Open Source License

The content on this site may have been pulled from other open source sites, but typically the interpretation and presentation is primarily the Intellectual Property of Jim Burnham, - TopClown@STEAMClown.org at www.steamclown.org and the Student curriculum can be found under the specific Mechatronics Engineering Units section of this web site.

If you do use my material, and make changes, I would appreciate getting a copy... because if you are making changes, it means that you think there is a better way to teach this… and I would really appreciate understanding that. Please send me feedback on my Questions or Feedback form. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or comment.

You also should keep and include my STEAM Clown Logo and Copyright in any derivative works you create. I would appreciate if you would include one of these images in any docs or web pages you create and link it to www.steamclown.org

Curriculum, Lesson Plans, Presentations, Labs License & Attribution

This presentation and content is distributed under the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 This means that you can use this for any Non-Commercial Educational purpose.

My best attempt to properly attribute, or reference any other sources or work I have used are listed in the Appendix of any Units, lesson plans, Student presentations, labs or Tutorials. If you find cases of infringement, please let me know.

Coding License & Attribution

This interpretation is primarily the Intellectual Property of Jim Burnham, - TopClown@STEAMClown.org at www.steamclown.org

The programming code found in this presentation or linked to on my Github site is distributed under the:

GNU General Public License v3.0

European Union Public Licence EUPL 1.2 or later

My best attempt to properly attribute, or reference any other sources or work I have used are listed in the Appendix of any Units, lesson plans, Student presentations, labs or Tutorials. If you find cases of infringement, please let me know.

My Philosophy on Open Source:

I’m a true believer in Opensource and creative commons licensing…

Hi, my name is Jim Burnham, and I’m a Mechatronics teacher here at Silicon Valley CTE in San Jose. SVCTE is a public CTE High School that pulls from 40 + other public and private High Schools here in the Silicon Valley area. Students come for 3 hours every day...

I get them for 3 hours , every day... so we ca really dig into topics. I’m reaching out as a fellow Instructor, and would like to see if you would be willing to share resources, lesson plans, and Lab. I’m specifically looking for lesson plans geared to High school, in the topics of Electronics, Arduinos, Raspberry PI, 3D Printing, and Robotics.

First, a little about me: Until Aug of 2016, I was working full time as an Engineer at Xilinx. They are the inventor of the FPGA, programmable SoCs, and now, more cool Adaptable and Intelligent products... They were awesome to work for, and it was a wild technological ride… but it has always been noodling around in my head to be a High School teacher…

So here I am. I’m super excited, because… heck… I get to teach Mechatronics… which is another way of saying FIRE Breathing Robots… Yes, I get to teach High School kids how to build FIRE Breathing Robots… I would challenge you to come up with a better career… OK, Sure, working as an Engineer on Mars might be better, but for now, FIRE Breathing Robots will do just fine.

In the 2017-2018 school year, SVCTE started a Mechatronics program, and I started to build and create the curriculum. As any teacher knows, building a new program with all new, nonexistent content is a daunting but rewarding task.

Second, let me explain my philosophy on sharing curriculum: Coming from the Tech industry, where Intellectual property is currency, where most companies tend to not share their technology or work, I have had some growing pains. My first year of teaching, when I taught a Cyber Security class, I felt like all my lesson plans and collateral that I had created had value… and it did... I spent a lot of time one it...

I came to realize that I’m really not competing with other teachers. I work in San Jose, and maybe I have some local competition, but in reality, if a student is not coming to my class or my school, then I’m really not competing with that other teachers in any way… and if you are a teacher who works more than a District away, then we really are not competitors. Let's Share... Collaborate... Help each other...

I have come to the opinion, that while I may have sweat blood and tears developing a lesson plan, it is more value to students if it’s shared in an Open Source and creative commons licensed way…

So… That is my plan. I’m going to share virtually everything I develop. I know that there is lots of folks who think that they should get some value for the material they develop, and that is fine. I don’t begrudge them that. If they can make that work, great. I’m just saying that is not what I’m going to do.

Sure, if someone found any collateral I created useful and valuable and wanted to recognize the time that went into it, and wants to send me an AMAZON gift card, buy me something off my Amazon Wish List, or drop something in my STEAM Clown's PayPal pool page … that is fine and welcome… just not required.

So… how about it… want to get on the open source band wagon? I know there is not a lot for Mechatronics yet, but I’m going to share all my material on www.steamclown.org. this is my personal domain. I will always try to give credit where credit is due. I will, to the best of my ability, site any sources, and point to where I got stuff.

I also think that we, as educators should not share copyright material. So to that end, I’m going to also do my best to not post docs and PDF that are not already in the public domain. I may use some material from books I have bought. I will always be re-framing and potentially enhanced or reworked it to work in my class under "Fair Use", but fair use aside, my goal is to not appropriate content that someone has a copyright...

With that said, I’m a true believer in Opensource and creative commons licensing… and will promote, modify and enhance any open content that I find useful… and I will site the source and if modified, re-post on my site for anyone to use, critique, or modify.