Imagine a broadcast network in America that was dedicated to education, where the best educators had the opportunity to produce its programming, and where individuals as well as institutions could develop a new genre of wide-ranging educational programs? Educational programming could elevate the role of teaching in our culture and promote the value of lifelong learning. This blog post explores why education is a more important role for public broadcasting in America, a new role that would re-align PBS with its original mission as an educational network.

A More Public Role for Public Broadcasting: Education

Bill has been involved with MAKE from the beginning. He serves on our Technical Advisory Board and is a Contributing Editor to the magazine. He was also a producer of Make: television and one of its on-air talents. Bill is the author of a number of best-selling books, including Backyard Ballistics and Whoosh-Boom-Splat: The Garage Warrior's Guide to Building Projectile Shooters. His most recent work, Absinthe & Flamethrowers, is a meditation on the art of living dangerously, with projects!

So, please give a round warm of applause to... Bill Gurstelle...

Notes from the Technology Underground (Bill's blog)

Enter the plugged-in world of Tim Kaiser, a maker who fashions experimental musical instruments from scavenged objects. In the Workshop John Park assembles a portable trebuchet from plastic plumbing pipe, and circuit bender Bianca Pettis demystifies the art of soldering. The Maker Channel presents a Smash Bat that snaps moment-of-impact photos, a drum synthesizer played with Skittles, a pedal-powered tennis ball launcher, and an evil mouse that causes the cursor to misbehave when moved. Watch in HD at blip.

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes

Here at MAKE, we're lucky enough to have a rotating stable of interns who build and test most of the projects before we go to print each issue (and sometimes photograph any missing step shots). They also haul supplies from the warehouse, shop for tools and materials, and come up with projects of their own on a surprisingly regular basis. We also work them to near death before, during, and after each Maker Faire -- packing pallets and building projects to send to the fairgrounds beforehand; setting up booths and greeting the public for 12-plus hours a day during the event; and unpacking trucks when everything comes back to our offices after the fact.

In exchange, they get to have one of the most highly coveted jobs in the land. Seriously. I've had top-level editors ask if they could trade their job for an internship at MAKE, not to mention engineers, the parents of our interns, and just about anyone who gets a look at the Make: Labs, where the interns build, sew, hack, hammer, drill, and solder day in and day out.

Now we're offering our website readers a look into the fabulous lives of the MAKE interns. Twice a month, the current interns will offer up stories about the projects they're working on, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they plan on building in the near future.

Jacob McKenzie, one of our two original interns who began working for us in the fall of 2005, has always said that we've pretty much ruined him for life in terms of ever having a cooler job. Nonetheless, Jake left his internship in 2007 to finish his bachelor's degree at UC Berkeley. He graduated with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in mechanical engineering. During the 2008 winter break, we called him up and asked him to demonstrate a few of our previous projects for the TV show, Quest, which were well-received and a blast to see get filmed in our very own Make: Labs. Most recently, Jake was accepted at both Stanford and MIT for graduate school. After much thought, he chose MIT, where he'll begin the next part of his journey this fall. He's promised to keep in touch, and let us know if he ever finds a cooler job than MAKE Intern. He remains unconvinced that he will, but his future looks bright to us.

Tune in on Wednesday, July 29, for the first of many first-person accounts about interning at MAKE!

We wanted to try something a little different from the look of Make: television so we dug up our teleprompter and borrowed a page out of Errol Morris' playbook and did all of the interviews with an interrotron. This is a simple, yet effective way of having the interview subjects communicate directly to the camera, while allowing them to interact with the interviewer and not just a dark lens.

Later this summer, Make: will be releasing a series of short videos that aim to inspire new generations of inventors as a partnership with the Lemelson-MIT Program. Stay tuned to Make: Online for more information.

Checkout Create TV this Saturday, June 20 for an all-day marathon of Make: episodes. Starting at 6am and going until midnight you can see every episode of Make: in HD. We don't actually recommend watching that much TV, hopefully you head out of the living room and into the garage and to build something you saw. Remember, all of the Maker Workshop projects have detailed PDFs on makezine.tv. It's still a great time to build your own DTV Antenna!

Here's the PDF, and be sure to check out more great comments our original blog post.

At Maker Faire, Jared Boone, of ShareBrained, premiered the Make: television jukebox. Fairgoers could plug in a thumbdrive, press a button, and have the selected episode loaded onto their USB drive. Here, Jared talks to Make: television's John Edgar Park about the project.

More:
Make: television Vending Machine

In addition to the hundreds of talented makers at this weekend's Maker Faire, Make: television will be live, featuring...

The Make: television Stage
Meet the makers who appear on the first season, as well as presentations and discussions from MAKE authors and bloggers. All day, Saturday and Sunday, in Expo Hall.

Projects built during the first season
We'll have our Burrito Blaster with plenty of shootables, the VCR Cat Feeder topped off with cat food and a Cigar Box Guitar and Amp ready for rocking.

Bring your USB Drives
Jared Boone of ShareBrained Technology and designer James Provost have made an awesome Make: television Media Vending Machine. Bring a USB drive that's between 512mb and 12GB and load up with HD or media player-friendly versions. The back is completely open so you can how it's made, and Jared will be on hand. Here it is in the testing phase.

Connect with Geek Squad
We're proud to host Geek Squad at this year's Maker Faire. They'll have Geek Squad Agents on hand to answer any of your tech questions as well as a live Twitter stream rolling throughout the weekend.

Tell us what you make!
We're building the momentum for a second season and we want to hear from makers of all sorts. Last year, we found a huge amount of unique makers at Maker Faire and we're hoping to do the same thing this year. Don't be shy, we love show and tell!

Jared Boone of ShareBrained Technology along with fellow makers at Dorkbot PDX are creating an awesome jukebox-style vending machine where Maker Faire visitors can bring any USB drive (over 512mb) and choose between HD or iPod versions of ANY EPISODE of Make: television. We're super excited that Jared and the crew have taken this awesome and sometimes challenging project.

It took a while to design the user interface (big push buttons!), design a control circuit board, and set up a little Linux computer to run it all. Last weekend, we finally got to the step of building the cabinet. It doesn't look like much yet, but just wait...

Jared and the crew also asked if anyone would be willing to contribute some time or resources to the design of the machine. Anyone out with a keen eye for design who's willing to help Jared should send a note to maketelevision@makezine.com.

Here's another chance to see Make: television - Episode 10

Visit SparkLab founder and designer Syuzi Pakhchyan, a maker who explores the new frontier of high tech and fashion with her space age handiwork. In the Workshop, John Park shows us how to build a guitar out of a piece of wood, some string, nails and a cigar box. Then he "makes it rock" by wiring it to a buck-fifty cassette-player amp. In a Hidden Treasures segment, Mister Jalopy opens up his Chevy Camaro's cassette player to show us the beauty and value of clear schematics for makers like him. The Maker Channel features a sunlight-triggered poem, a pedal-powered blender, a time lapse photography rig, and a handmade theremin.

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, or watch in HD on Blip.

Create TV is a cable and satellite channel featuring cooking, arts & crafts, gardening, home improvement, and travel. We're proud that Make: is now among a long list of popular shows like America's Test Kitchen, Ask This Old House, and Globe Trekker.

For those of you don't have access to Make: through your public television stations, or who just want to see Make: in full HD glory, be sure to look up Create TV on your cable or satellite directory and watch.

Episode 10 - Wearable Technology
Saturday, May 16
11am, 5pm and 11pm ET

AND

Father's Day Make: Marathon
Saturday, June 20
All Day

Of course, you can always watch any episode, anytime at www.makezine.tv/episodes

Meet CCRMA, a group of musical makers who stretch the sonic boundaries by turning personal computers into an electronic symphony. In the Workshop, John Park hacks a Wii controller and turns it into a personal flight recorder that can measure the G forces of roller coasters and other high-speed activities. In the Toolbox segment, William Gurstelle demonstrates the slick, back-cutting action of a super-sharp Japanese saw. The Maker Channel features a tesla coil-powered guitar amp, an RFID reader implanted in a human hand, and LED fan sign to bring to baseball games, and a solar powered bicycle gondola.

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, or what in HD on Blip.

A few weeks back Make: Online did a post about an awesome project featuring a simple "plug and grab" method for copying media called the Kopimi Station

Our friend Jared Boone at Sharebrained Technology offered up his skills along with the talented Dorkbot PDX to create a similar device for the Make: television booth at Maker Faire, one that will allow anyone to grab any episode of Make: television.

We've decided to have a single, wide selection panel with four USB pods below. While one person is waiting for their transfer, the next person can plug in and make their choices. If they don't quite know what to do, the people waiting can help out. So there's this interesting "institutional knowledge" aspect.

We've opted for push-buttons, which makes the machine look more atomic age. These are big, vending machine style lighted pushbuttons. As selections are made, the buttons will light or go dark.

I'm presently designing a custom circuit board that will scan the buttons and light them up appropriately. This board interfaces with my mini-ITX Linux computer, which dispenses the media.

So Jared and the team are over a month into the project and has made some considerable progress. As any good project goes, they've run into some hurdles.

I had a very frustrating evening yesterday, bringing up the controller circuit for the front panel. I fried both of the (spendy) Atmel chips I bought for testing. I talked today with some friends about what might be going wrong. We're not sure, but I'm going to try a few things tonight, with some replacement parts I borrowed. I hope I don't fry them too.

Then, we heard:

I think I have a workable plan B. It's not pretty, but should work. Basically, I'm going to chop off the part of the board that doesn't work, and wire up a pre-fabbed microcontroller (Arduino) board to serve in place of my failed design. Desperate times require desperate measures... In any case, I took pictures and have diagrams if you still want to offer up the situation to the MAKE audience.

Any makers out there have a similar experience? Weigh in with comments or questions below. We'll be sure to document his progress.

We journey upstream with environmentalist Dan McCormick, a maker who crafts intricate watershed sculptures out of woven willow. In the Workshop, John Park shows how to build lively and inexpensive miniature robots. Mister Jalopy reveals the hidden treasures of his "Compact Childhood Museum." The Maker Channel segment features French fries shot from a spud gun, freeline skates that ride like a skateboard, an Asteroids game wrist watch, and a motorized wheel chair that shoots flames.

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, watch in HD on Blip

Cy Tymony, a featured maker on Make: television, had a great interview with Ira Flatow on Science Friday last week. For you educators, how do you use projects like these? Does this fulfill a niche in your curriculum? What gaps are present that could be filled by future Make: television episodes?

Green DIY

Didn't get enough Earth Day this week? We'll talk with Cy Tymony, author of the book "Sneaky Green Uses for Everyday Things," about simple green projects you can undertake using objects around your house. Call in with your own DIY projects that somehow reduce, reuse, or recycle in unusual ways. Teachers, find more information about using Science Friday as a classroom resource in the Kids' Connection.

LINK

Here's another look at Episode 7 of Make: television. Individual segments after the jump.

Bike along with Ali Momeni and his fleet of mobile video projectors that transform public spaces into massive sound and light shows. In the Workshop, John Park combines a used treadmill motor and PVC pipe to build a wind generator, and William Gurstelle tests hardware on a giant trebuchet. The Maker Channel features a balloon organ, a ball-fetching autonomous robot, and a lie-detector wristband.

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, watch in HD on Blip

Great job to everyone who gave presentations at tonight's Ignite Minneapolis event. There were some insightful, funny, and useful presentations, but huge kudos to Make: television's very own Bill Gurstelle who kicked off the night with an energetic manifesto on the "art of living dangerously". The take away was, according to Bill, many of the world's best engineers and leaders have blown off at least one thumb by living dangerously, and a lot of innovation and merit comes along with taking big risks. Look for more this summer when his book comes out, Bill can explain it much better.

For those who are unfamiliar with the format of these events...

Ignite is a community-driven event comprising a series of speed presentations. Ignite events skew toward the geeky and wonkish, are usually innovative and fresh, and always involve drinking.

Basically, a person prepares a brief presentation on any topic. They get exactly 20 slides to tell their story, and each slide displays onscreen for exactly 15 seconds. So that's 5 minutes per presenter.

LINK

Chabot's describes the event like this:

Great art is often inspired by discoveries in science. Join us for the infusion of Art & Science with an evening filled with displays from local artists and photographers, live music, beer, wine and food available for purchase. Plus final showings of DomeFest 2008, an immersive experience that leaves necks craning, heads spinning, and a special feature of the Make: television Profiles of Bay Area Artists at 7pm and 8pm in our MegaDome theater. More info here.

If you attend, we'd love to see the pictures! Post to our Flickr pool.

A look back on Episode 6 of Make: television. Individual segments after the jump.

Enter the plugged-in world of Tim Kaiser, a maker who fashions experimental musical instruments from scavenged objects. In the Workshop John Park assembles a portable trebuchet from plastic plumbing pipe, and circuit bender Bianca Pettis demystifies the art of soldering. The Maker Channel presents a Smash Bat that snaps moment-of-impact photos, a drum synthesizer played with Skittles, a pedal-powered tennis ball launcher, and an evil mouse that causes the cursor to misbehave when moved. Watch in HD at blip.

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes

As of last week, you can watch Make: statewide on GPB at 12:30pm (pre-empted on 4/19/09). Make: television is very excited to welcome Georgia Public Broadcasting to the list of stations carrying Make:! We'd love to hear from the MAKE Online fans from Georgia. What sort of projects are grabbing your attention?

Make: television already has ties to Georgia. Daniel Bauen, maker of the brilliant tennis-ball launcher in Episode 6, hails from Atlanta.

Other links to check out:
Dorkbot atl site
Freeside Hackerspace

Episode Five, take two, bam:

Tour the elegant and hypnotic motorized wave sculptures, created by visionary maker Reuben Margolin. In the Maker Workshop John Park upcycles a discarded shopping cart into a stylish easy chair, and Mister Jalopy details the unsung wonders of his 1950 Studebaker. The Maker Channel features a treadmill bike, an obedient, robotic foot stool, a homemade foundry (built by two 14 year old wizards), and an ultra-high-temperature heat ray that can melt brass!

Get the m4v of Episode Five, or subscribe in iTunes. Watch the individual segments of Episode Five and find instructions for the Shopping Cart Chair after the jump.

All episodes, individual segments, and PDF instructions of our Maker Workshop projects from Make: television Season One can always be found at our Episode Guide. You can also watch Make: television videos on YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, or download our torrents at LegalTorrents.

Burrito Blaster on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

Maker Workshop - VCR Cat Feeder from make magazine on Vimeo.

MAKE Contributor Editor Mister Jalopy has been making the media rounds this week. First it was Nightline earlier in the week and today it was Public Radio's Studio 360.

Okay, now it's time for the media to focus on some of his other work besides the stereo cabinet iPod. He isn't a one-trick pony, you know. Mister J has layers (and lots of other cool projects).

Mister Jalopy on Studio 360

Makers in Motion

Episide Four, take two, check it:

Meet the Flaming Lotus Girls, a women-centric maker collaborative that creates gargantuan, fire-breathing sculptures. In the Workshop, John Park builds a digital TV antenna from wire coat hangers and a $10 video camera stabilizer. William Gurstelle shows surprising uses for cable ties, and Maker Channel contributors show off a motorized lounge chair, an eye-popping I/O brush, a vest that controls a video game with a back massage, and an explosive, giant match made from thousands of matchsticks.

Get the m4v of Episode Four, or subscribe in iTunes. Watch the individual segments of Episode Four and find instructions for the ever-popular DTV Antenna and Camera Stabilizer after the jump.

All episodes, individual segments, and PDF instructions of our Maker Workshop projects from Make: television Season One can always be found at our Episode Guide. You can also watch Make: television videos on YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, or download our torrents at LegalTorrents.

Well, today's Make: Talk was fun... while it lasted. I forgot to set the time interval for the show and it's defaulted to cut the stream at 15 minutes. Turns out, it continues to record, so we could have gone the full 45 for the archived version, but being new to this software/service, we didn't know that. The first 15 are worth listening to, though. We talk about happenings at MAKE, Make: Online, MakerFaire, and making in general. And you get to hear the beginnings of our Tom Igoe interview.

So sorry for the inconvenience. We're getting better as we go along and will work the bugs out. We'll have Tom on again next Friday, same time (12 noon PDT, 3pm EDT), so DO come back,

Funny enough, one of the main topics Dale, Goli, and I were discussing was failure, learning from failure, trying not to be embarrassed by your mistakes -- falling forward. So, I'll try and meditate on that for the rest of the day rather than feel like a complete bonehead.

Here are the Show Notes for what we discussed:

MAKE Classifieds (Closing today! Register for the Shed Gift Certificate drawing)
Fix the World! (The repair area for Maker Faire 2009 -- they need volunteers)
Maker Faire, May 30-31 (Plan to come. Bring the whole family and be prepared to be inspired)
Ask MAKE (New column from Becky Stern. Send Becky your questions.)
Show us your shop (We want to see your workspace photos!)

More:

• Make: Talk episode #003 show notes and next episode
• Make: Talk episode 2 show notes and next episode
• Make: Talk episode 1 show notes and next episode

In case you missed last night's Nightline segment on the DIY movement and MAKE, featuring Mister Jalopy and Mark Frauenfelder and scenes from Make: television and Maker Faire, ABC News now has it on their website. It's the "Do It Yourself" segment.

More:
Welcome Nightline viewers!

Make: television received a warm welcome from the folks at Seattlest.com last week. Thanks for the feedback about the episodes, we're always interest in hearing people's reaction. Here's a snippet:

Make debuts on Seattle TV this weekend. We've seen the first two episodes of the show (you can see some clips and episodes here), and the first one airing at 11 a.m. Saturday on KCTS was a little deflating. It just wasn't what we were hoping for, and seemed to opt for Burning Man-style spectacle over substance every time. We've also seen the second episode, though, and all is well with the world: it's awesome. That one doesn't air until April 4, so set your TiVo now. It won't kill you to watch the first episode as well, but know that things get better quickly. (LINK)

Watch Episode 1, Episode 2 or watch them all at our Episode Guide page.

If you're coming to our website after seeing the ABC News Nightline episode, welcome! We know Nightline viewers are a smart and curious bunch, so we thought we'd use this opportunity to introduce you (and others who might be new to MAKE) to what we do and why. We've got a lot of different things going on and are tremendously excited by the work we do and the global community of do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiasts we collaborate with on our many projects.

Maker Media is the name of our company, we're a division of O'Reilly Media, the highly regarded technology publisher. Under the Maker Media umbrella, we produce the quarterly MAKE magazine, run two busy websites, Make: Online and CRAFT, produce annual DIY festivals, called Maker Faires, run a store, called Maker Shed, and we work with Twin Cities Public Television who produce the popular Make: television program on PBS.

MAKE magazine is how we got started in all of this. It's a quarterly technology projects magazine and a sort of house organ for the maker/DIY movement. Projects in the magazine range from old-school balsa wood and tissue-paper airplanes to what to do with old high-tech gadgets to building autonomous robots from techno-junk. Our current issue, Volume 17, is entitled "Lost Knowledge," and looks at the technology of the past, and featues projects that celebrate its marvels. The upcoming issue, ReMake: America, will explore sustainability and prospering through challenging times using DIY technology and good ol' human ingenuity. We produce both a print and a digital edition of our magazine. You can subscribe here and find back issues here.

Make: Online is our award-winning website that you're reading right now. It is one of the most popular watering holes in cyberspace for makers, crafters, inventors, tinkers, and amateur technologists and scientists of all stripes who come here for breaking DIY stories, original content on building, repairing, and making things, and for how-to project articles. We also have several popular video series that run every week on the site, Weekend Projects, MAKE Presents, and How-To Tuesday, that present cool projects, kit builds, and explain (in plain English) how various technologies work. Here's a recent Weekend Project:

To introduce you to MAKE and to the Maker Shed, we've put together a special "Welcome to MAKE" bundle. It includes a one-year subscription to MAKE (four issues), a copy of The Best of MAKE, a 380-page collection of our favorite projects from the first ten issues, and a copy of The Maker's Notebook, a unique project notebook, with plenty of high-quality graph paper for sketching out your projects, and a reference section in the back of weights, measures, facts, figures, and other indispensable info geared towards makers. The bundle saves you $41 off buying the items individually.

Maker Workshop - Miniature Robots on Make: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

If you have questions about Maker Media or any of our projects, please feel free to ask in the comments feature below.