I often hear that the educational system is broken, but what I see is a lot of us waiting around for someone else to fix it. Luckily, there was a group of grad students from the Institute of Design at Stanford who noticed that hands-on learning was leaving the classroom and chose to do something about it. They launched a Kickstarter campaign to gather funds, bought an old truck, loaded it up with low-tech and high-tech tools, and set off on a summer road trip across America to teach the joy of making to younger generations. Thus SparkTruck was born.
On October 18th, after four months on the road, SparkTruck touched Stanford soil once again. Having reached a total of 15,323 miles, 33 states, 73 locations, and 2,697 students, I knew this team would have quite an interesting story to tell! I had the chance to chat with SparkTruck road trip survivor Jason Chua about this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The SparkTruck has had eight members over its lifetime, though only four of them formed the actual on-the-road crew that made it through the majority of the trip. The Institute of Design at Stanford (a.k.a. "d.school") provides a program where students from different departments can come work together, meaning that the SparkTruck team had quite a wide variety of unique backgrounds to bring to the table, from Mechanical Engineer to Film, Education to Product Design.
GeekMom: How was the idea of SparkTruck born?
Jason Chua: SparkTruck was born from two separate idea threads. The first thread came about when we spent a few months hanging out with teachers, students, and parents, and saw that hands-on learning was leaving the classroom. We began playing with different ideas of how to bring making back into education via workshops, kits, videos, or modular shop facilities. The second thread centered around the idea that it would be fun to make a truck-based project. Some ideas we thought through were food truck, nap truck, and garage sale truck. One day we decided, in true SparkTruck fashion, to mash these two idea threads together and run hands-on workshops out of a truck. Our teaching team told us that it was a dumb idea (not scalable, not practical) so we knew we were on to something.
GM: How did you assemble your team?
JC: We assembled the team based on who we thought we would like hanging out with rather than by skill sets because we figured that if we liked spending time with one another, we wouldn't mind pulling off the long work sessions a project like this requires.
GM: What is your approach when you arrive at a location, what do you guys actually do?
JC: We try to strike a balance between structure and exploration. One of the things that has been pushing exploratory activities like making out of schools is rigid curricular standardization so we didn't want to come in and give everyone step by step instructions on how to build specific things because that would be defeating the purpose of our workshops.
The workshop we run most often with younger groups is what we call "Creature-mash Vibrobots." We start off with a brainstorming phase of making two lists: one of land animals, the other of water animals. We encourage quantity over detailed analysis of whether animals are "cool" enough to include on the list. When these lists are full, we have them pick one animal from each list and mash them together into new hybrid creatures (koalawhal, giraffish, jellypig, etc.) and sketch them. We then bring out pager motors, watch batteries and a whole bunch of craft supplies and tell them to build the creature they've just sketched. We don't give them much direction on how to make different body parts and encourage them to prototype their way to a creature that looks cool and scoots around in interesting ways. When the workshop is over, we have them share stories about where their creature lives, what they eat, and if they're friends with any of their classmates' creations.
The workshop we run with older audiences is a laser-cut stamp making/awareness campaign workshop centered around a social cause. In this workshop, the prompt for brainstorming is "ways to make the world a better place." Once participants choose a social cause, we have them design logos that symbolize the cause (we use the recycling symbol as an example) and also prototype and build handles out of clay. While their handles are baking, we have them write letters to their parents, principals, or the president about why they want their change to occur. Didi put together a great little short video about the workshop that explains the whole thing well.
GM: With constant budget cuts, do you have any suggestions for how teachers can continue to teach making in the classroom?
JC: We've found that schools and teachers that set aside physical space for making activities (ranging in scale from a little cart full of tools and materials to a whole room dedicated to making) more successfully integrate making activities into their classroom. We've also come across a number of teacher resource centers that provide low-cost, high-quality kits for teachers to bring into classes like (RAFT in the Bay area, and Trash4Teaching in the LA area and others).
Beyond that, just having a willingness to be flexible and try new things and activities (and to be the guinea pig for the rest of the school) goes a long way.
GM: With the summer tour now over, is this the end for SparkTruck?
JC: No. We want the summer tour to be just the beginning or prototype for a longer-running project to bring exploration, prototyping, and making to kids everywhere. We're currently talking with Stanford and other stakeholders about making SparkTruck an annual student project that a new batch of students can prototype with during the school year, then take across the country in the summer after they graduate. There are a bunch of details to be worked out still, but we're hopeful we'll be able to find a way to make things work. Beyond that, we've met a number of passionate teachers and makers all across the country that are working on SparkTruck inspired projects, and we look forward to see mini mobile maker vehicles traversing schools, districts, and regions all around the US.
GM: Do you think there's any chance someone could make a financially-viable business with an idea similar to SparkTruck?
JC: We've actually been asked that by a number of people. People from India, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and France have all asked if we're franchising SparkTruck (which is pretty amusing to us). While we don't doubt that there is a business to be made traveling around to different schools, companies, birthday parties, etc. and bringing tools and technology for making (we ended up being revenue positive over the life of the project), this is not something SparkTruck as a project is seeking to do. For us, the ability to set our own course and do a lot of learning along the way (and not feeling like SparkTruck is a job) is why we want to keep SparkTruck alive in an educational context.
GM: What question did you get asked most often by the kids?
JC: "Are you coming back tomorrow?"
GM: What questions did you get asked most often by the teachers/parents?
JC: "Which one of those is the 3D printer?"
"How much does the laser cutter cost?"
"How often do you have to fill up?"
"Is this your job?"
GM: What are some of your happiest/funniest/scariest stories from the trip?
JC: Scariest: At one point in Utah we realized that our "Low fuel" light was on and we had 75 miles to the nearest gas station. We were seriously considering getting out to push, but then, miraculously, there happened to be a gas station 20 miles down the road that hadn't popped up on our map for some reason.
Funniest: In New York, we managed to book a workshop at the United Nations International School on the same week that the UN General Assembly was in session. Jason and Didi arrived via subway while Eugene was going to drive the truck down from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It turned out that the "21 minute" drive took over an hour and a half in pouring rain in a gridlocked city, as the truck inched its way down streets full of taxis and traffic-directing policemen. Jason managed to stall by showing a slideshow of the trip so far and Eugene ran into the room 15 minutes late, as Jason was on the last slide. Everyone came out to the truck and as far as we think, no one knew that the truck was late.
Coolest: Our visit to East Longmeadow, MA was orchestrated by a teacher named Donna Salo. She used our visit as an excuse to pull together a huge science and creativity fair that featured a school gym full of amazing hands-on exhibits, and hundreds of middle school students got to come and participate. At the end of the fair, a fourth-grader came up to Donna and said, "You know, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience." That was unbelievably heartwarming.
GM: What did you learn during the trip?
JC: The experience is so fresh that we think it'll take some time for all the learnings to fully simmer out. We certainly learned all sorts of things about US geography, the regional cuisines, and prices of gas, and lots of ways to use bungee cords to fix or secure almost anything. But we also learned that sometimes you don't need to know exactly where you're going or exactly how you get there, as long as you're okay with a little bit of improvising and trust that there are lots of awesome people ready to help you out.
GM: If someone gave you the opportunity to do this all over again next summer, would you take it? What would you do differently?
JC: Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) no. 15,323 miles and four months is a long time to be on the road, and I think the current truck team is looking forward to taking the SparkTruck spirit forward in other ventures. We do, however, want to give the next batch of students an opportunity to go on an awesome adventure next summer and are actively working on how to do that.
GM: Can people still donate to SparkTruck? Where will the money go now that the tour is over?
JC: People can still donate through our online portal: www.sparktruck.org/donate
The money will go towards supporting the future of SparkTruck and make sure that the next batch of Sparkees are able to travel across the country next summer.
Thank you, Jason, and congrats to the team on finally making it back home! For our readers who want to hear more about SparkTruck, the team has put a collection of wonderful videos on their SparkTruck YouTube channel.
