SparkFun teaching workshop

SparkFun is an electronics supplier based out of Boulder, CO. It is a company actually started by a CU grad. It's core business is selling electronic components for the DIY-types. Microcontrollers, batteries, sensors, etc.

But, aside from the parts themselves, SparkFun has invested a lot of energy into getting people excited about making cool stuff. In today's world, if it's going to be cool, it's gotta have sensors and motors and automation of some sort. Getting all these parts to talk to each other can be a non-trivial challenge, but SparkFun provides tons of tutorials to get you started.

Additionally, a big part of SparkFun's mission is to revolutionize electronics education (and more broadly, engineering education), to make it fun and inspiring and creative again. Therefore, they host a lot of hands-on tutorials and impromptu "maker spaces" around the country, for teachers and educators, to pass on cool lessons, ideas, and tools, and to just provide an opportunity for people to get inspired and be creative.

Mike Grusin, of SparkFun Electronics, demonstrates the proper assembly and programming procedure for a small computer to be fitted to the payload of a weather balloon to BVSD science teachers during a training session on CU Boulder's campus on Monday morning. Ryan Gooding for the DC, August 17, 2015.

I helped out at one of these workshops. BVSD Science Teachers were given the opportunity to play with SparkFun stuff during one of their breakout sessions of a professional development seminar. The session was held at CU, hosted in large part by the CU Engineering School, where I was working as an outreach fellow at the time. Full disclosure, one of SparkFun's chief "Education Engineers" is a good friend of mine, so I was already drinking the coolaid :)

The session was reported on by both CU and the Daily Camera. Fun Day!