John Spencer, coauthor of two different best-selling books, Launch and Empower, talks about the creativity (and test score) boosts his classes experienced when he began Maker Mondays.
Towards the end of the 2017 school year, I introduced a design challenge to my afterschool Maker’s Club that was one of our best ones ever. We began the Furniture Challenge in collaboration with Custom Educational Furnishings (CEF). The challenge was this:
Design a piece of furniture that could help another school to start or enhance their makerspace. The only rule is that it has to be something that could actually be feasible to manufacture (sorry – no storage carts with flamethrowers)
The students came up with all sorts of amazing ideas and presented them to representatives from CEF. Those representatives then looked at all the submissions to select one that they began manufacturing.
There is a point of view that kits are not good for Makers/Makerspaces. Their is a belief that kits take away from the purity of exploration of a Makerspaces and trying new things and failing. One big question from these people is,
Are you truly Making if you are just following directions?
My answer to that is yes. A big, fat yes for that matter.
A video prompt you can do as a hands-on activity or in Minecraft. Transcript: You are leading a team of elite engineers and innovative architects that wil
2017 was my fourth year of holding a Maker Fair at Stewart Middle Magnet School (see 2016, 2015 and 2014 for the previous ones). This year, my students had to put together everything for our Maker Fair in an extra short period of time, since the school year ended early. They rose to the challenge with some amazing, interactive projects and activities.
I had some visitors in my library makerspace last week that were wanting to add an aspect of maker education into their own libraries.
As they walked around our space, visited with my collaborating English teacher, and witnessed students prototyping for our invention literacy project, they said something surprising.
“We noticed you have traditional wooden library chairs and tables, so it isn’t about the furniture, is it? Maker Education? It’s about the mindset?”
In Nick Provenzano’s book, Your Starter Guide to Makerspaces, he makes the case that a maker space can start a movement inside your school. I agree wholeheartedly.
There are many folks who have been saying to “stop” using the word Makerspace, and it shouldn’t only be one space. But sometimes this space is the seed that plants a maker movement into a maker culture.
At Centennial School District (where I’m the Director of Tech and Innovation) we’ve been slowly beginning to build a maker culture out of maker spaces. It is a process and one that doesn’t happen overnight. Here is a few things/ideas we’ve done that have jumpstarted the movement towards a culture:
The maker movement has expanded greatly in recent years and much of the attention has focused on cities with high population density and large well-funded school districts. In rural districts, teachers are also developing maker projects to help students gain the benefits that come from hands-on experiences, while better understanding the needs of their communities.
If you're intimidated by the idea of using a 3D design program to create an object for a 3D printer, don't be. In this quick article and tutorial video, you'll see how skills you have with PowerPoint (and other graphic programs) can translate easily to 3D design.
Programming re-imagined for the connected world. Learn to program Arduino, drones, connected toys, and smart home devices. Tickle is easy to learn, fun to use, yet 1000x more powerful.
Best list of arduino project ideas along with sources we have published here. It includes arduino based battery charger, arduino based thermostat and etc..
Best list of arduino project ideas along with sources we have published here. It includes arduino based battery charger, arduino based thermostat and etc..
GREAT place to find nearly everything and well documented...
As the maker movement in culture moves from MacGyver jokes and what Noah did when Allie left him in The Notebook to something with a bit more academic and cognitive credibility, it has also begun to creep in to the education space.
As with any niche, there is specialized language–jargon–that may keep things murky for you. The 38 terms below by no means represent an exhaustive collection. (There are dozens of gadgets, circuit boards, and digital, robotic, and electrical wizardry we left on the cutting room flow.) But for most teachers in most circumstances, it should serve as a nice starting points.
John Evans's insight:
How many more terms can we add today 3 years later!!
Dan Ryder is an improviser, design thinker, and Twitter chatter at #dtk12chat and #EdCorps. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator for 2017 and co-author of Intention: CriticalCreativity, which can be purchased here.
Dan can be found on Twitter @WickedDecent and on the web at danryder207.com. Here is a great article by Dan for design thinking in the ELA classroom.
The Makerspace movement has been steadfastly gaining traction in education, and rightly so; what better way to incite creativity, encourage inventiveness, and just generally let kids have fun than by giving them Things and asking them to Make Something?
One great way to introduce the concept of making to your school is through a Maker Madness Tournament. This structured, guided, tiered competition gives faculty and students some great exposure to what it means to be a Maker while cashing in on the inherent joy that children find in some friendly competition!
"Before the curtain rose on the International School of Lausanne’s middle school production of The BFG, seven 12-year-old actors slipped the straps of wearable puppets over their shoulders and gripped the rods controlling the huge arms. In an instant, they were transformed into 10-foot-tall giants with booming voices, ferocious features, and massive movable hands, bringing the characters from Roald Dahl’s classic tale—Bloodbottler, Childchewer, and of course the Big Friendly Giant himself—suddenly to life. As a visual arts teacher at ISL, I am proud of my K–12 students, who designed and created the hand-sculpted and fully articulated puppets. It was a monumental feat, and it brought together students from our primary, middle, and secondary schools as they worked to design, engineer, carve, build, and paint these creations. "
"Most teachers have probably come across occasional student who is a maker. There was a girl in my year 8 English class who made the most adorable jewellery out of tiny, perfect, sculpted baked goods and sweets ('Get thee to Etsy!' I may or may not have cried, 'get thee to Etsy!). There was a boy in my year 10 media class who saved up his pocket money for years to buy a video-capable DSLR camera and was teaching himself to make films. He has an incredible, artistic eye. A girl in year 7 wrote pitch-perfect sci-fi genre prose.
All of these makers have really important traits in common - they are highly motivated, resilient and independent learners (all things we desperately want students to be), but these traits are a product of something deeper and more powerful - the maker-mindset."
According to this Los Angeles Times article from 1986, “The national education reform movement of the 1980s added a host of academic courses to graduation requirements, leaving little room for students to take electives. Because shop classes are usually electives, even students who want the classes have discovered they do not have the time.”
I checked out my old high school’s course catalog, which offered shop classes when I graduated in 2002, and found shop classes are gone there, too. But, the rumor around town is that they plan to open a Makerspace soon!
If you are unfamiliar with the Makerspace in schools, the most common type of Makerspace aims to both better expose students to STEM related fields and revive the lost art of making with one’s hands. Basically, it is Shop class 2.0. And like Shop class, the Makerspace is doomed. The Makerspace has five years left, ten if it’s lucky. Why? Two main reasons:
School libraries are starting makerspaces all over the world. It’s an exciting time in education as we rediscover the power of creativity. But many schools rush to start makerspaces so quickly that they neglect building the maker culture. Developing a maker culture is a lot like developing a love of reading, it takes time and persistence and it’s totally worth it. Here’s a few ways that you can work to cultivate a love of making and creativity in your students.
DIY : Learn how to make a vacuum cleaner using bottle, washing machine pipe and single dc motor, its very simple homemade vacuum cleaner show how the...
What is needed to start a Makerspace in a classroom or school?
Passion - You need to have passion and a belief in the educational value of maker-style projects.
Space - This can be a whole room or only part of a room.
Supplies - Start small with simple craft materials. Often sending a message out to colleagues and the community asking for donations of materials works well.
Storage - Create a place to store materials when they are not in use and student projects as they are being worked on.
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