Cardboard Creations: A Maker Education Camp
This post discusses my Cardboard Creations Maker Education Camp that was taught to fifteen 5 to 12 year old learners for five days, 2.5 hours each morning during Summer, 2017. It is split into three sections:
- Rational for Using No Tech, Minimal Cost Materials
- Some Pedagogical Perspectives
- Summer Maker Education Camp Project
Rationale for Using No Tech, Minimal Cost Materials
Cardboard Creations Maker Education Camp utilized no technology (except for projecting images of example projects on the whiteboard) and low/no cost materials. Many of the discussions about and actions related to integrating maker education into educational environments center around the use of new technologies such computer components (Raspberry Pis, Arduinos), interactive robots for kids (Dash and Dot, Ozobots, Spheros), and 3D printers. These technologies are lots of fun and I facilitate Robotics and Computer Science with my gifted students and at one of my summer camps. The learners engaged in these high tech learning activities with high excitement and motivation. Such high excitement, engagement and motivation, though, were also seen at my low tech/low cost maker education camps: LED crafts, Toy Hacking and Making, and Cardboard Creations.
As a recent NPR article discussed several challenges for maker education. One of them was related to equity issues, providing maker education for all students regardless of income level:
A big challenge for maker education: making it not just the purview mostly of middle- and upper-middle-class white kids and white teachers whose schools can afford laser cutters, drones or 3-D printers (3 Challenges As Hands-On, DIY Culture Moves Into Schools).
In order to adequately address this challenge, it becomes important to speak of making in broader terms; that maker education is so much more than 3D printing, drones, and robots. As Adam Savage from Mythbusters notes:
What is making? It is a term for an old thing, it is a new term for an old thing. Let me be really clear, making is not simply 3D printing, Art Lino, Raspberry Pi, LEDs, robots, laser and vinyl cutters. It’s not simply carpentry and welding and sculpting and duct tape and drones. Making is also writing and dance and filmmaking and singing and photography and cosplay. Every single time you make something from you that didn’t exist in the world, you are making. Making is important; it’s empowering. It is invigorating (Adam Savage’s 2016 Bay Area Maker Faire Talk).
Doing and promoting maker experiences such as cardboard projects have the potential to offset the challenges associated with access and costs as well as provide opportunities for making by all.
Cardboard, my makerspace material of choice, is available in every home in America. From mac and cheese boxes to a shoebox, cardboard is a material that puts students on a level playing field. It’s free. Students can cut thin stuff with scissors or score corrugated material with a pair of safety scissors, and tape is cheap enough that I can send a partial roll home with a student who needs it. Kids in families who cannot afford clay or craft kits or have little money for additional classroom supplies can still imagine something using materials that belong to them. That equals the playing field among students who ‘have not’ with students who ‘have’ adequate resources (Cardboard Creators: Reusing to Learn).
Some Pedagogical Perspectives
The Experiential Nature of Maker Activities Makes Them Messy, Loud, and Chaotic
Traditional classrooms are often marked by students quietly at their desks completing the same tasks at the same time. This is opposite of what went on during the Cardboard Creations Maker Education camp. The classroom was loud, seemingly chaotic and messy. Cutting and working with cardboard creates a mess, but authentic and engaged learning is often messy.
Learning is often a messy business. “Messy” learning is part trial and error, part waiting and waiting for something to happen, part excitement in discovery, part trying things in a very controlled, very step by step fashion, part trying anything you can think of no matter how preposterous it might seem, part excruciating frustration and part the most fun you’ll ever have. Time can seem to stand still – or seem to go by in a flash. It is not unusual at all for messy learning to be …um …messy! But the best part of messy learning is that besides staining your clothes, or the carpet, or the classroom sink in ways that are very difficult to get out … it is also difficult to get out of your memory! (http://www.learningismessy.com/quotes/)
Concepts and Skills Naturally Embedded in a Context
Concepts and skills became embedded in the experiential activities. Learning of concepts and skills occurred at the time when the campers’ interest and need were the highest. For example, when the learners did their solar ovens, several concepts were introduced and talked about: direction of sun rays, solar energy, angle of lean. These discussions and knowledge helped them to better their design and set up their solar ovens. Their learning had a context and a reason.
The same was true for the the learning of skills. Learners were motivated and attentive when I demonstrated certain cardboard folding and connecting techniques. This also included soft skills such as communicating needs, asking for what they needed, and collaborating with others as they found a genuine need and desire to use them.
The Cardboard Box as a Blank Palette
Many of kids’ toys are promoted and sold with directions, solutions to problems, and expectations for end products.
Unfortunately for kids today, the designed world doesn’t leave much room for them to explore. Most toys come with pre-defined identities and stories, which rob children of the joy of imagining these things. This leaves few opportunities to figure out how to use a toy, experiment, fail, and invent the story of where it came from, and why it does what it does. Imagining, understanding, and becoming who we are is a process informed by play, and both toy companies and designers are taking all the exploration out of it (The Case For Letting Kids Design Their Own Play).
The cardboard box becomes a blank palette waiting for a kid’s imagination to make it into come alive especially in the mind of that kid. Making with cardboard doesn’t come with a set of step-by-step instructions about what and how to make. This is beautifully illustrated by the following short film.
Summer Maker Education Camp Projects
What follows are the projects that the campers did during the cardboard creation camp
Knight Costumes and Capture the Flag
The campers made shields, swords, helmets and then played Capture the Flag . I got this idea from http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardboard-Fortress-Battle-capture-the-flag/. Given the elementary age level, I cut out the shields and sword handles for them.
Solar Ovens for Smores
Campers made solar ovens for Smores which was an easy, high engagement cardboard activity for them to learn about and explore solar energy. There are lots of tutorials on the Internet about how to make these. Here is one of them: http://desertchica.com/diy-solar-oven-smores-kids-science-experiment/.
Photo Face-in-the-Hole
The materials for this activity were simply big pieces of cardboard and poster paints. Kids were given the task to make a photo face-in-the-hole. What they created can be viewed in the following slideshow.
Cardboard Box Foosball
Directions on how to make the cardboard box Foosball can be found at: http://www.muminthemadhouse.com/shoebox-table-football-foosball/. I cut the goal areas out for the campers ahead of time. They poked the holes for the dowels using the pointy end of the Makedo Safe-Saw.
Miniature Golf Course Holes
For this cardboard creation, I gave campers a long piece of card, a kid golf club and golf ball (bought at https://www.carnivalsource.com/store/p/194472-One-Set-Golf-Set/10-Pc.html) and had available toilet paper/paper towel rolls, pool noodles, small cardboard boxes for them to each make their own miniature golf course hole. When completed they were placed on the playground’s grassy area to make a miniature golf course.
Hot Wheel Car Tracks and Garages
For our last day, each camper was given a hot wheels car and told to create anything for that car using all of the left over boxes, duct tape, and Makedo screws. Most created tracks but a few created garages. This was equally engaging for the boys and for the girls.
Here is a link to my blog post that includes the cardboard challenge projects from summer, 2016: https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2016/07/25/cardboard-challenges-no-techlow-cost-maker-education/. My cardboard creations webpage of resources and project ideas can be found at http://www.makereducation.com/cardboard-challenge.html.
Design Thinking Process and UDL Planning Tool for STEM, STEAM, Maker Education
Post by Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. @jackiegerstein and Barbara Bray @bbray27. Crossed posted at http://barbarabray.net/2017/06/08/design-thinking-process-and-udl-planning-tool/.
If there is a makerspace in your school, it may be down the hall, in the library, or in another building. If there is someone other than the teacher managing the makerspace or there is a schedule for the school, your kids may only be able to use it once a week or month. Some makerspace activities may be focusing on how to use the resources available and may not be connecting the activities to the curriculum or around a real world problem. If this is how the makerspace is set up in your school, then your kids may not have access to the resources, materials, and tools when they need them, especially for STEM or STEAM.
In deciding what resources you need based on the learners you have, you may first need to determine how your learners learn best, what projects you plan to do, how you can set up a makerspace in your classroom, and much more. This is why we decided to create a planning tool for makerspaces in the classroom for you using the Design Thinking Process and Universal Design for Learning®.
The Design Thinking Process
Design thinking is an approach to learning that includes considering real-world problems, research, analysis, conceiving original ideas, lots of experimentation, and sometimes building things by hand. The projects teach students how to make a stable product, use tools, think about the needs of another, solve challenges, overcome setbacks and stay motivated on a long-term problem. The projects also teach students to build on the ideas of others, vet sources, generate questions, deeply analyze topics, and think creatively and analytically. Many of those same qualities are goals of the Common Core State Standards. (What Does ‘Design Thinking’ Look Like in School?)
We adapted the Design Thinking Process to include additional phases based on our own experiences in schools with educators and kids.
Define the Problem: The educator along with the learners generate possible authentic problems to explore within their local community (classroom, school, social, community) which includes identification of the intended audience.
Empathy and Perspective Taking: Learners interview clients to gain an understanding of their needs and to see the problem from their perspective. The educator can assist learners in the interview process including how to develop interview questions.
Idea Generation: Learners, typically working in small groups, generate lots of ideas and questions to ask to solve the design thinking problem or challenge. Each generated possible design is analyzed as to its potential to resolve the design challenge.
Sketch Design: A blueprint or sketch of the selected design is created through pencil and paper or through an online tool such as Google Draw or Sketchup. This design can be pitched to another group for constructive feedback.
Prototype – Test – Refine: This phase is the actual creating and building of the product. To get the product to work as the plan often takes several iterations of prototype, test, and refine. Learners are encouraged to use the tools and building processes that work for them.
Feedback from User: The final design is presented to the users for their feedback. The designers ask the users about the degree to which the design met their needs asking specific questions about what worked and what still needs improvement.
Final Reflection: Learners reflect on the process in a way that works best for them – blogs, photo essays, video recording, podcast, sketchnotes, illustrated ebook.
Share Out: A goal of the design thinking process is sharing learning out to a broader public. This is typically done by sharing documentation of learning and final reflections through social media.
Universal Design for Learning® (UDL)
Universal Design for Learning® (UDL) developed by David Rose and Ann Meyers is a registered trademark of the Center for Assistive Special Technology (CAST). UDL was designed to reduce the barriers to the curriculum and maximize learning. UDL provides a framework for all learners to help them become self-directed and independent expert learners. UDL has reordered the principles and guidelines, to begin with, Multiple Means of Engagement, the Why of Learning that compliments how the Design Thinking Process involves learners in identifying an authentic problem or challenge.
- Multiple Means of Engagement (Why) is the affective network that explains how interest and purpose engages and motivates learners to want to learn.
- Multiple Means of Representation (What) is the recognition network how content is represented and how learners process information.
- Multiple Means of Action and Expression (How) is the strategic network involving how learners monitor progress and demonstrate and reflect evidence of learning.
The National Center on Universal Design for Learning goes deeper referring to the alternate version of the UDL Guidelines found in the book UDL Theory and Practice by David Rose and Ann Meyers where the order of the principles and the guidelines have changed. The UDL Guidelines provide a deep dive into each of the principles to checkpoints that provide resources, examples, and research. We pulled together the phases of the Design Thinking Process and identified specific options under each principle to create a Design Thinking Process and UDL Planning Tool for teachers.
Design Thinking and UDL Planning Tool
In the initial phase of defining the problem, the teacher involves learners to generate possible authentic problems within their local community. The problem can be defined by the teacher to encourage learner interest. We connected the UDL principle Multiple Means of Engagement to this phase by providing options for recruiting learners’ interest through optimizing relevance, value, and authenticity. To understand the problem, the teacher activates learners’ background knowledge and invites them to highlight patterns and critical features around real world problems that impact them.
The UDL connection to Engagement to the second phase of Empathy and Perspective Taking made so much sense to us. The UDL connection involves learners having options for sustaining effort and persistence by fostering collaboration and community. This phase is where learners gain an understanding of the needs of specific people about a problem from their perspective. They may interview, do observations or survey them about the problem.
Some lessons can involve a specific problem identified by the teacher who first wants to encourage empathy. We provide one example around an Egg Drop and the Design a Squishy Circuit for a Classmates (see these examples at the end of this post).
The middle phases of the Design Thinking Process involve the iterative steps related to idea generation and prototype-test-refine as well as getting feedback from the users.
As can be seen in the UDL Connections column of the Design Thinking and UDL planning tool, representation and action and expression can be explicitly addressed. Representation or the What of Learning is a strong focus during the Idea Generation and Feedback from Users phases as the educator helps learners highlight patterns, critical features, and relationships of their discoveries. The Action and Expression or the How of Learning emerges most strongly during the Creating a Blueprint and Prototype-Test-Refine Phases as learners include their own personal touches and preferred means of expression.
The final phases of the Design Thinking Process involve reflection on the design and making experiences and then sharing out the results to a broader audience.
The UDL connection to Action and Expression is especially strong in the final phases of Reflection and Sharing Out. During the reflection phase, learners are given the option to express what they learned during and because of their STEM, STEAM, Maker Education experience in a way that makes the most sense to them given the nature of the task; and their preferred means of expression. This is especially relevant given all that technology and online tools provide.
For example, students can write a blog, create a photo essay with a caption, record a podcast or video, do a hand-drawn or online sketch, create a comic. Learners, many being savvy at the use of social networks, can then choose how they want to share out their reflections. This serves several purposes related to Action and Expression: (1) it gives learners an authentic audience, and (2) it helps other makers learn from their personal experiences.
Examples of STEM, STEAM, and Maker Education Activities using the Design Thinking and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Planning Tool
We hope the Design Thinking and UDL planning tool we developed helps you guide the design of learning activities that focus on STEM and STEAM and brings makerspaces into your classrooms.
We will be discussing this topic in the Twitter chat (#plearnchat) on Monday, June 19 at 4 pm PT, 5 pm CT. We ‘re also going to be sharing more details including redesigning makerspaces in the classroom in our presentation at ISTE 2017 in San Antonio on Monday, June 26 11:30 to 12:30. Please join us!
We welcome any comments, ideas, or questions.
Dr. Jackie Gerstein’s byline is, “I don’t do teaching for a living. I live teaching as my doing . . . and technology has amplified my passion for doing so.” Dr. Gerstein has been teaching in-person and online for several decades. Currently, she teaches master’s level online courses in educational technology for Boise State, Walden, and Western Governors’ Universities as well as gifted elementary education where she focuses on STEM, STEAM, and Maker Education.
Jackie actively blogs at https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/jackiegerstein
Additional Resources referenced from Jackie’s blog:
- Introducing Design Thinking to Elementary Learners
- Video Game Design with Elementary Learners
- Student Voice Comes With Teachers as Listeners
- Giving Students a Voice Models High-Quality Learning Processes
- Today’s Education Should Be About Giving Learners Voice and Choice.
- Show Learners The Possibilities and Get out of the Way
Barbara is a teacher, writer, change agent, risk-taker, instructional designer, connector, futurist and visionary. Whenever anyone told Barbara she couldn’t do something, she took it more like a challenge. New and veteran teachers are overwhelmed with day-to-day tasks plus being asked to teach and integrate technology or to change their curriculum. The big question even today is “how do you fit everything in that is expected of you and meet the needs of all students?”
Barbara co-authored two books on personalized learning with Kathleen McClaskey:Make Learning Personal and How to Personalize Learning. She wrote a regular column on professional development for OnCUE (Computer Using Educators) for over 17 years and continues to write here, for Personalize Learning, chapters in books, articles, and as guest posts on other blogs. She works tirelessly to find and research new tools and methods that help educators and personalize learning. Now with multiple opportunities to network using social media and join various online communities, teachers and learners are confused. Barbara makes it her job to determine what is authentic, valid, cost-effective, safe, user-friendly, and relevant for her clients. She is relentlessly researching how to personalize learning so all learners follow their passion so they discover their purpose.
Barbara actively blogs at http://barbarabray.net/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/bbray27
Documenting and Reflecting on Learning
I am a strong proponent of encouraging learners of all ages to engage in reflective practice.
Learners do not just receive information only at the time it is given; they absorb information in many different ways, often after the fact, through reflection. The most powerful learning often happens when students self-monitor, or reflect. Students may not always be aware of what they are learning and experiencing. Teachers must raise students’ consciousness about underlying concepts and about their own reactions to these concepts. ETE Team
Documenting Learning
Silvia Tolisano sees documenting learning as:
-
a process of intentional documenting serves a metacognitive purpose
- a creative multimedia expression (oral, visual, textual)
- a component of reflective practice
- taking ownership of one’s learning
- a memory aid
- curation
- being open for feedback (Documenting FOR Learning)
Blogging as a Form of Documenting Learning and Reflection
I find blogging to be a one of the most powerful ways to documenting learning and engage in reflective practice.
Blogging has its own unique benefits as Sylvia Duckworth’s Sketchnote summarizes:
Experiential, STEM, STEAM, and maker education are the focus of my gifted education classes. The learners in my gifted education classes have access to Chromebooks. Having learners take pictures of their artifacts and describing what they did is a standard practice in my classes.
Sometimes I list vocabulary words I ask learners to include in their blogs. For example, for a design challenge, I asked learners to include the following vocabulary:
- design thinking
- communicate
- empathy
- tolerance
Here are some example blog posts from 6th grade students:
Blogging, as opposed to keeping a hand-written journal of classroom experiences, has unique advantages in my classroom:
- Learners can easily include photos of their work.
- Work is easily reviewed and edited for errors.
- Learners’ classmates can easily view and comment on one another’s work.
- Blogging acts as a formative assessment whereby I, as the educator, get an opportunity to learn what elements of the projects were significant for my learners.
A Picture Tells So Many Stories
Because my classroom activities are high engagement, learners become totally immersed in the activities. They aren’t interested in taking photos during the activities. Also due to the student-centric nature of the learning activities, my role becomes that of facilitator walking through the classroom and visiting with individual groups of students to find out what they are doing, answer questions, give feedback. This guide-on-the-side role allows me to take lots of photos of the students. In essence, then, I become the official photography documenting student learner so they and their parents have an archive of the school year’s activity. We review these photos throughout the school year as a form of reflection. It’s fun to hear the learner comments exclaiming joy and amazement in what they learned earlier in the school year.
Here are links to photos I took for my two gifted classes and posted to a shared folder on Google Photos during the 2016-17 school year:
A Final Reflection
As a way to wrap-up the school year, learners should be given the opportunity to review their work from the past school year. For my learners, I asked them to look through all of the photos I took and the blog posts they wrote and choose between 5 and 10 of their most favorite and best projects. (It was great listening them express their delight in reviewing all of the projects they completed during the school year.) After selecting these, learners were asked to create a presentation of their chosen works using one of the following options:
They then presented their work to their peers and a group of adults: parents, school officials, visitors to the school.
A few afterthoughts about this final activity:
- Throughout the school year, learners were asked to present their learning in front audiences. One of the students has a dual diagnosis – gifted and Asperger’s. This student wouldn’t even talk to the group at the beginning of the year. Loved the confidence shown during the final presentation.
- The final presentations gave me, as the educator, a type of program evaluation where I got the opportunity to learn the most significant classroom projects from my learners’ perspectives.
Video Game Design with Elementary Learners
In order to support interest and passion driven learning (all – I mean all – of my students play video games) as well as address cross-curricular content area integration of language arts, science, and technology standards, I had my gifted elementary learners, grades 2 through 6, do a semester long project on video game design.
Standards Addressed
English Language Arts Common Core State Standards
- Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
- Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.
- Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
- Reference – http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/
Next Generation Science Standards
- Define a simple design problem that can be solved through the development of an object, tool, process, or system and includes several criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
- Generate and compare multiple solutions to a problem based on how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the design problem.
- Reference – https://www.nextgenscience.org/
ISTE NETS for Students
- 4a – Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
- 4b – Students select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers design constraints and calculated risks.
- 4c – Students develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process
- 4d – Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
- Reference – https://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students
Unit Overview
The overview for this unit:
- Introduction to Storytelling
- Storyboarding with Storyboad That
- Storyboard Presentations, Feedback, and Revisions
- Create a Video
- Design a Logo
Introduction to Storytelling
The following video and articles were reviewed with the learners:
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How To Write A Good Game Story – http://www.paladinstudios.com/2012/08/06/how-to-write-a-good-game-story-and-get-filthy-rich/
- How To Write A Compelling Game Story In Three Steps https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/how-to-write-a-compelling-game-story-in-three-steps/
Storyboarding with Storyboard That
Learners used Storyboard That to create the storyboards for their video games.
Storyboard That is a graphic organizer and storyboard creator . The program provides pre-made scenes, characters, text boxes, shapes, and other images to choose from, Students are able to drag and drop these items into their chosen layout. Scenes are organized into locational and thematic categories (e.g. school). Characters are organized similarly and can be customized with hair color, eye color, and other edits. Text boxes allow the student to give voice to their characters. Shapes and additional images add props to the story. (https://www.edsurge.com/product-reviews/storyboard-that-product)
It was continually reinforced that their storyboards needed to include strong characters, settings, and plot.
Feedback
Learners presented their storyboards to their classmates. Their classmates asked questions and gave feedback using the questions from How To Write A Good Game Story http://www.paladinstudios.com/2012/08/06/how-to-write-a-good-game-story-and-get-filthy-rich/
They made revisions and additions based on the feedback they received.
Create a Video Game
Learners were then given the choice to create their video games using one of the following platforms:
Create a Logo for the Game
Finally, learners were asked to design a logo for their games. To add another element of fun, learners decorated sugar cookies with their game logo.
Examples
The Adventures of Jack by a 6th Grade Boy
His video game was created using Sploder:
His Game Logo:
Save Mother by a 4th Grade Girl
Her video game was created by Bloxels:
Her Game Logo:
Sam and the Dark Lord by a 2nd Grade Boy
His video game was created using Sploder:
His Game Logo:
The Over Promotion of Failure
Almost daily I see posts on social media by educators promoting the benefits of failure. It often seems that there is a push to intentional embed failure into instructional activities. This always rubs me the wrong way. Failure has almost universal negative connotations. It doesn’t feel good and sometimes it is extremely difficult, if impossible, to recover from big failures.
For the past several years we’ve been bombarded with advice about the “wisdom of failure.” Books by business giants and self-help gurus tout the importance of learning from mistakes. The problem with the focus on failure is that failure is a weak process when put up directly against its counterpart: success.
I want to be clear that I’m not against learning from failure. It’s certainly useful that humans have the rare biological luxury of being able to learn, non-lethally, from our failures — we can remember them, share stories about them, even laugh about them. And all the stories and lessons about what you can learn from failure represent real opportunities to do better. The problem is that none of the advice and literature on failure fairly compares learning from failure to learning from success.
We have to ask how abundant or common are useful failures compared to useful successes? If opportunities for learning are rare, it’s hard to make a practice out of them. Unfortunately, truly useful failures that change our thinking (as opposed to merely stupid failures that just confirm what we already should have known) are relatively rare. (http://www.businessinsider.com/we-learn-more-from-success-than-failure-2014-6)
Focusing on success in practice does not translate in attempting to craft learning experiences into ones whereby learners have no struggles; achieve success or desired results on first attempts and iterations. In fact, I believe that authentic learning experiences should require multiple iterations prior to their successfully completion. This mimics real life learning.
The expectation then becomes that learners will struggle with their tasks, that they will focus from what went right and build upon these elements to have increasingly successful iterations within their process of learning the given task. I reframe the idea of failure, that oftentimes occur within open-ended, ill-defined projects, as things didn’t go as originally planned. It is just a part of the learning process. I explain to my learners that they will experience setbacks, mistakes, struggles. It is just a natural part of real world learning. Struggles, setbacks, and mistakes are not discussed as failure but as parts of a process that need improving. The focus becomes on what went right and on how learners can increase those aspects that were successful. The underlying learning principle becomes success breeds more success.
Learning from success is an active process that needs to become part of an organization’s culture. You just need to ensure that at least some of your “after action” reporting is dedicated to what went right. Even an event that was largely a failure probably has some small successes that need to be shared. (http://www.businessinsider.com/we-learn-more-from-success-than-failure-2014-6)
Within this framework, learners then reflect on their learning experiences coming from a place of success with questions such as:
- What specific actions did you take that were successful within your learning task?
- What did you do to decrease your liabilities during your learning task?
- What personal and social resources did you draw upon if and when you reached an impasse with your learning task?
- What strategies did you use to self-regulate your setbacks and frustrations if and when they occurred during your learning task?
- What did you see as your major strengths during the learning task?
- What aspects of your learning will you take into future learning experiences in order to increase your chances of being successful with similar tasks?
Toy Take Apart and Repurposing
Toy take apart and hacking is a high engagement activity that works for kids of all ages, including adults who haven’t lost their sense of kid, and both genders. I have done it multiple times during my summer maker camp for elementary level kids, with my gifted elementary students, and at conferences as part of teacher professional development.
Here is a description of this activity from the tinkering studio at the Exploratorium:
Do you ever wonder what’s inside your toys? You’ll make some exciting and surprising discoveries about their inner parts when you don some safety goggles and get started dissecting your old stuffed animal, remote controlled car, or singing Santa. Use screwdrivers, seam rippers, scissors, and saws to remove your toy’s insides. Check out the mechanisms, circuit boards, computer chips, lights, and wires you find inside. Once you’ve fully dissected your toy, you can use the toy’s parts, your tools, and your imagination to create a new original plaything. (https://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/toy-take-apart)
Standards Addressed
Toy take apart and hacking addresses a lot of cross curricular standards including:
- Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool. (NGSS)
- Develop a simple sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem. (NGSS)
- Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost. (NGSS)
- Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace. (ELA CCSS)
- Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly. (ELA CCSS)
- Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. (ELA CCSS)
- Elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts. (21st Century Skills)
- Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur. (21st Century Skills)
- Demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas. (21st Century Skills)
- View failure as an opportunity to learn; understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes. (21st Century Skills)
- Solve different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways. (21st Century Skills)
Frontloading and Framing the Experience
(For background information about this idea, see Don’t Leave Learning Up to Chance: Framing and Reflection)
To help frontload and frame this activity, participants are given the following scenario:
You have been hired to create the newest, most exciting handheld game to hit the market in years. You can decide the type of game, the population for whom you want to design it for – age range and gender, the goal of the game, the rules, any functions. The sky is the limit but there is one caveat – you need to recycle parts from old handheld games, ones made a decade or two ago, to create your prototype. Here are some questions to consider as you make your prototype –
- How will you decide what to make?
- What factors do you need to consider as you make your game?
- What actions can you take if you get stuck using the tools? Coming up with ideas?
- How can you ask for help as well as support others during the toy take apart and hacking?
How-To
I like to use the older handheld games as they contain lots of interesting parts and can be bought fairly cheaply in lots through ebay. First, the toys are passed around so participants can examine and learn about them.
Participants select the toy they want to take apart. Using the various screw drivers, scissors, wire cutters, and hammers that have been laid out on a work table, the toys are taken apart as much as they can be taken apart.
After the participants fully take apart their toys, they are asked to create a new game out of their parts and parts discarded by the other participants. I use hot glue guns but soldering of parts can be done, too.
The criteria that I give to the participants for their game creation includes:
- The creation must be a new game – one that the participant hasn’t heard of nor played.
- The parts need to be used creatively – not the same way they were used in the original game.
- The specifications for the game need to be developed and written as a poster are –
- Name of the Game
- Age Level Recommendations
- The Rules
- How to Play
Participants then share their designs with the rest of the group.
Reflection
(For background information about this idea, see Don’t Leave Learning Up to Chance: Framing and Reflection)
After finishing their projects and sharing, participants can reflect on their experiences through:
Through a conversation with other participants; a presentation using Google Slides, Prezi, or Adobe Spark; or a blog post – your choice, address the following questions –
- Describe the game you made – why did you make that type of game?
- What changes did you make to your original design? Why?
- Did you get stuck at any point during the activity? Taking apart the toy? Coming up with a design? Using the tools? Making your game? If so, how did you get unstuck?
- What will you do the same/differently if you do a similar activity in the future?
More Information
For more information on toy take apart and hacking, visit http://www.makereducation.com/toy-take-apart.html.
A slideshow of participant engagement in this activity . . .
A Framework for Implementing Maker Education Activities Presentation
I am facilitating two mini-workshops at ASCD Empower 17 and the 2017 ASCD Conference on Teaching Excellence on using a framework for implementating maker education activities. The description for my session is:
Providing a framework for maker activities helps ensure that their use is intentional and that meaningful learning is extracted from these experiences. The educator, using such a framework, becomes proactive in framing or frontloading the maker experiences and in debriefing or processing them to increase the chances that learning occurs. Framing or frontloading is making clear the purpose of an activity prior to actually doing it; it helps to set purpose and intention for the activity. Reflecting on the maker activities can occur through a variety of methods: talking, writing, sketching, and using technology such as Web 2.0 tools and social media. During this interactive presentation, participants will experience this framework through maker activity that is introduced through framing or frontloading and then by directly using reflection techniques upon completion of the activity.
The slides for my session:
Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D.
