Building a Makerspace Culture to Support Standards and Learning: 10 Ideas and 16 Resources. As you are aware there is an amazing and powerful Maker Space movement going throughout the education landscape.
This is a concept that I and many others want to see sustained because of the amazing learning opportunities it provides. In order to do so, I believe there are several ideas and concepts we must acknowledge in order to achieve the genuine education possibilities that the Maker’s culture can bring a classroom. Before reading, please take a moment to subscribe by email or RSS and also give me a follow on Twitter at mjgormans. I promise you will find some great information coming your way in the posts that follow…So sign up now and please pass this on with a retweet. – Mike Gorman ( Booking Info – It is time to think about your school or conference needs. Quick Notes – PBL Opportunities you may want to be aware of: BLC 16 ….
Making Learning Happen…New York PBL – Join me in Syracuse, New York in August for some exciting PBL workshops. MAKING THE GRADE: HOW SCHOOLS ARE CREATING AND USING MAKERSPACES. About two years ago, Summit Elementary in Oconomowoc (WI) brought in laptops and ramped up its science and math curriculum in an effort to reach the hands-on, active learners who had already begun to check out.
A committee researched the maker movement, secured a grant from a local education foundation, and turned the outdated computer lab into a makerspace. Now, as part of their specials schedule, students spend an hour each week in the makerspace, learning about the design process and playing with the materials. Because it’s been such a big hit, the committee applied for another grant to create four maker carts that teachers can check out. The carts—Engineering, Math & Science, Tech & Robotics, and Creativity—include materials and activity binders. “Teachers design lessons around the materials that fit right into the curriculum,” says Wendy Harrop, learning resource teacher.
The mobile solution is perfect for schools that lack physical space. Teacher integration is picking up, too. 8 Tips in Taking on School-Wide Makerspace Leadership. I’m now a little over a month into my new role as the coordinator of our brand-new makerspace in my PS-8th grade school here in Seattle, and I’m honestly loving it every bit as much as I expected!
Over the course of this month, 450 students made prototype boats for their stuffies (PK), built “doodle bots” (K and 1), “hacked” their notebooks with surface-mount LEDs (2), made dioramas powered by Hummingbird Robotics kits (3 and 4), designed and laser cut labels for their new classroom spaces (5), made postcards using the greenscreen of themselves visiting exotic locales (5 French), built casino games for math class (6), and built symbolic representations of their personal core values (8). 7th grade will be building turbine-driven generators next week! And, that’s not even a comprehensive list… 1. Your planner must be permanently affixed to your person. 2. There have been days when there were literally only 30 minutes in the whole school day when there were no classes in our makerspace. 3.
Alternative Assessments and Feedback in a MakerEd Classroom. The Rapid Growth of “Maker Education” Programs According to Google Trends (see photo), a new term came into existence and quickly became synonymous with progressive education and a resurgence of STEAM education in America.
That term is maker education, or makered for short, and can be seen in the graph as “born” according to google searches, around September of 2004. Although the exact number of makered programs is not currently known, schools that employ a progressive pedagogy (insert the word innovative for those working in the 21st century) or schools that make claims regarding the importance of differentiation, constructivism or experiential learning have built or are building makered programs.
At first these programs seemed to be dependent on having state of the art Maker Spaces or FabLabs and high-tech tools, as most were found in well-funded private schools. Shop for toys that give girls confidence in problem-solving. A Modified version of Paper Circuits activity for classroom. I just wanted to make a quick post about our modified version of paper circuit activity that we tried in a classroom at Lighthouse Community Charter School, hoping this might help school teachers to prep for their activities in the class.
For the paper circuits activity, we usually use this tiny little surface mount LEDs in the Tinkering Studio, but in the classroom, we used this gumdrop LEDs (10mm LED) so it would be more appropriate for the third graders to handle (see the size difference in the photos!). Also, instead of using skinny copper tape, we used ¼” wide copper tape, which was twice wider than the one in the Tinkering Studio.
Tiny surface mount LED ---> Gumdrop LED (10mm LED) With the gumdrop LEDs, students could simply scotch tape the LED's leads on copper tape (no need to solder!). There's a Maker Faire in That iPad! 10 Ways to Create Student Makers With Apps - Getting Smart by Alison Anderson - edapps, iPad, maker, maker fair, makerchat, makered. Too often the word on the street is “my school or class has new iPads but we don’t know what to do with them.”
The best part about these devices is that they get the learning into the actual hands of students- make learning “hands-on.” That is NOT a new concept. Dewey, Montessori, David Kolb knew this long before the digital age- constructivism is one of the most effective ways to learn anything. These days, the word “maker” can be interchanged for “constructivist” and the Maker Movement is really starting to sweep the country. The White House announced last week they would host their first Maker Faire this spring (follow the hashtag, #IMadeThis). These are all exciting events but all students should have easy access to becoming a maker. 1.
DIY.org (app and webbased) has it all! 2. Play-i Bots: coming soon – these little bots will take the code written on the ipad and make it come to life in the real world. 3. 4. 5. 6. Foldify: Don’t have the cash to get a 3D printer? 7.