education

Mashing Maker Workshops as a Way of Extending Learning

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As a maker educator, our job is to nudge students toward the possibilities by developing a maker mindset in all of our students. One way I attempt to do that is by cultivating a culture of creativity in the library and letting students play to learn (and sometimes re-learn to play!)

We want our students tinkering. But sometimes, the older the students are, the more difficult this becomes because they’ve fallen out of the habit of playing and what Seymour Papert calls “hard fun.” I thought a lot about this idea when I wrote the “Librarian’s Guide to littleBits” last year.  I interviewed different librarians in the field on their feelings about “Tinkering vs Guided Learning” and asked each librarian how they facilitated both types of learning in their libraries. Across the board, we all discussed the value in libraries instituting open makerspace time and guided project time (workshops, activities, etc). Plus, there was an agreement that a maker facilitates things in a very hands-off way compared to normal library programming. Instead of giving answers, a maker facilitator nudges makers to think of their own ideas and solutions. A maker facilitator also lets students choose the way they want their project to end.

Creating a culture of creativity and nudging students toward tinkering are just a few of the reasons I began hosting maker workshops at my own library makerspace. Sometimes these workshops introduce my students to new skills. I host “hands-on” play sessions at my maker professional development too. Teachers learn to create something and then I attempt to nudge them toward all of the possibilities of a maker tool or material. For example, read this reflection from one of my maker participants from a recent workshop. When she needed help, I offered her tips for debugging why her scribblebot wasn’t working instead of giving her direct instructions for how to make it work. I asked her to try a few things and gave her a few ideas to try. By doing this, I’d indirectly taught her that the teacher doesn’t always have the answers (or maybe I should say give the answers…). She emailed me a few weeks later to tell me (and her fellow librarians) that she realized that even though not having answers can be a scary thing, it is a good thing too. Sometimes, we need to let the students have all of the answers. Imagine how empowering that must be for students? To figure out how to debug a problem when the teacher can not? Now she and her students are taking scribblebots MUCH further than the concepts introduced in my initial playful workshop.

And THAT is why I think it’s important to have some guided projects in a library makerspace. Giving students new skills helps them go further as makers.

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To showcase this with a specific anecdote of a student’s workshop makerspace mashup, take this tale from Lamar Library. Two years ago, I hosted three different workshops at the beginning of the school year:

  1. A student-led origami workshop
  2. A teacher -led light up origami workshop with a simple circuit LED
  3.  A quick propulsion Bristlebot workshop. Students made simple robots with a toothbrush head and pager motor.

Students were allowed to keep all of these projects because they were low cost and the bristlebot kits were purchased with a grant.

Then this happened….

One of my students took the concepts from all three workshops and made this awesome robot paper circuit origami thing….

(Thank you Facebook memories for reminding me of this quirky creation!)

Why did he do that? Because a workshop or a project isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning of an exploration of the “vast possibilities” of a skill, of a material, or of an idea. I’m basing this wording and concept of “exploring the vast possibilities of student ideas” on my talks with Jay Silver, Amos Blanton, Ryan Jenkins, and Patrick Benfield during my research for Challenge-Based Learning and mashing it up a bit with my own ideas. These mash-ups from student-led ideas and the learning that it reflects are at the heart of making.

 

If you are interested in reading more about projects and workshops, read this article “The Value of Guided Projects in a Makerspace” from Diana Rendina. (We also go into depth about a lot of this post’s concepts in our book scheduled to be released in the spring.)

What type of makerspace mashup fun have you seen in your own students? What type of things have they made by taking a concept further?

 

Invention Literacy Research – Part Three- Sharing and Reflection

/ gravescolleen / 7 Comments

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This is the third post in a series describing the Invention Literacy Research Project that I worked on collaboratively with one of my English Teachers in the 2015-2016 school year- April Feranda. About 6 months ago, I watched this video by Jay Silver defining the term “Invention Literacy.” I immediately loved this concept because it perfectly describes what I’ve been attempting to do in my library makerspace since May of 2013.  After writing lessons for Makey Makey in 2015, I realized I went through the ultimate training on Invention Literacy and boosting creative confidence. I wanted to share that journey with you to help you become invention literate as an educator. April Feranda and I would love for you and your students to become more invention literate. Therefore, we are putting this out there for you to hack and personalize and make your own. Read post one and post two if you haven’t had a chance to read them yet.

After researching and learning from the tinkering experts at The Tinkering Studio, students spent two class periods (and plenty of time after school) finishing prototypes for our finale Maker Fest. One of the coolest things about this project was that students were picking up making skills as needed. The student in the video below needed to learn how to use our saw while creating marble runs, so I was able to teach some saw safety on the fly!

I was also pleasantly surprised when students stayed after school and we made up quicker ways to create soft circuits by utilizing conductive fabric tape from the Makey Makey Inventor Booster Kit and hardware store foil tape.

Sharing Maker Fest

On the due date, Mrs. Feranda and I decided to hold a Maker Fest and just like at a real Maker Faire, students presented their prototypes in a show and tell style fashion. If you hold your own Maker Fest, you need to make sure you:

  • Get others involved
    • Invite community
    • Invite inventors via Skype
    • Invite other Students or classrooms
  • Have students be prepared to speak about invention literacy, historical context, and the most challenging part of creating an invention
  • Make GIFs of prototypes ( with Spin turntable or another documentation) to keep a digital record of inventions.

Some of my favorite projects were made out of all recyclables (this helicopter and water turbine), while others combined favorite maker tools with recyclables to make miniature versions of everyday things! (Makey Makey piano and littleBits tank below)

Surprise Virtual Guest Jay Silver

During our Maker Fest, we had a surprise virtual guest, Jay Silver! I carried him around via my computer so he could chat with each group or individual about their #rhsmakes. He did an awesome job casually chatting with kids about what they made. Students really enjoyed sharing their creations with this awesome inventor and Jay was great about asking students about their invention process. One of my favorite things was how he asked each student questions pertinent to their own invention.

If you implement this project at your school, it is important that you and your co-teachers understand that the process and the meaning a student gets from making are one of the most important aspects to making and education. The final product can be faulty and that’s okay. One of our students during this project decided she was going to build magnetic gears. She never got a working prototype, and was a tad upset about the outcome. However, when we Skyped with Jay Silver during our Maker Fest, he was extra impressed with her idea and original concept. He spoke at length to her about her process, her thinking, and her many attempts that ended in failure. Through this conversation, she was able to see how much she learned throughout the project. During the project, Feranda and I worked on explaining this to all of our students, and explaining that persevering after failure is what leads to innovation.

This whole research project was the perfect blend of academic research and crowdsourced research.  For example, after researching how cars were made, the student below wanted to build a littleBits car. He found a crowdsourced Youtube video and tried to replicate the car from the video, only to find that there were missing steps, and parts he did not have access to. Instead, he ended up looking at gears and mechanisms, then found his own way to make and create a tank out of an old 3D filament box.

Reflection

After our Maker Fest, students went back to class to finish out the school year. Since reflection is an integral part of the process, we gave them a break and then had them create video reflections via Flipgrid. We are hoping to compile these videos and use them as a springboard for this year’s Invention Literacy project. Here are the reflection questions we used:

  • What did you like most about the Invention literacy project?
  • What was the most challenging part of the project?
  • What advice would you give to someone making their own invention?
  • What does someone need to know in order to be invention literate?
  • Any final thoughts or advice for Mrs. Feranda and Mrs. Graves?

(If you want to read more about reflection and makerspace stories, check out this great article from Edutopia by Ross Cooper and Laura Fleming and read my Edutopia article about using maker journals as a form of reflection during maker education professional development.)

Sampling of student responses:

As I sat in my office and watched these Flipgrid reflections, I was struck by the authentic research methods of my students AND how invested they were in research as an integral part to making! This maker-focused research was like an accelerated course in making. Some of these students had not utilized the makerspace until this project and the little nuggets of wisdom they gained from this project were all the things a maker teacher librarian wants to hear from students:

  • “You have to be okay with failing”

 

  • “You need to be flexible with mistakes even if you mess up.  Even if you have to start over and do it again. And you need to be creative to think about how you are going to build your project. Because not all projects come with instructions.”

 

  • “You have to tweak it (projects) and make it your own.”

 

  • “The most challenging thing was learning from your mistakes, but that helped you later in the project.”

 

  • “Research…that’s all you need…. and also planning… you might want to make blueprints, gather materials, and think about what you want to create. Not like what I did!” (In response to: What advice would you give to someone making an invention?)

 

  • “It’s okay to fail. Even if you have to start over and over.”

 

  • “My advice is to do really good research on your project and maybe draw out what you want to create, and be patient with yourself because you are going to mess up and it’s going to be a long process. ” (This is one of my favorite reflections. )

 

  • “If you don’t do enough research, you won’t have the ability to collect all of the materials. Because some dude out there may have ideas you didn’t think of that will work for your project.”

Extending Invention Literacy into Daily Practice

So….what are we doing this school year to support invention literacy?

Here at Ryan High School, we want to increase invention literacy by teaching all of our incoming freshmen (an estimated 500 students) the basics of programming, prototyping with littleBits and Makey Makey, creating and editing greenscreen videos, and utilizing design thinking to solve community problems. As we continue to work through this process each school year, we hope to teach all of our 2,000 students the “basic vocabulary and grammar of inventing” so that all of our students can help contribute and create our world!

With the help of teachers, all of our freshmen  in High School 101 classes have not experienced playing with Makey Makey, littleBits, and Greenscreens. I’m hoping to up their coding skills soon by teaching them to create programs in Scratch. I’m looking forward to planning with more teachers on collaborative research projects and working with the awesome Mrs. Feranda on Invention Literacy Research 2.0.

What will you do? How will you prepare your students and increase invention literacy on your campus?