The Paper Clip Electronics workshop is part of a series of workshops and experiences for children designed to explore and explain the role of electronics in our environment. Children are use to electronics. They know about batteries and lights. The Paperclip workshop is centered on showing them that they can make these things too. As a consumer it is easy to think of electronics as something that either works or doesnʼt work. Instead I like to think of it as something that can be made, repaired, changed and thought about.
The workshop is an opportunity for children who are too young to solder to experience how electronics work. I have developed a number of techniques to make electronic connections and attachments without hot solder and dangerous tools. Instead we look at our immediate environment.
We will work our way through basic theory like polarity and switches while we make
connections out of everyday materials. There is plenty of metal there, silver foil, metal thread, paper clips, tape. The circuits we build are made from the everyday and the banal.