Author Archive
A Brain Science Hyperdoc Activity
Judy Willis, a neuroscientist turned teacher, in How to Teach Students About the Brain writes:
If we want to empower students, we must show them how they can control their own cognitive and emotional health and their own learning. Teaching students how the brain operates is a huge step. Teaching students the mechanism behind how the brain operates and teaching them approaches they can use to work that mechanism more effectively helps students believe they can create a more intelligent, creative, and powerful brain. It also shows them that striving for emotional awareness and physical health is part of keeping an optimally functioning brain. Thus, instruction in brain function will lead to healthier learners as well as wiser ones.
I teach a unit on the brain each year. This year I am teaching a 9th grade freshman seminar and decided to do a brain science unit with them. For this unit , I created a brain science hyperdoc for them. A hyperdoc is:
A HyperDoc is a digital document—such as a Google Doc—where all components of a learning cycle have been pulled together into one central hub. Within a single document, students are provided with hyperlinks to all of the resources they need to complete that learning cycle (https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/hyperdocs/).
The Brain Science Hyperdoc
Here is a completed brain science hyperdoc so you can see what was required and how one student completed it.
Making Models of the Brain
One of the hands-on activities was to work in a small group to create a model of the brain lobes + cerebellum out of playdoh, and then add post-it note “flags” for each part that indicates its name, function, and how to promote its health.
Creating Neuron Models
As a treat and to reinforce the parts of the neuron, students used candy to make a neuron, label its parts on a paper below, and then show as a group how one neuron would communicate with the next neuron and then to the next and so on.
Creative Writing Activity
One of the final projects of their brain science activities was to pick two activities from the list of creative writing activities about the brain found at https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/writing.html. One of my students went all out to create a newspaper called The Brainiac News which follows. Using her own initiative, she started a Google Site to post a series of tongue-in-cheek stories. So impressive!
Creating a New Makerspace at Our School
I am beyond elated – our PreK-6 elementary school received monies, through our district’s Computer Science Resolution 2025, to create a STEAM (science, technology, arts, math) makerspace. I never thought our Title 1 school would get the opportunity to create such a space. I never thought I would get the opportunity to help create a fully equipped makerspace. A few of use spent the past few weeks rearranging our library so that one side contains our books and the other our STEAM materials.
We received the following items. Some were put out in the STEAM makerspace and some items the teachers will check out for use in their classrooms:
- Dremel Laser Cutter (in makerspace)
- Makedo Kits (in makerspace)
- Strawbees (in makerspace)
- Dash and Dot (in makerspace and can be checked out)
- OSMO Coding (in makerspace)
- Makerspace Kit (in makerspace)
- BeeBot Robots (in makerspace)
- Squishy Circuits (in makerspace)
- Makey-Makeys (can be checked out)
- littleBits Base Invent Kit (in makerspace)
- micro:bits (3rd-6th grade teachers received their own sets)
- Circuit Playground (can be checked out)
- SAM Lab (can be checked out)
- Green Screen (in makerspace)
Integrating Maker Education Activities Into the Curriculum
As we (the steering committee) envisioned adding a STEAM – Makerspace at our school, we realized that its success will be dependent on the teachers integrating these activities into their curriculum rather than an extra “recreational” activity.
Maker education needs to be intentional. It follows, then, for maker education to be brought into more formal and traditional classrooms as well as more informal ones such as with afterschool and community programs, it needs to be integrated into the curriculum using lesson plans to assist with this integration (Learning in the Making).
To assist our teachers with integrating maker education activities into the curriculum, I created the following Pearltrees aggregate of possible classroom lessons and activities for each of the materials – products we purchased for our school:
In this post, I am also including the following lesson plan template from my book, Learning in the Making that can help with integrating maker education activities into the curriculum :
Cross-Curricular Lesson: Communicating with Parents
As someone who has been in teacher education for several decades, I often think about – teach about how to make curriculum engaging, fun, effective, authentic, and relevant for learners. I believe interdisciplinary or cross-curricular lessons have the potential to do so. I also add, when I am working with pre- and inservice teachers, that there is not enough time in a day to teach-learn everything that is desirable. Cross-curricular activities can help “create” more time as several content area standards can be addressed in one lesson.
Multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary learning is a “whole” or “comprehensive” method that covers an idea, topic, or text by integrating multiple knowledge domains. It is a very powerful method of teaching that crosses the boundaries of a discipline or curriculum in order to enhance the scope and depth of learning. Each discipline sheds light on the topic like the facets of a gem.
I created the following graphic to show the benefits of interdisciplinary standards.
An Example: Communicating with Parents
This past week I asked my freshman seminar class to do a few activities related to communicating with their parents. The goal of this lesson was, obviously, to have to students develop some more effective communication strategies.
Social Emotional Learning and 21st Century Standards
This lesson, at its core, falls into the areas socio-emotional learning and 21st Century Competencies. Ohio established their own set of K-12 Social and Emotional Learning Standards and the following are related to the goals of this lesson.
- Actively engage in positive interactions to make connections with peers, adults and community to support and achieve common goals,
- Establish and actively participate in a healthy network of personal, school and community relationships.
The Framework for 21st Century also identified communication as an important skill with the following standards.
- Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms and contexts,
- Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions.
English Language Arts Standards
Because the learners were asked to do research and write a letter to their parents, English Language Arts standards were also addressed:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.7
Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
Communicating with Parents Poster
Learners were asked to review some online articles about communicating with parents and then make a poster that reflected strategies they believe to be important.
Letter to My Parents
Next, the learners were asked to write a letter to their parents that discussed:
- What types of communications are going well,
- What types of communications are not going well,
- Suggested goals for improving communications.
They were told they were not required to share the letter with their parents. Some examples follow:
Design a Cardboard Chair Challenge
In Learning in the Making: How to Plan, Execute, and Assess Powerful Makerspace Lessons, I discuss a Framework for Implementing Maker Experiences as depicted in the following diagram.
I recently asked my 9th grade students to do a cardboard chair challenge. What follows is how the students went through this framework.
Framing or Frontloading the Experience
Framing or frontloading a maker education experience increases the chances that transferable skills and knowledge result, is framing or frontloading the activities as part of introducing them.
This activity was framed as a continuation of the team building and group communication activities in which the students participated the previous week. They were told that they needed to practice the effective communication skills they identified during the previous activities.
The Experience
The experience is, obviously, the doing or making part of the framework. Below is a cardboard chair challenge guide I found from Creativity Lab and which was shared with students via Google Classroom.
Materials
- Zip Snip Cutting Tool
- Makedo screws and mini-tools
- tape measure
- lots of cardboard
Designs Created in Tinkercad
In their small groups, they created their chair designs using Tinkercad.
Chair Construction
In their teams, students built their cardboard chairs using the Zip Snip Cutting Tool and the Makedo screws to connect the cardboard pieces (worked wonderfully I want to add).
Reflecting on the Experience
To reflect on their maker experiences, student work groups were given a set of cards (see below) to, first, pick cards from the deck to verbally answer, and to, second, choose three of the cards to answer in a blog post.
Example Verbal Responses to the Reflection Questions
Reflection Card Blog Post Examples
The Conceptualization: Researching
Finally, students were asked to create a infographics
Example Student Infographics
Learning in the Making: The Role of the Educator as a Maker Educator
I have been working with ASCD for the past few years to publish my book, Learning in the Making: How to Plan, Execute, and Assess Powerful Makerspace Lessons. It has finally been released for sale! Below is an except – Chapter 5: The Role of the Educator as a Maker Educator.
The process of bringing maker education into formal and informal educational settings involves different approaches and strategies than in a more traditional educational setting. As such, the roles of the educator as a maker educator are also different.
- Lead Learner
- Process Facilitator
- Safe Environment Manager
- Normalizer of Ambiguous Problem Finding and Solving •
- Resource Provider
- Technology Tutor
- Relationship Enabler and Builder
- Feedback Facilitator
Lead Learner
The educator’s role has always been to model and demonstrate effective learning, but somewhere along the line, the educator’s major role became content and knowledge disseminator. Today, content is freely and abundantly available, and it is more important than ever to help learners in the process of how to learn.
In most traditional education settings, the emphasis is on what students “need” to learn, and little emphasis is given to teaching students how they should go about learning the content or what skills will promote robust and effective learning. John Dunlosky, a professor of psychology at Kent State University, stated that “teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for promoting lifelong learning” (Dunlosky, 2013, p. 13 ).
Because maker education is as much (or even more) about the processes of learning as it is about the products, it becomes important for educators to understand and model the processes— or the “how-to”—of maker education. This often requires teachers to express out loud the metacognitive strategies they use when
In most traditional education settings, the emphasis is on what students “need” to learn, and little emphasis is given to teaching students how they should go about learning the content or what skills will promote robust and effective learning. John Dunlosky, a professor of psychology at Kent State University, stated that “teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for promot- ing lifelong learning” (Dunlosky, 2013, p. 13 ).
Because maker education is as much (or even more) about the processes of learning as it is about the products, it becomes important for educators to understand and model the processes— or the “how-to”—of maker education. This often requires teachers to express out loud the metacognitive strategies they use when approaching and doing maker activities, including how they learn about the task at hand, find resources, develop an overall goal for the activity, organize and keep track of materials, develop and manage timeframes, and judge their success. Importantly, it also requires teachers to explain what they do when they struggle with a make. This will help learners emulate these learning processes when they work on their own maker projects. Figure 5.2 provides methods and strategies that can be used by the educator to model effective making processes that have the potential to benefit their learners.
If educators embrace the prospect of being a lead learner, then it naturally follows they should be lead innovators, too. Lead inno- vators model eight characteristics of the innovator’s mindset; they are empathetic, problem finders, risk takers, networked, creators, observant, resilient, and reflective (Couros, 2015). “Ultimately, what [innovation] really is about in education is creating new and better ways of learning, which is something educators should all get behind. If I can help more educators see themselves as innova- tors, and help them embrace this mindset, our students will have better opportunities in learning. . . . It is meant to not only help see change as something we embrace and model ourselves but help create the foundation where change is more likely to happen with others” (Larken, 2015, paras. 2, 3).
A common characteristic of making across settings, age levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, and genders is that it is taps into the innovation of the participating learners. When educators model innovation by trying new projects, new teaching procedures, and new technologies, they are not only showing and telling students that innovation is valued in their classrooms but also demonstrating a willingness to take risks often associated with innovation—especially in the sometimes noninnovative environment of traditional schools.
Process Facilitator
Another hallmark of maker education is that the making processes are equally important as the products created. The processes used to make something often carry over to future projects and products. To truly focus on the process—rather than on the products of learning—the educator needs to let go of expectations and preconceived notions about what the specific products students produce “should” look like.
This approach translates into several benefits for learners:
- Learners are not limited by educators’ expectations or the expectations of a lesson or assessment developed by an out- side entity (e.g., textbook or testing company).
- Learners’ engagement, motivation, curiosity, and excitement increase.
- Learners learn to tolerate and embrace ambiguity.
- Natural differentiation and individualization result.
- Learners gain skills such as self-directed learning, taking ini- tiative, locating resources, and asking for help—all of which can be transferred to all learning endeavors.
- It reflects and models how learning occurs outside of school.
- Learners take an increased investment and pride in their work.
- Learners develop both a sense of confidence and a sense of competence.
Safe Environment Manager
An educator’s role as safe environment manager is a two-pronged one. First, teachers must ensure that the learning environment is physically safe. Because a maker environment often contains lots of tools, ranging from scissors and knives to hot glue guns to power tools, the maker educator must establish an environment in which learners’ physical safety is of primary concern. Second, teachers must make sure that learners also feel safe emotionally— that they are willing to take risks and know that their ideas will be accepted and valued by everyone in the classroom. There are some general guidelines for creating a physically safe makerspace. Consider the following as you set up your own maker environment:
- Research how the tools you plan to use in your maker pro- gram operate and the safety procedures associated with them.
- Teach students how to safely use all of the tools in the maker area, including seemingly “simple” tools such as scissors and hot glue guns. Don’t make any assumptions.
- Develop and review procedures about what to do if students notice an unsafe practice or if there is a medical emergency.
- Establish behavioral expectations that students know and understand. These will be guided by the age of your students but can include rules such as no horseplay and keep your hands to yourself.
- Establish, post, and teach clean-up procedures.
More information about creating a physically safe makerspace can be found at https://makezine.com/2013/09/02/safety-in-school-makerspaces/.
Because making often involves taking risks, dealing with failure, asking for help, getting and receiving feedback, and sharing projects with peers, it is important that you also establish a work-learning environment that is emotionally safe for all students. This should be thought out and factored into your maker program from the beginning to develop a healthy sense of community. This can be accomplished through team-building activities with a STEM or maker education focus. Activities such as these help students learn to work collaboratively, communicate, and problem solve with one another. Students also learn to support one another.
As a safe environment manager, teachers should teach and model what emotional safety looks, sounds, and feels like in the learning environment. It then becomes the students’ responsibility to maintain and reinforce that emotional safety. Comments that reflect an emotionally safe and supportive environment include
- “Your effort shows and is admirable.”
- “I like the way you are helping and supporting one another.”
- “Failure is OK; just give it another attempt.”
Students should be acknowledged when they are heard using such comments.
Normalizer of Ambiguous Problem Finding and Solving
Another difference between traditional education and maker
education is that the former too often presents problems that have
a single, correct answer, whereas maker education embraces ill-de-
fined problems that don’t often have obvious or “correct” answers.
Iteration and related failure often accompany maker projects that
are based on ill-defined problems and solutions. Failure often has a
negative connotation in education, but within the maker mindset,
failure is celebrated. Adam Savage, former host of the popular TV
show Mythbusters, often wears a shirt that says, “Failure is always
an option.” Maker educators should normalize iteration and
failure by emphasizing and reemphasizing the idea that ill-defined
and ambiguous problems and solutions are part of the making
process—and real life.
Resource Provider
Because there is so much free information available online, the 21st century educator needs to be a curator of content. As a curator, the maker educator locates and vets resources, especially those that will be used by younger students. These resources can include YouTube videos; tutorials from companies such as Spark- fun, Make: Magazine, Instructables, and Adafruit; relevant books and magazines; social media accounts and hashtags (e.g., #mak- ered, #stem); and online communities, such as Facebook groups. Since the goal is to have learners use self-directed or heutagogical practices, the educator—as a maker educator—should offer resources as suggestions based on individual learners’ projects.
Nevertheless, students should make the final decision about which resources to use and to what degree they want to use them. The educator as a resource provider means that he or she becomes a coach or a mentor to learners. Educators are the adult experts in the room, and learners will often go to the educator for assistance, especially when they get stuck on a problem or need feedback. “The best coaches encourage young people to work hard, keep going when it would be easier to stop, risk making potentially painful errors, try again when they stumble, and learn to love [their learning]” (Tomlinson, 2011, p. 92).
The educator as a resource provider also implies that he or she has multiple skill sets—expertise in the process of learning, exper- tise in how to navigate online environments, and the ability to mentor learners during their maker education experiences. They need to model how to vet the resources and determine their use- fulness and value. They scaffold resource curation and ultimately release responsibility to students as they become more skilled at finding and vetting their own resources.
Technology Tutor
For learner agency and self-directed learning to occur, educators need to keep abreast of current and emerging technologies. There is an assumption that young people are universally digitally savvy and know how to use every form of emerging technology. However, teachers “are increasingly finding that their students’ comfort zone is often limited to social media and internet apps that don’t do much in the way of productivity” (Proffitt, 2012, para. 2).
Technology can dramatically enhance maker experiences since it provides access to resources and tutorials. It also provides a means for learners to share their processes and products. With this in mind, the maker educator can help learners find resources (as previously discussed) and teach them how to use educational technology such as blogs, videos, video creation tools, e-books, podcasts, collages, sketches, and Google apps to document and share their learning.
Relationship Enabler and Builder
Another important hallmark of the maker movement is its strong focus on community. The maker education community, both the in-person and broader global one, is overwhelmingly based on sharing with and learning from one another. Though not every maker shares his or her knowledge or creations, the existence of large online communities shows that many do. People share for various reasons: to exchange information, educate others, get feed- back, and feel connected. This type of collaboration often comes naturally in a making environment, but educators can and should facilitate it through asking—sometimes coaxing—learners to share their ideas, opinions, resources, successes, and failures with other maker learners.
To help facilitate this process, maker educators can ask stu-dents to share what they’ve accomplished so far with their project, where they think things are going in the project, and what issues they have experienced or anticipate experiencing. Students can also document and share their processes and findings in a manner that allows both other students in the class and the larger maker community to review and comment.
Feedback Facilitator
Learners getting feedback on their work is always valuable and important—even more so in the maker environment. Indeed, the maker environment should be rich in feedback. As a feedback facilitator, maker educators not only provide learners with feedback about their maker projects but also teach and facilitate a process for learners to give and receive feedback to one another. Too many educational environments don’t actively teach learners methods and strategies for giving and receiving feedback. Since one of the characteristics of the maker environment is that is it community based, facilitating a feedback process supports and reinforces this sense of community. Because making is often an iterative process, feedback from other community members often facilitates and accelerates that process.
Promises to My Learners as a Maker Educator
Because maker education is so different from traditional education, and because the maker educator’s roles are also so different, I developed the following promises to my learners as a facilitator of their learning as makers:
- I promise to make the making environment positive, joyful, and physically and emotionally safe so you feel safe enough to take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, and test things out.
- I promise to provide you with resources and materials that help you create, make, and innovate.
- I promise to respect and support your unique ways of think- ing, learning, creating, and interacting with others.
- I promise to work with you to create learning experiences that are personally relevant to you.
- I promise to support and help you understand and navigate the ups and downs, the mistakes and failures, and the trials and errors associated with making.
- I promise to give you time and opportunities to collaborate and share with other makers (of all ages).
- I promise to provide you with positive feedback on things you can control—such as effort, strategies, and behaviors.
- I promise to encourage you to critically think, formulate questions of your own, and come up with your own conclusions.
- I promise not to intervene with your learning process unless you ask me to do so.
- I promise to support you as you embrace the joy of creating, playing, innovating, and making.
Starting Off the School Year: It’s About the Learners
I always start off the school year focusing on connections – my connections to the students, their connections to me and the other in the class. Too many classes, all grade levels, begin the school year with getting down to academic business – starting to cover content, discussing expectations regarding academic requirements, giving tests, and other academic information provided by the teacher to the students in a mostly one-way communication. The human or social element is often disregarded.
I want students to learn about one another in a personal way. I want to learn about my students so my instructional strategies can be more personalized and tailored to their needs and interests. Beginning class with a focus on connections rather than content gives learners the following messages:
- You are the focus of the class not me.
- You are important as a learner in this class.
- You will be expected to engage in the learning activities during class time. You will be an active learner.
- You will be expected to do collaborative learning during the class time.
- I, as the class facilitator, will be just that – a facilitator. I will introduce the learning activities, but you will be responsible for the actual learning.
- I will get to know you as a learner and try to help you find learning activities that are of interest to you. (From my post: Beginning the School Year: It’s About Connections Not Content)
Two things that I believe needs to occur at the beginning of the schools year:
- Get to know the learners – as individuals with unique backgrounds, interests, strengths, weaknesses.
- Establish a learning community where all learners are seen as having value in our classroom.
This past week was the first week of school and the first week that I am teaching these students in a 9th Grade Freshman Seminar. After the first day introductions with fun games such as Warp Speed and Jenga Q & A (descriptions of these can be found at https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/beginning-the-school-year-with-connections-2018/ . The rest of the week was spent on the learners working on the activities from the following Hyperdoc.
By far, the most valuable activity for me is the Student Interest Survey as it provides me with so much information about each student in such an easy format. With 25 students in the class, it would have taken me months to learn all I did using the following Google Form.
The results of the survey, which follow, provide me with so much valuable information. I discovered their passions, aspirations, dreams, and even some fears. For example, I found out their career aspirations: pathologist, mechanical engineer, police officer, orthopedic doctor, electrical engineer, doctor. veterinarian, architect, actress, civil engineer, professional racer for anything with a motor, teacher, interior designer, photographer, nurse, writer, artist, dancer, music producer, singer psychologist, forensic scientist, neurosurgeon. This information will assist me in planning activities based on their interests.
Letting Your Learners Experience Productive Struggle
I came into teaching through a non-traditional, backdoor route – through a graduate degree in counselor education and through being an adventure therapist, whereby I took at-risk youth on extended wilderness trips. There have been a plethora of lessons I learned through these experiences that have served me well as a teacher.
As part of my counselor training, we were taught to not try to take away a client’s pain or struggle; that they often need to experience these struggles in order to move forward. My role during client distress was not to try to take their pain away but to offer my presence, listening skills, and being a witness to their stories.
As an adventure therapist, the youth often had a difficult time during wilderness activities such as rock climbing, rappelling, and the wilderness solo (spending 24 hours alone). Many become scared and wanted to give up. My role during these times was to encourage them and not let them give up. The results of successfully completing these activities that seemed unsurmountable were feelings of accomplishment; an increase of positive self-esteem.
This often seems contrary to being in a role of a helper, either as a counselor or as a teacher. Being a helper translates into wanting to take away the struggles and pain of others. The paradox becomes in that by allowing our clients or students to work through their pain and struggles, it helps them to grow.
Productive Struggle
In 1910, John Dewey described learning as beginning with a dilemma—an uncertainty about how to proceed. Struggling to work through uncertainty and ambiguity to discover a solution was, for Dewey, essential to meaningful learning. Struggling and persisting in the face of uncertainty is finding its way back into prescriptions for good classroom practice. Advocates for meaningful struggle recommend that teachers avoid telling students how to solve problems. Instead, teachers are urged to allow students to wrestle with a problem and try to solve it themselves.
Engaging students in productive struggle is a challenge for teachers as well as the students. It takes time, persistence, and some experimenting to plan rich learning opportunities that challenge but don’t frustrate students. Activities need to stretch students’ thinking and performance just beyond the level they can do on their own. Struggle works and does not frustrate when students have the knowledge and tools to tackle novel problems—ones they’ve not seen before, and are just beyond what they’ve already learned and mastered.
Another crucial teaching role in productive struggle lessons is providing timely assistance. When a challenging task opens a productive-struggle zone, the teacher’s judgment is again critical. Success depends on teachers recognizing when a little timely assistance sustains student persistence but does not prematurely terminate productive struggle and learning.
Getting the right balance can be difficult. For teachers accustomed to avoiding student struggles, there is temptation to intervene and help students get the right answers. To do so runs the risk of turning the activity into the classic recitation-style lesson—turning students into passive receivers of knowledge and teachers into “tellers.” (Beyond Growth Mindset: Creating Classroom Opportunities for Meaningful Struggle)
Maker Education and Productive Struggle
I’ve been integrating maker education activities into my gifted classes for the past several years. The ill-defined tasks that often characterize maker education create situations whereby my learners often struggle. In fact, I’ve had 6th grade boys cry due to this. Being gifted, they’ve developed a school history of being able to quickly and successfully the tasks given to them so when given tasks they can’t do easily, they become distressed.
I also teach summer camps with a maker education focus. This past week I taught Toy Making and Hacking to 2nd through 6th graders. Many of them struggled and due to these struggles quickly exclaimed, “I can’t do this.” This occurred mainly during the Toy Take Apart and Repurposing and through making Wiggle Bots.
Assisting Learners With Their Productive Struggles
First and foremost, I let them struggle. Second, I say to my learners who struggle and want me to fix it – do it for them something such as:
- I know you can figure it out.
- I won’t do it for you. I have faith that you can do it.
- You got this.
- Take as much time as you need. There is no time limit.
- Why not try for ___ minutes? If you don’t get it by then, I’ll help you.
- What steps can you take in order to be successful?
- Why not ask a classmate how they worked on the problem?
- You might want to try something different.
Finally, I do offer and give help to those who have struggled and are reaching high levels of stress.
Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D.
