Archive for the ‘Maker Education’ Category
micro:bits for good
At the beginning of November, 2019, I had the opportunity to travel to Singapore to attend and present at Edutech Asia 2019. During that time, I had the opportunity to hear about their initiative to use micro:bits to help students learn technology in authentic ways. An article from 2017, Micro:bit launch: What you need to know about the coding gadget Singapore plans to introduce, explained it as:
School-going children in Singapore will soon be using a pocket-sized, codeable computer, called the micro:bit, to pick up coding skills. The move is aimed at instilling passion for technology among young Singaporeans. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) will work with the Ministry of Education (MOE) to roll out micro:bit as part of its new Digital Maker Programme over the next two years.
In the exhibit hall at the conference, IMDA showcased the micro:bit-for-good projects that groups of Singapore students created. The following video provides a sampling of students explaining their projects.
micro:bit Global Challenge
The Micro:bit Education is sponsoring a challenge to use micro:bits to address two of the UN’s Global Goals: Life Below Water and Life on Land. They provide lots of resources on their website:
- Resources: By completing any of these activities, young people will gain insights into two of the UN’s Global Goals. They can then complete the Design Activity, designing their own prototype solution to a real world problem which they can enter to the do your :bit challenge – https://microbit.org/do-your-bit/resources/
- Inspiration: Looking for some inspiration to get started? Have a look at some of the devices that the winners of our last Global Goals challenge created – https://microbit.org/do-your-bit/inspiration/
Previous micro:bit Global Challenge
In 2015, world leaders came together to decide on a series of “global goals” to build a better world. We challenged students aged 8-12 across the globe to consider how these goals could change the lives of themselves and others, and to design solutions to these goals using the micro:bit (https://microbit.org/global-challenge/)
Although this contest/initiative has officially ended, it could still be used by groups of students as a reference to create micro:bit-for-good projects. Some resources from this challenge follow:
- Global Challenge Resources for Teachers – https://microbit.org/global-challenge/lessons-landing/
- The micro:bit Global Challenge – the winners! – https://microbit.org/global-challenge/winners/
The following is a guide developed by Canada Learn Code to help students prototype their micro:bit global challenge idea.
A Maker Education PD Workshop
I had the privilege of presenting a day long maker education workshop at Edutech Asia on November 7, 2019. I was excited about having teachers and other professionals from Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, and New Zealand attend. What follows are some details and highlights.
As they arrived in the morning, I asked them to access the workshop slides and create a name card lit up with an LED.
They then used these name cards to introduce themselves.
Next, they were provided with copper tape, coin batteries, LEDs, and Chibitronics’ circuit stickers along with instructions about how to make series and parallel circuits; and asked to create pictures from their circuits. Here is a video of some of the participants sharing their processes:
Then, they were asked to further reflect on their learning by playing my Maker Reflection Game.
They were then introduced to their next making segment in which they could pick to do one or more of the following projects:
- Bristlebots
- Gami-bots
- More advanced paper circuits
- micro:bit books
- Makey-Makey Characters
I repeatedly encouraged them to take pictures throughout their making processes in order to document their learning.
To reflect on this making segment, they were introduced to several types of online educational technology creation tools to use for their reflective piece. I believe that reflection and assessment should be as fun, exciting, valuable, and informative as the making process itself. Here are some examples from the workshop:
Finally, they were instructed to create a poster using visuals and LEDs in their small groups about their day and how they can apply their learnings when they return to their work environments.
. . . and here are the slides provided to the participants:
Language Arts Lesson Using a micro:book
In Learning in the Making I discuss the importance of and strategies for integrating technology into the curriculum.
Maker education needs to be intentional. It follows, then, that if we want to bring maker education into more formal and traditional classrooms—as well as more informal environments such as afterschool and community programs—it needs to be integrated into the curriculum using lesson plans. This chapter begins with a discussion of the characteristics of an effective maker education curriculum and then suggests a lesson plan framework for maker education– enhanced lesson plans. A powerful maker education curriculum includes the following elements:
- Instructional challenges are hands-on, experiential, and naturally engaging for learners.
- Learning tasks are authentic and relevant, and they promote life skills outside of the formal classroom.
- Challenges are designed to be novel and create excitement and joy for learners.
- Learner choice and voice are valued.
- Lessons address cross-curricular standards and are interdisciplinary (like life).
- Learning activities get learners interested in and excited about a broad array of topics, especially in the areas of science, engineering, math, language arts, and fine arts.
- Communication, collaboration, and problem solving are built into the learning process.
- Reading and writing are integrated into learning activities in the form of fun, interesting books and stories and through writing original stories, narratives, and journalistic reports.
- Educational technology is incorporated in authentic ways; the emphasis is not to learn technology just for the sake of learning it.
Educators need to approach their curriculum and lessons with a maker mindset. With this mindset, they can figure out creative ways to integrate maker activities into existing lessons and instructional activities. Educators in these situations start with the standards and objectives of their lessons, as they typically do with “regular” lessons, and then design or identify maker activities that meet the standards and the lesson. It simply becomes a matter of “How can I add a making element to my lessons to reinforce concepts being learned?”
The micro:book Lesson
After showing the micro:book activity (see https://make.techwillsaveus.com/microbit/activities/animated-microbook) to a bi-lingual co-teacher, Natalia, she took off with it to develop a lesson to teach her Spanish-speaking students types of sentences. See the video below for her explanation of this lesson and a student example.
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 :
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.
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.
Expert Mentors: A Professional Development Model for STEM and Maker Education Implementation
Implementing Maker, STEM, STEAM Education
In order to prevent STEM and maker education from becoming a flavor of the month, there needs to be specific strategies provided to educators on how to embed STEM and maker activities into their curriculum. A good number of educators have not received training on how to integrate activities into their classroom practices which entail resource heavy, hands-on learning.
One of the elementary schools where I work is going to implement maker education this coming school year. In a discussion with the principal and a small number of teachers, we realized that some of the teachers will be resistant due to their lack of experience with the activities, resources, and tools related to maker education, and frankly, their fear of doing something as foreign as maker education.
A key to increase their comfort with and chances for implementing these activities is to provide them with professional development opportunities, but the PD needs to be designed based on research.
Professional Development
Teacher professional learning is of increasing interest as a critical way to support the increasingly complex skills students need to learn in order to succeed in the 21st century. Sophisticated forms of teaching are needed to develop student competencies such as deep mastery of challenging content, critical thinking, complex problem solving, effective communication and collaboration, and self-direction. In turn, effective professional development (PD) is needed to help teachers learn and refine the instructional strategies required to teach these skills. (Effective Teacher Professional Development).
The Learning Policy institute examined rigorous studies that have demonstrated a positive link between teacher professional development, teaching practices, and student outcomes. They discovered that not all professional development experiences are equal and that effective PD has specific characteristics. Their findings included:
Active learning provides teachers with opportunities to get hands-on experience designing and practicing new teaching strategies. In PD models featuring active learning, teachers often participate in the same style of learning they are designing for their students, using real examples of curriculum, student work, and instruction.
Curricular models and modeling of instruction provide teachers with a clear vision of what best practices look like. Teachers may view models that include lesson plans, unit plans, sample student work, observations of peer teachers, and video or written cases of accomplished teaching.
Effective professional development provides teachers with adequate time to learn, practice, implement, and reflect upon new strategies that facilitate changes in their practice. As a result, strong PD initiatives typically engage teachers in learning over weeks, months, or even academic years, rather than in short, one-off workshops (Effective Teacher Professional Development).
After attending the New Mexico Computer Science week whereby engineering college students acted as mentors for the participating teachers, I realized that having experts in the classroom working directly with educator can be a great form of professional development. In this case, it was the engineering college undergraduates but it could also be trainers from STEM-related organizations or other educators who have developed their STEM instructional practices. This model has the potential to discuss the properties of effective professional development discussed above. Mainly, educators would be able to see STEM and maker instructional practices being modeled.
Benefits
- Directly observing how the expert interacts with their content and with the learners.
- Experiencing the benefits of team teaching – pairing a content expert with an education.
- Learning how to troubleshoot when the activities don’t work as planned.
- Assisting both the educator and their learners to see failure as iteration and growth opportunities.
- Getting to see how learners respond to the hands-on experiences . . . often with excitement and engagement.
Implementation Suggestions
Some suggestions for implementing this form of professional development follow. It obviously is just a beginning.
- Train expert mentors in interacting with learners using hands-on activities.
- Train and plan meetings between educators and mentor experts making sure that they include collaborative and active learning strategies.
- Needs to occur over time through multiple sessions – not a single time experience.
- Include educator reflection and follow-up as an integral component of the professional development.
An Example
An example of a mentoring program is my local area is the New Mexico STEM Mentor Collective.
The Northern New Mexico STEM Mentor Collective, funded by NSF INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science) seeks to raise aspirations and expectations in Middle & High School STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics by training and planting (in local schools and libraries) a paid STEM Mentor Corps comprised of caring, exemplary NNMC (Northern New Mexico College) undergraduates
Even though it is designed to bring Engineering undergraduates into the classroom to provide young people with mentors, I contend it could also be used to help educators learn how to implement STEM and maker education activities. I am planning to work with my principal this coming school year to help develop this as a model of professional development.
Shoe Design Project
As the final project of the school year, I asked a group of my gifted 4th through 6th graders to design and prototype a new type of shoe. In a recent post from Idea U, Why Everyone Should Prototype (Not Just Designers), Chris Nyffeler, IDEO Executive Design Director, discussed the purpose and value of prototyping:
When we say prototype, that’s anything that gets the idea in your head into an artifact people can experience and offer feedback on.
You use prototyping to process the ideas themselves and to help you think through the idea better.
It’s not that you process your idea and then communicate it through a prototype. You actually use prototyping to process the ideas themselves and to help you think through the idea better.
Keep early prototypes quick and scrappy. By starting with tools that are familiar to you and easy to use, you can quickly create something tangible that will allow you to gather feedback and learn what’s working and what’s not.
Videos for Inspiration
After being told about their task – to design a new type of shoe with new and unique features, learners were shown the following videos for inspiration:
Writing a Description of Shoe Characteristics
Learners were asked to begin their design process by writing about each of the following:
- Age Group?
- Gender?
- Kind of Shoe (e.g., athletic, fashion)?
- Special Features?
What follows are some examples of their descriptions:
Creating a Shoe Design Sketch
Learners were asked to begin prototyping their shoe designs by sketching them.
- Front, Side, and Bottom Views in Color
- Special Features
- Materials Used (they were asked to do online research on the different types of materials that can be used for shoe construction.)
Creating a Logo
It was the learners’ idea to create a logo for their shoes. One of them knew about an online logo creator at https://www.freelogodesign.org/ which they all used. Here is one of them that impressed me. He worked a long time fine tuning it.
Creating a 3D Model
Option 1 – A 3D Model Out of Cardstock
This part of the activity was taken from Summer Fun: How to Make a Paper Shoe https://kidzeramag.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/summer-fun-how-to-make-a-paper-shoe/ – the template and instructional video follow:
Learners began creating their design with the cardboard template adapted the template to better match their sketches. We ran out of time to complete this part due to the school year ending.
Option 2 – 3D Model Using Google Sketchup
Some learners attempted to create their 3D designs using Google Sketchup – https://app.sketchup.com/app?hl=en. This is the free version so there was limited functions but the learners enjoyed experimenting with it.
Reflecting with the Creative Product Assessment Rubric
As part of their gifted program, learners complete quarterly assessments. For the final quarter, they use the Creative Product Assessment Rubric.
An Example
Product Name: Ixploz, v.1
Product Description: Athletic Shoe
Problem or Need Statement: To make an athletic shoe that is comfortable and relaxing.
In grade 6, O. reviewed his product, Ixploz, an athletic shoe, using the Creative Product Assessment Rubric. The CPAR assesses novelty, resolution, and style as factors of creativity. This product scored 3/5 for novelty, 3.8/5 for resolution and 3.6/5 for style. Averaging the factors, it scored 3.5/5 overall, accumulating 52/75 possible points.
Strengths Noted: It looks nice and it is comfortable
Questions: If made in real life, would it be successful?
Scratch and Makey Makey Across the Curriculum
I love bringing physical computing into my classrooms:
Physical computing means building interactive physical systems by the use of software and hardware that can sense and respond to the analog world. Physical computing is a creative framework for understanding human beings’ relationship to the digital world. In practical use, the term most often describes handmade art, design or DIY hobby projects that use sensors and microcontrollers to translate analog input to a software system, and/or control electro-mechanical devices such as motors, servos, lighting or other hardware (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_computing).
. . . but as with all use of educational technologies, I believe that it should be used intentionally to assist learners in developing and expanding their content knowledge and life skills.
Best Practices for Physical Computing
- Hands-on/Minds-On: “When students are fully engaged in a task, they are actively doing and actively thinking. While hands are engaged, minds should be questioning, sorting through sensory input, and making connections” (Actively Engage Students Using Hands-on & Minds-on Instruction).
- Development of Learning and Innovation as Well as Career and Life Skills: Physical computing activities should be designed to help learners develop skills as identified as by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning.
Learning and innovation skills are what separate students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments in today’s world and those who are not. These skills include: Creativity and Innovation; and Critical Thinking and Problem Solving.
Today’s students need to develop thinking skills, content knowledge, and social and emotional competencies to navigate complex life and work environments. P21’s essential Life and Career Skills include: Flexibility and Adaptability; and Initiative and Self-Direction (Partnership for 21st Century Learning Framework and Resources).
- Cross Curricular Connections: Physical computing, at its best, enbraces content standards across the curriculum.
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. (A Cornucopia of Multidisciplinary Teaching).
- Relevant and Authentic Learning: Physical computing is often perceived by learners of all ages are relevant to their lives especially with the current push towards learning STEM and coding.
Authentic learning is learning designed to connect what students are taught in school to real-world issues, problems, and applications; learning experiences should mirror the complexities and ambiguities of real life. Students work towards production of discourse, products, and performances that have value or meaning beyond success in school; this is learning by doing approach (Authentic learning: what, why and how?)
- Learner-Centric – More of Them; Less of Us:At its heart, maker education and physical computing is about centering around the learner. Children and youth are natural learners—imaginative, curious, exploratory testers of theories and creators of solutions. When children and youth have educational experiences that allow them to fully occupy the educational space and are supported by adults who trust their innate abilities and contributions and are given the guidance, they grow confident in their abilities (At its heart, maker education is always about centering the learner).
- Scaffolded Learning Leading to Learner Autonomy: In Scaffolding Maker Education Learning Experiences, I discussed the following:
Direct instruction is provided through structured and prescribed activities with the goal of learners then being able to eventually go into self-determined directions. My contention is that learners often don’t know what they don’t know; and that giving them the basic skills frees them to then use their creativity and innovation to take these tools into self-determined directions
- Open-Ended Challenge: As stated above, learning is scaffolded but even with more structure projects as described in this post, they are still open-ended enough for learners to integrate their own talents, interests, and skills into the projects.
Note about using Makey Makey and Scratch 3.0
All of the following projects utilized new Scratch 3.0 along with their new extensions: Makey Makey and Text to Speech.
Language Arts: Character Development
Standards Addressed:
Common Core State Standards – ELA
- Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
Next Generation Science Standards
- Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
- Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
National Core Arts Standards
- Students will generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
ISTE Standards for Students
- Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
- Students develop, test and refine prototype as part of a cyclical design process.
- Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance, and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
- Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.
Directions:
Learners engaged in a maker-enhanced writers’ workshop. I like having my learners begin by developing their characters. They did so by:
- Describing their character.
- Drawing a picture of their characters.
- Creating a more artistic version of their character using additional art materials.
- Posting a description and image of their character onto Kidblog.
- Using Scratch and Makey Makey to describe the main characteristics of their characters.
- More about the Maker-Enhanced Writing Workshop: Character Development can be found at https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/maker-enhanced-writing-workshop-character-development/
Science: Brain Science
Standards Addressed:
Next Generation Science Standards
- Develop a model to describe phenomena.
- Use a model to test interactions concerning the functioning of a natural system.
- Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
- Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
ISTE Standards for Students
- Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
- Students develop, test and refine prototype as part of a cyclical design process.
- Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance, and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
- Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.
Directions:
- This was part of a larger unit whereby the students were taught about brain science. See https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2016/10/22/teaching-elementary-level-learners-about-the-brain/.
- I adapted the directions for their brain operation game from https://iamclaudius.com/makey-makey-operation-game/. I gave them an outline of the brain with lobes outlined for them to color and rubber cement onto a pizza box (see video below). For their brain parts, I gave them air drying clay. They were asked to create parts that represent the functions of the individual lobes, e.g., eye for occipital lobe, mouth for temporal lobe, a ball for the cerebellum, etc.
- They were then asked to code their games using Scratch. Here is the example I used to get them started: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/283935140/editor/. I instructed them to include, for each lobe, its name and some kind of pun about its function.
- Finally, they hooked up the Makey Makey using the directions found at https://iamclaudius.com/makey-makey-operation-game/.
Music: Piano
Standards Addressed:
Music Education
- The creative ideas, concepts, and feelings that influence musicians’ work emerge from a variety of sources.
- Musicians connect their personal interests, experiences, ideas, and knowledge to creating, performing, and responding.
ISTE Standards for Students
- Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance, and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
- Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.
Directions:
These project used the directions from Scratch Cards, Music Cards, for the Microbit found at https://microbit.org/scratch/. Instead of a microbit, a Makey Makey was used. See the video below.
Engineering: Marble Mazes
Standards Addressed:
Next Generation Science Standards
- Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
- Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
- Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.
ISTE Standards for Students
- Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
- Students develop, test and refine prototype as part of a cyclical design process.
- Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance, and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
- Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.
Directions:
- This project was adapted from @gravescolleen Makey Makey Marble Maze and 5th grade https://colleengraves.org/2018/05/04/makey-makey-marble-maze-and-5th-grade/.
Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D.
