Ryan Jenkins's Blog

This October, I took part once again in a wonderful online community event hosted by my friends at Chibitronics where artists, makers and tinkerers from around the world built light-up pop-up creations based on prompts from Keith Allen of #poptober fame. 

After making a ‘recycled’ themed project last year I wanted to focus this time on combining LED paper circuits with automata mechanisms. I was inspired by the work of artist Fi Henshall who has incorporated li...

Anyone else ready to experiment with new ways of online tinkering and prototyping? I'm so excited to be collaborating with Josh Gutwill and Sue Allen of the Clean Confe...

Sad news arrived last week that kinetic artist and exhibit builder Norman Tuck had passed away peacefully at home. Norman contributed greatly to the collection of exhibits at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and to me, he was always a conduit to the spirit of the original museum at the Palace of Fine Arts. There are a half dozen of his creations like oscylinderscope, three balls on a string and lariat chain, that you can find in science museums all around the world.

Last weekend I set up a mini tinkering space for the library day and book sale at the Carl-Schurz-Haus, the local German-American cultural center here in Freiburg. Sin...

Over the weekend I had a chance to test out a new tinkering activity in the local forest with the Naturwerkstatt Breisach eV. and engage kids and adults in playful expe...

Last weekend, while participating in an education conference at the Swiss Science Center Technorama in Winterthur, I made sure to take some time to explore the extensiv...

As part of a ongoing experience developing tinkering projects for young learners (roughly ages 3-5 years old) I’ve been connecting with my original WICO collaborator Ni...

This past weekend I led two experimental tinkering workshops at the bildungs congress (education conference) at Technorama science center in Winterthur, Switzerland. Fo...

The past weekend I got the chance to participate in a wonderful community festival in Freiburg called "kinderkunstdorf” or children’s art village. This was my second ti...