howtoons

Howtoons are cartoons showing kids of all ages "How To" build things. Each illustrated episode is a stand-alone fun adventure accessible to all. Our Howtoons are designed to encourage children to be active participants in discovering the world through Play-that-Matters -- fun, creative, and inventive -- and to rely a lot less on mass-consumable entertainment.

Much like MIT has OpenCourseWare distributing curricular materials for college students worldwide, our Howtoons are OpenKidsWare, with practical build-it projects letting kids learn-by-doing, MIT-style!

Saul Griffith and Joost Bonsen started and incubated the Howtoons Project while graduate students at MIT, working in close concert with professional illustrator Nick Dragotta as well as literally hundreds of fellow students, alumni, faculty, friends and their fantastic kids. We have received and continue to welcome ideas from contributors world-wide. One important caveat -- we build and refine absolutely everything we publish and always try variations of each design on a volunteer group of kids and parents. Everything works!

Howtoons is working with Harper Collins Books to produce fully illustrated books of the projects you see here and many more. Howtoons are built at Other Lab Inc. in San Francisco, California.

In big-picture terms, we see Howtoons as fast-spreading "Tools of Mass Construction" inspiring kids everywhere to think about hopeful futures while giving them both practical skills and nurturing the creative savvy needed to solve their own very real problems.

For more kid-related projects, check out the beta Howtoons projects. and http://www.howtoons.com

contact: info@howtoons.com