The STEAMLabs community makerspace teamed up with a grade 6 class from Vocal Music Academy, a public elementary school in downtown Toronto, to create a working model of the Ontario Power System. It pulls XML files and displays the live power generation mix from renewable and other sources on a 3D printed display on RGB LED strips. Arduino coding on a Spark Core provides the brains.

The kids learned HTML, CSS and Javascript to build a web interface to send commands to the Spark and explain how the system works. Their project was accepted as an exhibition at the TIFF DigiPlaySpace. The kids presented their project to adults and other kids at the event. STEAMLabs has also published a free, open source Internet of Things teaching kit to enable other educators to make projects with Internet brains.

STEAMLabs is currently crowd-funding a new makerspace in Toronto. They’re almost there, a few hundred dollars short of their target, with a couple of days to go. Help them help kids and adults make amazing things! When Hackaday visited Toronto recently, [Andy Brown] dropped in to show off this project. Projects like these which let kids become creators of technology, rather than mere consumers, is one of the best ways to get them hooked to hacking from an early age.

Massimo Banzi  will be featured as  Meet the Media Guru at #DigifestTO2014 in Toronto on the 9th of May!

Digifest is Toronto’s international festival celebrating digital creativity and this year the theme is Digital Urbanism and the Future of Cities:

For the first time in our history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. With a continual growth of 60 million urban residents every year, 70% of the population will live in cities by 2050.

If you are not staying in that part of the world, follow the livestream starting at 4.30 pm local time (20.30 GMT).