I'm currently taking the MIT Lifelong Kindergarten MOOC. I'm trying to keep up with it anyway.
The mantra of the MIT Media Lab is the 4 P's: projects, passion, peers, and play.
This is a great way to teach, but what if teacher PD was set up around these four words? What if we allowed teachers to take an hour a week to work on a passion project that they shared with their peers?
What if coaches encouraged teachers to choose one project for the year, a project that would impact their classroom and allowed them to learn a new teaching technique?
I started this post a few months ago, November I think, and am now just finishing it.
The Why - Why start a Maker Space?
I have often wondered what students do when they go home. Especially those who live in a city, where do they go? Are they allowed to wander through the alleys? Do they have access to resources they can use to build? Do they have the time to do it?
Parents want the best for their kids. So, they try to set them up for success by enrolling them in programs the parents think would be beneficial. I look at elementary students here in Taiwan, and many are busy every night of the week. I asked my high school student how their weekend was, and he replied, "I studied all weekend. I have a test coming up and a few projects that will be due."
When did kids lose their time to be bored and find out what they are interested in?
Kids need time and space to do the activities in which they are interested or try activities they have not yet experienced -- giving students a chance to create.
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Build Confidence and Self-Efficacy
I want students to figure out how to solve problems independently. In the elementary session in August, I told the students to ask three before asking me: Google, YouTube, a Peer.
One trait I wanted them to develop was self-efficacy. I wanted them to the time and space to geek out and find something they are interested in. It was a good chance for students to take something they were learning in class and build upon it.
I remember some elementary students had been building games in IT Class, and they decided to use their time (because it is their time) to continue developing the game they were making in class. In the Middle School club, one girl asked if she could bring in a kit of some sort and make it in the club, another MS girl made my dog a little scarf.
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These are some of the skills/traits I saw:
students using design thinking
ideation
building confidence
experience learning by themselves and learning how to look or ask for help
making connections
making with their hands
What I think I will always remember is how, over the two years, they built friendships and learned from each other.
The Current State (as of last November)
Currently, the elementary and middle school Maker Clubs include the following "options" (so far):
3D printing
3D modeling
Coding
Minecraft
3D pens
LEGO robots
and other options I have not considered yet
Really, if students can make it [safely], it is acceptable.
I considered having them show a plan, or express one verbally, but that could hinder the process for some students. Besides, sometimes when you are making something, the project unfolds before you. Yes, it may be better to have a plan, but when you are building, sometimes you start to see something not previously conceived.
While this looks like a "tech" club, the spirit of the club is STEAM projects and student choice. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. Recently some enthusiastic girls asked if they could knit. They were surprised when I told them they could because knitting isn't "technology". While that is true, it is art, and there is a logical thought process that is behind the making of a knitting project. So it is absolutely acceptable.
At KAS, teachers are required to coach a sport or supervise two activities a year. This year was an active one for me; I coached MS Softball and MS Soccer and did seven sessions of Maker Club at all levels.
KAS does not have a design thinking/maker culture, so part of the challenge was to create it.
This year's maker club schedule looked like this:
Elementary
Last year I was asked to do a tech-related club, so I started with an Elementary Coding Club. A few weeks into it, I was told that a few rambunctious Middle School Students were really good at coding and were far ahead of their classmates, so I thought it might be a good idea to enroll them to help with the club.
For them, it was a good way to help their self-esteem and give them a little leadership experience. For me, it was a good lesson in learning to help students structure lessons they give and give some "problem" students a chance to show their skills to younger students and hopefully increase their self-esteem.
This year I did one season of ES Maker Club. I had 11 students, then I was asked to take 16 more, I agreed, and it turned out a little chaotic. There were some students who really got into coding (they used their make club time to work more on the coding they were doing in IT class) and there were some students who got into the LEGO robots I brought in.
I tried a system where we took a class period to learn a new skill, then the next week we learned another, and students could choose between the two. I continued this way through the season, but the problem with this was students could not spend as much time with the skills I presented later in the club. Before the club-size more than doubled, I had intended to set up stations where students could do what they wanted.
Middle School
After School
When I got my student list for the MS, I was surprised to see that I only had two students. Reading the names, I saw they were both girls. This was interesting since I just had a cohort of too many students in ES and now I only had a pair of students.
What would I do with two girls?
I started off with the 3D pens. We then went on to using the small drone I have. I then gave them the task of choosing what they wanted to create and use their time after school to simply make things.
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Flex Time
Near the beginning of the season, I was asked to do a Marker Club for Middle School during the day, in Flex Time. Flex Time is once a week, and it is a time for students to try activities or clubs they are interested in.
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Last year I started the HS IT Club to give students a chance to explore what they wanted. Many days I would find students off task and the attendance was rather low on some days.
This year, I decided to shift the focus to more of a Maker Club, where they could have the time and space to explore IT concepts. It ended up being time well spent.
It was really cool to see students bring in projects they were working on, like the electric current gadget below, and show other students a new skill, like teaching them how to make headphones.
Some things students did were:
fix the 3D Printer
assemble robots
play with robots
present to each other and make websites and headphones
Who inspired you to do creative work (a friend, a mentor, or a teacher)?
This question is a hard one for me, probably too hard. I wanted to talk about a past teacher. I can think of a few teachers who were influential:
Grade 3
Grade 4
Grade 5
Grade 6
Grade 7
Grade 10
Grade 11
Several in college
This list gives me for an idea to make a post of the most memorable lessons from my own schooling.
The teachers' areas of specialization are also interesting because they weigh heavily in social studies and in college, I chose international relations, a course of the social studies group of subjects, as my major.
How did that shape your approach to teaching?
I don't remember much about schooling before high school - my mind was always focused on things outside the classroom, but I do remember a shift from junior high to high school and college. Assignments moved from more project-based learning to essay/writing assignments, then to lectures and essays in college.
I remember a unit on communities in junior high were we were asked to interview all our neighbors in what we considered to be our neighborhood. So, we first had to decide and justify what we consider to be our neighborhood and identify it on a map before going out and knocking on doors. In high school, I had a new (to teaching) teacher that had us simulate the Cuban Missle crisis. I don't think his lesson went according to plan (we always opted for the nuclear option) but it made us look at the even a little differently and I still remember it as an interesting way of teaching.
