TL;DR This week I need to close down this email newsletter for personal reasons. There’ll be one more email Sunday. Today this last Wednesday email begins to share some of my STEAM sources. Also I’m looking for freelance writing and editing work to help continue to pay down magazine debts.
The longer version: A little over a year ago I shut down the print and online version of my kids computing magazine. That left me with subscribers who had paid for 6+ future issues they would never receive.
It’s common practice in the small magazine business to say, “tough luck” to these stranded subscribers. I wanted to do something different. So I started this email newsletter 52 weeks ago. I wanted to provide kid-oriented STEM content for kids, parents, teachers, and librarians. Anyone with a kid in their life curious about tech. In the past year, I’ve published 103 emails with a 1000+ links to STEM topics and resources. I’ve also researched and wrote up 170+ STEM topics. Compared to my print magazine with six issues a year and 10 stories an issue, that’s at least three years of content. In one year.
In the past few months, I’ve realized that I have too many obligations in my personal life. It’s also been 12 years plus thinking about and creating STEM content for kids. I have a unique point of view people appreciate. It’s been a lot of fun to research topics. And to hear from teachers, parents, librarians, and kids. But I need to stop for personal reasons. I need to take time for myself and to be open to whatever is the next thing in my life. I’m very grateful to you and to everyone who has read the content I and our writers, editor, and designers produced the past dozen years.
I will be writing and editing, as I’ve done for 8 years in a day job for a real AI company (not OpenAI or Google). If you know of small freelance writing and editing projects, I’d be grateful for leads. I started this email newsletter in part to help pay down the personal magazine debts from the past dozen years. The magazine and this newsletter have been a passion project. I never took salary in all those years. Taking on freelance writing projects will help me continue to pay down that debt.
Anyway, this final Wednesday email today is a partial set of links to STEM resources I follow and recommend. They’ve been a source of fun topics to research and learn about. I hope you’ll find them interesting and educational too. In 2-3 weeks, I’ll send a last email with a browser bookmark file and an RSS OPML file of all my STEAM resources. Hopefully you’ll find them to be useful.
Sunday’s email will be the last from me. I’ll try to find some really fun oddball STEM links. (I hear parrots use the same vocal cords as humans do, for example. Imagine that. Might explain why I want a cracker.) Thank you so much for reading!
My STEAM Links
Here are five types of online resources that I’ve found interesting. Since I started the magazine, I’ve wanted readers to see themselves in stories about science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Plus there’s a lot of joy and fun in these topics. Weird stuff that’s also educational.
Rest of World
While this online magazine skews towards business, if you look closely there’s lots of personal interest stories. They cover how people use technology outside of North America and Europe.
Computer Science for Fun
I found this resource the first few years of publishing the magazine. It amazed me that the British educational system has such deep STEM/STEAM curriculum and other teacher resources. With a fun engaging approach.
Instagram Links
The other day I pulled together my Instagram links and discovered there’s 60+ of them. Oy. These are the ones that seem most reliably interesting to me.
https://www.instagram.com/oxford.mathematics
https://www.instagram.com/fryrsquared/
https://www.instagram.com/physicsisfun_official/
https://www.instagram.com/shebuildsrobots/
https://www.instagram.com/alberta.tech/
https://www.instagram.com/quantamag/
https://www.instagram.com/modernday_eratosthenes/
Kids STEAM Magazines
Being with my two kids and with kids in my extended family reminds me that being a kid is special. Kids are very open to the mysteries and silliness in life. These magazines capture that spirit.
https://www.illustoria.com
https://aquila.co.uk/
https://brainspacemagazine.com/
STEAM Projects
Whenever I went in search of projects, these sites were useful.
https://makezine.com/
https://www.instructables.com/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/
https://www.adafruit.com/
https://docs.arduino.cc/learn/
https://www.browndoggadgets.com/
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay
This Week
Our Sunday email this week will have fun often offbeat links about magic mud and baseballs, an inventor creating robot copies of himself, how games run the world, microplastics in our bodies, and a Japanese company 1500 years old. Plus a woman who used an Air Tag to catch a thief. Oh, and the parrot story I mentioned above. I did find it again. Look for the email this Sunday.
