On August 5th, 2017 DEFCON201 hosted r00tz Day, a Hacker and STEM interactive celebration at the MakerSpace in Newark Museum.
Stimulating kids of all ages and backgrounds, DEFCON 201 and it’s partners hosted various events through out the MakerSpace.
Co-Founder of DEFCON 201, Sidepocket (Jordan White), hosted a fun class on learning the properties of electricity via conductive dough that you can make at home with your own stove top. Children went home with a head full of knowledge and creativity, plus the recipe for conductive/insulating dough with small samples and an LED.
AfroCROWD, taught children and their parent how to leverage the editing tools of Wikipedia to craft and edit their own histories. Then as an application of this newfound knowledge, these new Wikipedians were given a list of influential local artist and icons of Newark’s history for them to finally create pages for these figures to be added to the digital tapestry of our city’s collective history.
TOOOL (The Open Organization of Lockpickers) engaged kids to the mechanical world of locks; how your locks work, how to manipulate and open them without keys and the insanely fascinating history behind the tumbler locking system. Children and parents also explored the Ballantine House and its 27 rooms to compare lock mechanisms of 1886 and modern mechanisms.
Children and Parents also asked questions about the Hacking Community, Privacy Concerns and were presented with two videos of interviews conducted by DEFCON 201 members Bianca and Heavhacker at r00tz Asylum 2017:
DEFCON 201 is a computer hardware and software workshop group made up of hackers, makers, technologists, STEM Teachers, Information Security and other unablable folk. We meet the Third Friday of every month at MakerBar (www.makerbar.com) to talk tech and learn hacking with lightning talks, open community projects, special events and more! DEFCON 201 is also a member of the EFA (Electronic Frontier Alliciance) with the EFF (Electronic Fronteir Foundation) and is a subset of the global DEFCON GROUPS movement. For more information about us and our next meet ups, go to: https://www.defcon201.org
The Newark Museum, in Newark, New Jersey, is the state’s largest museum. It holds fine collections of American Art, Decorative Arts, and Arts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the ancient world. The Newark Museum operates, as it has since its founding, in the public trust as a museum of service, and a leader in connecting objects and ideas to the needs and wishes of its constituencies. We believe that our art and science collections have the power to educate, inspire and transform individuals of all ages, and the local, regional, national and international communities that we serve. For more information about the museum please visit: http://www.newarkmuseum.org
Afro Free Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD) is a new initiative which seeks to increase the number of people of African Descent who actively partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software movements. Since its launch during Black Wiki History Month in 2015, Afrocrowd has sensitized thousands in its target audience about free culture crowdsourcing and the need to close the multicultural and gender gaps in Wikipedia. Afrocrowd has also held monthly multilingual editathons in partnership with cultural institutions such as the Brooklyn Public Library, the Studio Museum in Harlem, MOMA, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and Haiti Cultural Exchange. Afrocrowd has also trained future trainers in the target community. For more information visit http://www.afrocrowd.org
TOOOL NJ (The Open Organization of Lockpickers) is New Jersey’s premier Lockpicking Group. We are a group of individuals who are interested in security, how locks function & how to defeat them. The mission of the Open Organization Of Lockpickers is to advance the general public knowledge about locks and lockpicking. By examining locks, safes, and other such hardware and by publicly discussing our findings we hope to strip away the mystery with which so many of these products are imbued. For more information about TOOOL NJ go to: https://www.meetup.com/TOOOL-New-Jersey/
r00tz Asylum is a nonprofit dedicated to teaching kids around the world how to love being white-hat hackers. A white-hat hacker is someone who enjoys thinking of innovative new ways to make, break and use anything to create a better world. For more information please visit: https://www.r00tz.org
