Online Sewing Lessons for Beginners
We’re releasing prototype micro-lessons for a short online course, an “Introduction to Sewing Machines”. This short course will help new sewing machine users become comfortable with basic operation and safety, help more experienced users refresh their knowledge.
The first online sewing lesson
Please check out our first sewing lesson and let us know what you think! In this first short lesson, we review common sewing machine parts and what they do. We take a quick look at the power switch, tension management, take-up lever, hand-wheel, bobbin-winder and more. Subsequent lessons will dive deeper into machine operation.
Other lessons in the module
As we get underway, we’ll roll out each lesson, one by one, as they come off our assembly line. Please have a look, and subscribe to be notified of new lessons as they’re released every few weeks. Eventually there’ll be six lesson modules and we’ll post a short blog to announce each as they roll off our assembly line so you can check them out.
About Soup Stone’s micro-learning courses
Soup Stone’s short micro-learning courses will contain four to six micro-lessons, consumed in as little as five minutes each. They’re intended to enrich hands-on instructor led training workshops. For example, several of the micro-lessons will help set the stage before a workshop, and several will help reinforce concepts after the workshop. This blended approach expands a hands-on workshop into a several weeks learning experience.
We aim to build similar short courses for up to 50 common shop machines and tools. Right now, we are building prototypes. Please consider them drafts for comment. Let us know what you think and how we can improve them. We’d love to hear from you!
Do you manage a makerspace or know someone who does? Do you serve on the board of a maker space? Are you a contributor, passionate parent, able-bodied volunteer? Mayor or local official sensing new jobs and economic development opportunities in the coming microfabrication revolution? Want to lexpand your makerspace learning programs?
After several years of product development, we're finally poking our heads out like the proverbial groundhog to take a look around. We're positioning for a Indiegogo campaign. We expect to launch in several months. We'll be building buzz as we head to campaign launch. We hope you'll join our voyage of discovery! Please visit regularly, check out our product demos, sign up for our list and be sure to visit us on Facebook. We'd love an opportunity to connect and get acquainted.
Who are we and what do we do? We're a small and dedicated group of instructional designers passionate about the global Maker Movement. We've figured out how to rapidly design, build and distribute short online for basic shop tool instruction. Our lessons work best in nonformal technical training settings, especially community maker space workshops. We can help turn a two hour hands on workshop into a powerful two week learning experience.
Our online lessons, designed in part by expert makerspace workshop instructors will blend with, not replace, essential hands-on training. Short micro-lessons consumed by learners both before and after instructor led workshops creates a proven brain-based "pacing effect" that reinforces (but does not replace) hands-on training, The result is a deeper instructional experience that helps new learners become more comfortable and safe with a particular tool or machine.
This is not boring corporate elearning. We're inspired by Sesame Street. For example, we use puppets just like Grouch on Sesame Street. And we love the famous Lewis Carroll nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark" a classic tale of teamwork, invention and risk. We've adapted and updated Carroll's mythical ship's crew of misfits as they bravely sail on a voyage of discovery for the elusive Snark.
Indeed, physicists have named a recently disovered and elusive particle, the Snark. For good reason! Like many makers, the Snark antiproton is "a peculiar creature, that won'
And, help more makers of all ages, become more comfortable with more tools in the years to come.