We were excited to find out Jie's friend and colleague, Natalie Freed, now lives in the Bay Area and even more excited to meet her and learn more about her own paper circuitry explorations. She told us about the SparkCore, a new low-profile Bluetooth LE board that makes it very easy to connect electronics projects to the Internet. We explored the possibilities of connecting a paper notebook to the web—why might you want to do this? What would you want it to do for you and your work? Natalie agreed to prototype a Wi-Fi connected notebook with us and she made this beautiful exemplar of what a multidisciplinary inquiry-based notebook can look like.
We had a great time at the Digital Media and Learning (DML) conference in Boston last week. DML, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, has been convening researchers, educators, educational technology industry professionals, and other stakeholders around issues of engaging youth in and out school to become digital media creators, active in civic matters, and lifelong learners. NEXMAP and CV2 presented Saturday afternoon with Jie Qi of the MIT Media Lab, Natalie Freed, and Paul Oh of the National Writing Project (NWP) on our 21st Century Notebooking initiative. We led workshop participants through an activity of storytelling through paper circuitry.
