Panther -- Day 3

Doodlebots and Toy Hacking
Attendance: 10 - 12

Thank you Gabe for being a great help at set up and clean up. And for making a great doodlebot out of a scavenged CD player that drew fantastic cirles.

The day at Panther started with me (Saafir) and Gabe setting up materials for Doodlebots and Toy Hacking in the teen room. Working in the teen room feels much more comfortable compared to the art or multi-purpose room. This is their space and they have developed customary ways to use it. We just fall in wherever it makes sense. We have developed incredible goodwill among the wider group at the club -- all the younger kids LOVE the museum folks. The teenagers put their CD’s on the laptops in the computer room and burn mix CD’s to play in the teen room. Yin-Yang Twins, Lil’ John, Ginuwine, etc. This is the music that they listen to at school and at home, most of it is sexually explicit and full of profanity. It doesnt' always work to say "hey man, turn that off". Being a hard-ass to get them to conform often backfires and makes them more recalcitrant. How do you avoid trampling their egos while keeping order in the room? We need to set up some ground rules but we want to give them some freedom. Maybe we'll get some decent headphones so they can listen to whatever the they want to without me having to regulate. Until then, I'm using the “Grandma rule” for appropriate music and language -- if you wouldn't listen to it in front of your grandmother, don't listen to it in front of me.

The boys were more into the toy hacking than some of the girls. Nisha, Taylor, and Jasmine spent a lot of time on BlackPlanet.com inserting photos of Ludacris and Ant Banks into their webpages. We ended up with some disassembled action figure toys and five or six doodlebots. Awesome night.