Etextile Bracelets = Fun with Felting

I recently started experimenting with needle and wet felting after a generous friend gave me some of her beloved wool stash!

While I've been dabbling with etextiles for about three years, my interest in wool as a medium was piqued by Barbara Liedahl's Ultimate Felt Bracelet with LEDs Instructable (CC BY NC).  A fresh take on an old idea, Liedahl's detailed tutorial inspired me to set aside the craft store felt to make something unique.

My first pieces of felt were fun to make, even if they were a tad on the bulky side.  

Needle felting propelled me into a meditative state almost immediately!

While I was happy that I'd used slow flashing 5mm RGB LEDs to add visual interest, I thought my sewing along the edges looked a bit sloppy.

In the second iteration, I added a snap switch and substituted machine stitching along the edges.  

Circuit details of the snap switch are depicted below, although I used different LEDs for this project.

Thank you, Barbara Liedahl!  

Here are a few more bracelets I've made for friends, including one that incorporates an Attiny85 (bottom).

Switches, GoAnimate, and Creating a Transcript on YouTube

I have recently started playing with the online animation tool Go Animate for Schools to practice creating instruction in the form of dialogue between characters.

I created the video featured here, which discusses how switches work, as a tool that might be added to the Girls Make IT Google Classroom resources.  I like the idea of creating video-based instruction for the site, because it will make it easier for the girls to share their learning with others and to revisit concepts at their leisure.

In the process, I learned something new about YouTube and how it can be used to advance Universal Design for Learning!  Did you know that you can add a transcript to videos in YouTube, allowing your viewers to see the audio written out in text?  Under the settings of YouTube, you can do this by typing in your own Subtitles or Closed Captions.  Or, you can have YouTube translate the script using a voice to text feature.  (When I tried that, however, I had to go in and edit several of the captions.)

To access a transcript, you'd simply need to go to description of the video and click on "More" to find the "Transcript" option.  Alternatively, you could turn the captions on if you wanted to see the text at the bottom of the video.