Enterprise Day.

Students take home the 3D Printer, Circuit Plotter, Electric Motor, and Battery Pack - and you are ready to prototype 80% of the things you find on Amazon to transform the economy to lifetime design, and get so much closer to financial freedom.

Project Days: In the 5 project days, we build a highly functional Raspberry Pi Tablet, an aerial drone that we subsequently upgrade to image recognition and AI, and a vaccuum robot that is eventually upgraded to image recognition and AI. All the projects will evolve continuously in future STEAM Camps, and they are stackable or swarmable - such that the devices can all operate as modular swarms. Examples of Product Swarms:

  1. Raspberry Pi Tablet - For example, imagine interconnecting multiple Raspberry Pi Tablets so you can have one master tablet with multiple screens, running multiple applications and thus displacing a more powerful computer? Tablet is used as a controller for both the drones and vacuums.
  2. Drone - controlling all drones with one controller? Slaving them to follow one another, and lift a larger load if connected to one another. When slaved to carry a small fueled electric generator, they have extended range to about an hour for practical missions.
  3. Vacuum Robot - robots communicate with each other so they don't overlap their paths. Or simply operate as a swarm in a room. Or one robot is used to empty the bags on other robots.

Curriculum Development Model

See STEAM_Camp_Candidates#Curriculum_Development_and_Evolution_Model

Meta

Business model starts with Extreme Manufacturing - which then reduces the size of other sectors: financial, legal, spiritual, transportation, hospitality, education. The model foundation is XM - ie - Distributed Market Substitution of physical goods - that meet or exceed industry standards. From there, prosperity follows into other sectors. This is the old debate between materialism and idealism. Within the human economy, it seems clear that materialism is the preferred foundation, and idealism is derivative, not source.

The target market is people who are looking for self-determination, with financial independence coming from material production that eliminates artificial scarcity and other structural evils.

We can break the product into a 4 day OSE Core Skills training - which can also be turned into an online course. This formalizes the first 4 days and makes this training scalable. Revenue model in the virtual edition may come from the services (exams, webinar, learning community) around the STEAM Camps - and products (edu kits).

9 Day Curriculum

See STEAM Camp 9 Day Curriculum

Open Source Prior Art

Former work related to the topics covered:

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Day 4

Day 5

Links

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