Innovative artists in the creative fields.
- Air Rocket Works: “The Fun Aspect” March 10, 2025
(Rick’s photo courtesy of Angie Scheetle; Keith’s photo courtesy of Tanya Violette.) As Air Rocket Works Co-Founders Rick Schertle and Keith Violette discuss their work, one word keeps coming up.
“Fun”.
That’s because Rick and Keith, both passionate makers, enjoy creating cool things that fly.
And so do the teachers, students, parents and various enthusiasts who get to build and launch their rockets–and learn engineering, hands-on, while having a great time!
(California STEAM Symposium, Anaheim, 2019.) An unexpected venture
Rick and Keith’s small business, Air Rocket Works, came about almost by accident.
It all started when Rick, a middle-school teacher, dad and lifelong maker whose MAKE magazine bio says he “specialized in fun growing up”, became intrigued with the idea of making a compressed air rocket launcher.
Rick came up with a project that, unlike other launchers available at the time, was inexpensive to create, as well as durable–and a lot of fun!
About a year after publishing his project in MAKE magazine, Rick and his family assembled a few rocket kits, and offered them through the magazine. When they sold out rapidly and customers wanted more, he began exhibiting his rockets and rocket launchers at maker fairs.
Dual-coast creativity
Meanwhile, Keith, who is an engineer by profession, as well as a dad and a maker who describes himself as a “big kid”, saw Rick’s rocket launcher project and brainstormed ways to create a new working air rocket glider.
Keith and his son took videos and sent photos of their finished work to Rick–and the rest is history.
Today, Rick and Keith, who live in California and New Hampshire, respectively, have numerous rockets and launchers available on their website. They’ve developed rockets and launchers for educational programs all around the world. These include educational outreach programs by NASA, United Launch Alliance and The Tech Museum of Innovation.
Meanwhile, they continue to wow visitors at maker fairs–and may very well be coming to Maker Faire Bay Area this September!
(Like to get some hands-on experience before then? Here’s a link to Rick’s book “Planes, Gliders and Paper Rockets: Simple Flying Things Anyone Can Make” on Amazon!)
Rick and Keith shared the story of Air Rocket Works, discussed some of their favorite experiences and offered a preview of what’s next!
On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:
- How “specializing in fun” led to Rick’s career path, as a maker teacher, entrepreneur and author;
- How Keith’s background enabled him to develop his talents for prototyping creative ideas, and led to his career as an inventor and mechanical engineer;
- The story of their partnership in their family-owned small business;
- What led Rick to create the air rocket launcher that started the whole thing!;
- Rick’s experience, exhibiting his creation at his first Maker Faire;
- How Keith came onboard, through his passion for making “cool stuff”;
- Rick and Keith’s experiences with their early collaborations;
- A “shameless plug” of some of the products on their website shop;
- How NASA Kennedy Space Center became intrigued and wound up contributing free templates!
- The “arts” aspect of what Rick and Keith are doing, with Air Rocket Works;
- Rick and Keith’s perspectives on starting their small business, and why it worked well;
- RIck and Keith’s advice to parents or educators who would like to implement maker festivals or activities at local schools;
- How you can get involved, if you’d like to!
- iBoda: “The Joy of Creating” February 27, 2025
“I want more people to use our platform and find out that art-making is fun,” says iBoda CEO Professor Sunah Kim.
And her new South Korea-based platform offers students multiple opportunities to make that discovery.
Using AI as a tool in collaboration with art education experts from Hanyang University in Seoul, iBoda assesses a student’s artistic tendencies, as well as the art styles they prefer. Then, based on these findings, the platform customizes art lessons to that individual’s interests and abilities.
Collaborating creatives
From there, the art educators assess the student’s uploaded work, guiding them as they improve. The student also does a self-assessment, and the platform allows them to chart their development in a “process-folio”.
In addition, students can display their work in online galleries. and write about what they’ve created. Art educators can use the platform to design lessons customized to individual student interests, and resources are available, including lesson plans and videos on specific techniques. And the iBoda platform features multiple media for art creation, including weaving, origami and digital art. (Several examples of student work are shown on their Instagram page.)
It’s all about creativity as an ongoing process.
“(Art-making) should be continuous,” says Professor Kim.
“It’s not some activity you can do one day and stop.”
She’s speaking from considerable experience.
An artist for as long as she can remember, Professor Kim holds multiple art-education credentials. She is a Professor in the Department of Art Education at Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea. She chairs three art-related graduate programs at HYU, as well as serving as Director of the university’s Art Gifted Education Institute. In addition, she is the Director of the Hanyang Education in Art + Design Lab.
Professor Kim shared the story of the iBoda platform, offered a look at the ways it works and discussed the ways she’d like to expand the platform in the future.
On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:
- Professor Kim’s creative journey, as an artist;
- What she learned about teaching art, when she gave her first classes;
- How teachers and their students can use the iBoda platform;
- Professor Kim’s thoughts on challenging students to take risks and explore their ideas, while creating art;
- Her perspective on “failure” during the art-making learning process;
- Some of the new lessons currently being added to the iBoda platform, exploring new media and materials;
- How a teacher can create their own “virtual gallery” on the platform, for a specific class;
- How iBoda makes art-history content relevant to students;
- Professor Kim’s future vision for the platform.
Continue reading → - AI: Agility Plus Ideas February 3, 2025
In honor of XR Women, hosting their “Thrive in 2025” Symposium this upcoming weekend, please enjoy this reposting of one of our top episodes of 2024!
This post and podcast are for informational purposes only, and are not intended as legal advice. Please contact a legal professional with any law-related questions.
(Photo courtesy of In Her Image Photography, and used with permission.) “I think we, as human beings, are at our best when we are using AI as a thought partner,” says workplace futurist and bestselling author Marti Konstant.
Her advice for making artificial intelligence your “thought partner”, as she explores in her book, “Activate Your Agile Career: How Responding to Change Will Inspire Your Life’s Work“? Start at the level of your profession.
And from there, you can customize the ways AI can work, to enhance, rather than replace, your own creative talents.
In this interview from September 2024, we discuss the ways Marti’s term “AI-gility” allows users to put artificial intelligence to work to spark new ideas.
Marti talked about her background, explained some of the ways artificial intelligence can boost the creative process for artists and educators, and offered a look at some of her favorite AI resources.
On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:
- What first inspired Marti to become an artist;
- The career path which took her to her work in career agility as a workplace futurist;
- How she first encountered artificial intelligence in her work;
- Guidelines, for anyone who’d like to start using AI in their career;
- An exercise which shows how artificial intelligence can become a “thought partner” in teaching;
- A technique that could help avoid “scraping” when using AI;
- Some of Marti’s favorite AI resources for creatives;
- How one such resource might help with personal branding for creative work;
- One experience Marti had, introducing a novelist to practical AI for her creative process;
- Future skills creatives will need, in making AI their “thought partner”, now and in future projects;
- Some of Marti’s personal favorite ways to use AI to enhance her work and well-being;