• Now also take a moment to consider your own thinking during the session. You may like or dislike the concept of mindset but it is a valuable concept to reflect on how your mind is tackling things (or how it is geared up to do a task). Do you recognise aspects of thinking that could be helpful or not helpful for tinkering? Quickly sum up your thoughts and findings and discuss them with the others

During the animatronics session I was excited to try to make something with the materials. I was quite sure we could make something fun in about an hour. During the material session I was a bit less excited but still curious to see the materials. What I fortunately didn’t feel was overwhelmed. That is something I’ve experienced before, where we would get a task and there were so many options I wasn’t sure where to start. For a helpful aspect I believe being excited and working on something you’re interested in will nearly always help. • describe the materials quickly experienced in the first session. What makes them suitable?
BYOR: BYOR is a great way to do some simple things with sensors and actuators. The power bank makes it portable and it is very easy to use. However, by changing the components to make them easy to use there are also less options than with an Arduino Kit. The plug and play style of BYOR makes it very nice for tinkering
Gove sensor kit: I did not like this kit. The lack of instructions on paper was the first not great thing, then on the website there is still not an easy plug and play description, just exercises like for the CreaTe Arduino course. These exercises will likely help you learn how to work with the kit and Arduinos in general but I don’t think the little connecters make this kit that much better than just an Arduino starter kit. After you’ve done the simple things you can do with this kit you will have to use a breadboard anyway and I don’t think that a breadboard has such a steep learning curve you need to remove it to allow people to learn how to use Arduinos.
Makedo: Cardboard is a great material to use for tinkering! I myself have made many a great cardboard fortresses for my parent’s cats. But I never needed anything more than scissors, a Stanley knife and some trusty duct tape. Therefore, I don’t think these screws really do something useful.

All of the definitions mention the specific goal of the techniques. This is interesting because of the focus of the lecture on tinkering not having a specific goal. Tinkering is defined not by solving an issue but changing an already existing thing while trial-and-error and brainstorming are about imagining new things/solutions. Tinkering's definition also does not mention different techniques but small changes, implying that only one domain/method is used. Brainstorming is entirely theoretical in this definition only discussing ideas and not applying them
• which of the experienced tools and materials has the lowest threshold? i.e which materials are easiest to get started with (are grabbed right away, no thinking, no consideration)
The Makedo kit is very easy to understand because it takes the form of familiar tools. The screws immediately makes you think of other screws so you start to work.
• which of the experienced tools and materials has the highest ceiling? I.e, with which materials could you come closest to applications in the real world?
The Grove senso kit, It is just a slightly different Arduino starter and if I have learned one thing from CreaTe, it is that there are many many ways to use an Arduino.
• To which extent does the exact instruction play a role? Do you need an introduction in the materials(seed) or towards the goal (discovery) or the tooling/skills?
I can imagine you can quite easily destroy an Arduino board if you don’t have instructions. Knowing what is possible with Arduinos also helps with setting goals or thinking of projects.
• Can you recognise most of the aspects of the framework in action?
The seed is often quit clear in these toolkits as they show examples of what can be made to inspire you. The facilitation is there as well but not as clearly. The BYOR one does have clear facilitation, the grove kit is very unclear and only has digital facilitation and the Makedo does not have as much which is why it took us a long time to understand what the sharp pin is for. The discovery and toolbox are both represented well. The Makedo even comes in a toolbox shaped box.