Wikiseat Project: Chair Design Journal Assignment #3 - Materials

by Sean Wheeler

As we've discussed in class, the Wikiseat project will require a good deal of ingenuity from you.  Perhaps the most essential question will center around materials.  What are you going to make your chair from?  How will you get these materials?  Is your plan realistic and achievable?

(Please do not simply answer the questions.  Give this some thought and give me your response to the whole issue of materials.

"My biggest problem doing this project is getting the materials to build it.  I have asked my family members and they said that they would be able to help me a bit with this problem. My grandpa said I can look around in his garage if needed. Hopefully I can find some metal to make the legs out of, really, anything but wood for the legs. As for the seat I was going to use wood, then drape some cloth over the wood so it won't be so hard. Lastly I'll need screws to hold the chair all together. I believe that my plan is realistic, but not easy to do." - Branden

"I would like my chair to fit comfortably for the sitter. I would like it to be cushiony nad relaxing. In order to fulfill my sitter's desire I think I want to use cotton, styrofoam, and anything else that I can maybe find for cheap. I hope these materials will make me a good chair so I may need help from a professional chair builder or someone close to it. I'm going to have to get my materials for cheap. I will search yard sales, garage sales, lawns, or from people that aren't using materials that I need. The plan that I imagine I feel like it may be realistic with a little help, but on my own I don't think I may be able to pull it off. But overall, my chair will come together and hopefully it's a success." - Jasmine

"My first major challenge in the making of my chair would be for me to figure out what my chair can be made of while also keeping the idea realistic and the cost at a medium range. I would like to build the frame of my chair out of wood then make my arm rest, backrest, and seat cushioned. I’d like to have a foot rest coming from the bottom of my seat that is retractable. It would stand on three wooded legs. I would like to make my seat reclineable so I would have to look into getting the piece that allows my chair to recline and also have to figure out if my wood frame will allow me to have a reclineable chair. My secondary problem would soon become getting these materials I would use pieces from the old chair we have in our basement and I would ebay the needed piece to make my chair recline.  Asking family members and friends, I believe, will take me a long way to achieving a medium cost range chair with the power to hold me up." - Jianna

"My chair will be somewhere cozy! Its gonna have fur! Its not gonna be from an animal or anything its gonna be just like one of those fake furs from the store or something! I will get the legs.  from Home Depot. Then for the cushion and the fur, probably Joann Fabrics. It's one of those stores where you can gets arts and crafts from. I think i will be able to do it. Right now it doesn't seem that hard but when I actually get working on it I hope it won't be too difficult. It shouldn't be! I think the hardest part for me will be getting the cushion to stay on and making sure the bottom isn't too wide and making sure the top is perfect! My fear for this project is cutting something wrong then having to redo the whole project again. But I know for a fact it's not gonna turn our perfect the first time. Wer'e suppost to screw up on our chair. It's how we learn!" - Morgan

Wikiseat Project: Chair Design Journal Assignment #2 - Influences

by Sean Wheeler

I'd like you to use this journal entry to occasionaly post pictures of things that you find interesting or perhaps useful in the design of your chair.  You shouldn't limit yourself to only finding pictures of chairs. 
For a great example of desing influences, check out this page.  If you look in the left hand column, you can see the way that jet design influenced Marc Newton's chair designs.

This assignment was intended more for student use, so I'll not be posting any of their responses here. 

Wikiseat Project: Chair Design Journal Assignment #1 - What's the Problem?

by Sean Wheeler

For this journal assignment, I'd like you to write a paragraph that takes into consideration the following questions:
- Where do you envision your chair being used? (ex.  Is it an outdoor chair?  Does it have to fit in with the decor of your bedroom?  Will this chair be used everyday, or just once in awhile?)
- Who will use your chair? (A kid?  You?  A specific person?)
- What problem do you hope to solve with your chair?  (We know a chair is for sitting, but what, specifically, does your chair do that would be useful.  Essentially, I want to know the specific function of your specific chair.)

"Have you ever got that feeling that you just want to sit in a chair and chill with your favorite music? Or when you have to do home work and you just want to listen to something to get your mind off of the boring work, and want to lay down because you had a rough day. Well that’s my problem. So I’m going to do something about my problem for me and others that have same problem as me. I will make a chair that you can listen to your favorite tunes in and not just for sitting but laying down in also. This chair has speakers that you can hook onto your iPod, iPhone, and cell phone. The laying down part of the chair is that you can fold it back from a chair to a bed. " 
- Chris

"My room is going to be remodled as an arabian genie in a lamp theme and I need a chair that will complement my new room. I don't have any seating other than a rocking chair that not only does not go with my theme, but it is also very uncomfortable to sit in and I use it more as clothing rack than a source of seating. My colors for the room are fuschia, aquamarine, bright orange, and gold accents."
- Kali

"My room has alot of collages on my walls. There is one empty space in my room and it would be the perfect place to watch tv comfortaby in my room. there is not a good space to watch tv in my room right now because it hurts my neck to look at the tv for too long in my bed.

I think it would be really cool if I made a collage chair to fit the empty space. It would match my room perfectly. I would make sure that it is very comfortable, and will have a foot rest with padding. I also like the idea of a collage made out fabric, like a quilt pattern on my chair, that way it would be a very comfortable place to sit in my room. I also like the idea of using parts and pieces of old bikes.

I can picture this as the perfect place to watch tv, and I won't have to watch tv in the living room with my parents anymore, because I will be perfectly comfortable in my room, and my neck won't hurt anymore. Also, my room will no longer have an annoying empty corner anymore." 

- Courtney

"I want my chair to solve problems that others may have. Lots of chairs seem to hurt people’s backs, or strain their legs, so I thought of a more curved chair to make things a bit more comfortable. I also found that armrests seem to be nice also, so I will try to put that in with my chair. Chairs are almost everywhere you go, from in the park, to in your bedroom. I would like my chair to be located in someone’s living room where it would be used the most often. Not only are chairs everywhere, but on top of that, they have their own textures and colors, from leather to wood. They can match, but they don’t have to. I think that if a chair matches everything else that it is around, it just adds to the room, where if you have a chair that does not fit the room at all, it may make the room look bad, because of that one thing which stands out. I would like my chair to be the one that fits in best."

- Andrew

The Wikiseat Project - Getting the "Catalysts" and Emerson's "The American Scholar"

by Sean Wheeler

The "Catalysts" were handed out on the 14th of September, and I've been a bit busy since then!  The video above shows the first group of students as they picked out their "Catalyst" and the project suddenly became very real for them.  It was a great day and I was sure to take tons of pictures and conduct a few video interviews.  I haven't had a chance to edit the interviews together yet, but I can honestly say that the whole project took a definite turn when they got the parts in their hands. 

The "Catalysts" were constructed by John Malloy, a local tradesman, as a side-project/favor and they turned out great.  Our pieces still need the holes drilled, and might require some paint, but John was super helpful with his pricing and he came through for us as I was starting to worry if this thing would ever get off the ground.  He documented his process and will be meeting with the students to discuss his process in the upcoming week or two.  I look forward to having my students get a glimpse into the steps that John took in learning how to build the part, as well as the discussion that my students will be able to have about their own learning process as their work on the Wikiseat begins.

We're reading Ralph Waldo Emerson as well.  Last week had us working with "The American Scholar", this week we're tackling "Self-Reliance".  In the opening of "The American Scholar", Emerson lays out what he saw to a crucial issue that he hoped the American students would come to both realize and confront, 

It is one of those fables which out of an unknown antiquity convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.


The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, -- present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,--a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.


Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship.

The students and I got pretty deep into this one.  I started by asking them what they wanted to be in ten years.  They told me they wanted to be doctors, veterinarians, athletes, business executives, salon owners, artists, and rappers.  It was a set-up question, of course.  I pointed out to them that nobody said "happy", or "in love", or "interested", or anything of that ilk.  They all told me that ten years from now they wanted to be a job.  They didn't say anything about wanting to be a person.  What would Emerson think of these answers?  He'd say we hadn't learned anything since he pointed out the problem over 100 years ago.  My students have the message loud and clear.  They go to school, to get into college, to get a job and then they can start their "life".  Emerson holds that the American student should be more closely tied to what Walter Gropius referred to when he said of his work with the Bauhaus academy that,  "Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society. "  With his admonitions to "study nature" and to acquire an "active soul", Emerson calls on American students to recognize and confront the dignity of creation as a vital component of our educational mission.  He goes on to point out that all too often, "Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books."

This project, for us, is a way of exploring Emerson's ideas.  The students are doing instead of getting, making instead of regurgitating, and engaged rather than being passive participants in their learning.  I've got tons to process and the project keeps moving forward at a rapid pace.  I'll be posting the journal assignments (and hopefully a few student responses), posting random interviews and pictures,  and discussing all of the interesting turns the project is taking along the way (ex.  The Geometry teacher and I have been holding cross-curricular classes for the past three days!).  Stay tuned and please be patient as I try my best to work with the kids, plan the next step, and reflect on the vast amount of learning that has gone on thus far.

Wikiseat Napkin Drawings

The Wikiseat Project: So You're Going to Build A What in English Class?

by Sean Wheeler

A Wikiseat by Nicolas Weidinger

This past spring I stumbled onto an interesting project designed by Nicolas Weidinger called, Wikiseats.org. Nic explains the project by writing,  "A Wikiseat is a three legged stool that is built by hand. Each WikiSeat starts with a Catalyst that acts as a central support structure. The creator of a WikiSeat has the freedom to gather materials and find their own methods for building the seat."

The "Catalyst"

At the time, I was immediately struck by a desire to give it a go.  But I'd never built a chair before, I didn't know how to get a "Catalyst", and I'm terrible with tools.  I felt stuck before I even got out of the gate.  Navigating the project and learning all I would have to learn seemed so daunting.  My seat would probably stink anyway.  After a few weeks of having this gnawing feeling that I really did want to have a try at building a Wikiseat, and falling back on my litany of fears about actually learning how to navigate the project successfully and have it not end in abject failure, I realized that this was exactly like so many of my students feel when working on schoolwork.  It's a case in which the will to learn is there, but it's consumed by an inability to actually dive in for fear of failure or frustration.  I needed to learn how to learn, to navigate, and to talk about the process with someone who might listen and help.  So I decided to order 100 "Catalysts" and make the Wikiseat project the main focus of our first quarter in 10th grade American Literature.

A brief bit of context... I teach in a cohort of students and teachers in a program called LHS 2.0.  The teaching group consists of 9th grade and 10th grade core-subject teachers (Math, Social Studies, Science, Language Arts), an academic coach, and three Special Education teachers.  We use mastery grading, flexible block scheduling, blended online instruction, and problem-based learning as the core foundations of the program.  Each grade level contains a mix of randomly assigned students taken from our regular and special education population and the average class has 25 students.  Each student has been assigned a school-owned netbook.  The 10th grade team often uses a large lecture hall as a classroom, and we frequently hold classes with all 100 students at a time.  We work in two time blocks, each consisting of three 40-minute classes, and students take electives and lunch in the middle of our school day.  Cross-curricular and content area specific units share time throughout the school year.  

The thrust of this unit is towards building a basis in our classroom culture for what it means to learn.  The design process lends itself as an excellent model for real learning, and the Wikiseat project is an ideal way for students to participate in the design process.  Encountering a "Catalyst", be it a few sections of metal at odd angles or a problem that needs solved, is the first step in learning.  The problem compels the learning.  This is contrary to most current teaching practice in that most text-book based classrooms allow what is supposed to be learned to dictate what "problems" students should have to do to acquire the skill.  They've got it backwards.  After encountering a compelling problem (i.e. "I've got this chunk of metal, how am I going to make it into a seat?") designers then begin brainstorming, hypothesizing, modeling, and drafting.  Each of these skills can be found littered throughout our academic content standards, and when students have something to accomplish (like making a chair or writing an essay) I've noticed that these steps don't feel tacked-on or tedious.  The actual composition of a finished product requires a healthy willingness to fail, learn from mistakes, and seek feedback and input from outsiders.  Students, all too often, get mired in frustration and freeze at this stage of the learning process.  Either that or they rush through in a half-hearted effort to get it done and over with.  Design is only realized in use, when it is interacted with by an audience.  The more real the audience is to any designer, the more important that it has an effect on that audience.  This is also true for learning.  My students have shown a tremendous concern for the quality of their work when they have the opportunity to share it in an authentic context beyond our classroom.

The Wikiseat project will be the main focus of my posts for the near future.  I hope that people will follow along, comment, and help me to teach my students something that I really need to learn.

(Next Post --> "'This Is American Literature Class, Isn't It?': Ralph Waldo Emerson's, The American Scholar and the Wikiseat"

Technology Didn't Make the List

by Sean Wheeler

 f/m flickr.com CC Licensed by MinimalistPhotography101.com

In an all-day district meeting, I heard plenty about "roll-outs", action plans, and "The 5 Step Process".  Luckily, an academic coach next to me had reached the absolute limit of her attention span exactly when I did.  Mid-presentation, she turned to me and asked, "If there were three things that you'd say were the most important things to the work your group is doing in the classroom, what would they be?"  I didn't miss a beat.

1.  "We learn."

The teachers I work with think deeply about our need to model learning for our students.  We share links, discuss what's working, and all subscribe to a wide-variety of blogs and twitter feeds.  Our PLN expands all the time, and our students can clearly see that we are learning all the time.

2.  "We collaborate."

Our LHS 2.0 group 's collaborative model starts with the teachers.  We watch each other teach, jump in on each other's lessons, and work together to help our students regardless of content.  We co-design projects.  And we talk, all the time, about how we can work together better.

3. "We're patient."

Sometimes learning something takes awhile.  It takes some failure, some frustration, before ideas and skills start to set in.  Our natural inclination as teachers is to press for time, to move on because we're falling behind our pacing guide, or because we have to give a common assessment in two weeks and we can't afford to wait around for kids to actually learn the content.  The teachers I'm working with are learning to be patient.  We're not there yet, but we wouldn't be where we are without it.  Real learning takes time.

Of course, that isn't exactly what I said, but it was something like that.  The state "improvement coach" rolled on with his presentation.  "The Common Core = Rigor", or something to that effect.  The woman next to me leaned in and whispered, "But... technology wasn't on your list.  Why not?"

I'd like to say that I told her that technology wasn't the house but the hammer.  I would have loved to have asked her what her three things were.  It would have been worthwhile to go back and forth about the role of technology in the work that we do.  But none of that happened.  Just as she asked her question, the improvement coach broke us into "leadership teams" to make SMART goals.