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"Maker education (often referred to as "Maker Ed") is a new school of educational thought that focuses on delivering constructivist, project-based learning curriculum and instructional units to students. Maker education spaces can be as large as full high school workshops with high-tech tools, or as small and low-tech as one corner of an elementary classroom. A makerspace isn't just about the tools and equipment, but the sort of learning experience the space provides to students who are making projects. Maker Ed places a premium on the balance between exploration and execution. Small projects lend themselves to indefinite tinkering and fiddling, while larger projects need complex, coordinated planning. Often, small projects can organically grow into larger and larger projects. This deliberate process strengthens and enriches a learner's executive functioning skills. Additionally, communication and collaboration are two of Maker Ed's fundamental values. Making allows learners to practice their social communication skills in a variety of groupings, whether affinity-based, role-specific or teacher-assigned. It's important for all different groups to be present in student learning spaces so that all students can practice their social skills in multiple settings. Lastly, Making presents unique opportunities to generate flow learning and allow the teacher to leverage high-interest projects and activities and turn them into learning objectives within a curriculum. Maker education provides space for real-life collaboration, integration across multiple disciplines, and iteration-the opportunity to fail, rework a project and find success. The benefits of a cooperative learning environment are well documented in a makerspace. If you are wondering how to connect these projects back to the Common Core Standards, check out PBL Through a Maker's Lens and Woodshop Cowboy."

"Recently on westXdesign-via scoopit-we found an interesting graphic about naming 12 principles of collaboration. Collaboration is among the most-often promoted fluencies of 21st century learning (along with creativity and communication). However, there are very few frameworks or models that exist to support the development of better collaboration forms. As it is, in many K-12 learning environments, collaboration is limited to teacher-created grouping, or more scattered project-based learning groups that converge on a single project and thus a single goal. The following principles of collaboration (seemingly created for businesses but clearly applicable to learning) push that idea a bit further-with some important emphases on the individual, including:"

"Please, No More Professional Development! By Peter DeWitt on April 17, 2015 8:10 AM Today's guest blog is written by Kristine Fox (Ed.D), Senior Field Specialist/Research Associate at Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (QISA). She is a former teacher and administrator who has passion for teacher learning and student voice. Kris works directly with teachers and leaders across the country to help all learners reach their fullest potential. Peter DeWitt recently outlined why "faculty meetings are a waste of time." Furthering on his idea, most professional development opportunities don't offer optimal learning experiences and the rare teacher is sitting in her classroom thinking "I can't wait until my district's next PD day." When I inform a fellow educator that I am a PD provider, I can read her thoughts - boring, painful, waste of time, useless, irrelevant - one would think my job is equal to going to the dentist (sorry to my dentist friends). According to the Quaglia Institute and Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center's National Teacher Voice Report only 54% percent of teachers agree "Meaningful staff development exists in my school." I can't imagine any other profession being satisfied with that number when it comes to employee learning and growth. What sense does it make for the science teacher to spend a day learning about upcoming English assessments? Or, for the veteran teacher to learn for the hundredth time how to use conceptual conflict as a hook. Why does education insist everyone attend the same type of training regardless of specialization, experience, or need? As a nod to the upcoming political campaigns and the inevitable introduction of plans with lots of points, here is my 5 Point Plan for revamping professional development. 5 Point Plan Point I - Change the Term: Semantics Matter We cannot reclaim the term Professional Development for teachers. It has a long, baggage-laden history of conformity that does not

The Flat Classroom Project is a global, collaborative project using Web 2.0 tools to foster communication, collaboration and creation. For inspiration and content material it draws on the work of Thomas Friedman and 'The World is Flat'. Read more about the project background and view past projects.

"I'm not sure of the way most people learn the complicated process of programming Arduino projects because I only know my own convoluted journey. I started the hard way following projects from the Arduino Starter Kit by building photo sensor theremins and electronic magic 8 balls. Here is one of my first Arduino projects I created at a class at the Denton Public Library. (The tweet below is a flashback to the Coding Bonanza I led at Lamar Library in 2014.) I quickly found that I wanted to do things OTHER than what the projects outlined, but I just didn't have the code knowledge to hack projects and make them my own. I continued following projects and attempting to tinker with code. For someone with absolutely no background in coding, it was quite an arduous journey. Imagine my surprise when I found out about the ScratchX extension from Kreg Hanning at SXSWedu in 2015!"

Creative Web Tools For and By Kids is a project designed for students, ages 9 to 14, to use emerging technologies for engaging, thinking, learning, collaborating, creating, and innovating. The focus is on the use of free, open-source, or minimal cost tools, so the project can be replicated. An underlying goal is to demonstrate how advanced technological applications for enhancing learning can be implemented with only a computer and Internet access.

"The inspiration - History ebook Back in April 2014 I worked with Hill Country Middle School in Austin on a collaborative ebook between 8th grade and 3rd grade students. 8th grade students composed books using Book Creator and Scrap Pad based on historical topics covered in the year. The books took on a familiar repetitive children's storybook theme to make the concepts easier to digest and comprehend for their 3rd grade audience. Once the framework of the book was set, 8th grade students used a Google Doc to provide 3rd grade students with a list of images they would need to complete the book. On the day of the field trip, the whole project really came together. >> Watch the video of the History Book collaboration  American Sign Language book The History ebook project became the inspiration for another collaboration."

"Welcome back to iPad Summer Camp. Whether your summer is relaxing and filled with free time or packed with busy things (like me - working on a master's degree!), it's important to take some time to play with some of the technology that you might be using next year. If you haven't been following along, check out the introductory post and the first project. Otherwise, onwards to collaborative writing!"

""Ms. Clark, when are we going to do that again?" Nothing makes me happier as an educator than hearing those words - and lately I have been hearing them a lot! It is not the question as much as the look on the faces of my students that I enjoy the most. It's the inspiring glow of engagement and enthusiasm and the fire in their eyes that makes me want to keep trying new projects. Their relentless desire to do collaborative-based work is proof that they enjoy the journey, the connections and the role of play in their learning. One of the thrills about being an educator in 2013 is this ability to redefine the typical classroom landscape in this way. This year we did it campus wide with some pretty amazing projects that helped everyone see the value in collaborating, and the immense power of thinking outside the box - in this case, I literally mean the constrictive box of the traditional classroo"

"The rise of the Maker has been one of the most exciting educational trends of the past few years. A Maker is an individual who communicates, collaborates, tinkers, fixes, breaks, rebuilds, and constructs projects for the world around him or her. A Maker, re-cast into a classroom, has a name that we all love: a learner. A Maker, just like a true learner, values the process of making as much as the product. In the classroom, the act of Making is an avenue for a teacher to unlock the learning potential of her or his students in a way that represents many of the best practices of educational pedagogy. A Makerspace classroom has the potential to create life-long learners through exciting, real-world projects. Making holds a number of opportunities and challenges for a teacher. Making, especially to educators and administrators unfamiliar with it, can seem to lack the academic rigor needed for a full-fledged place in an educational ecosystem. However, project-based learning has already created a framework for Making in the classroom. Let's see how Making could work when placed inside a PBL curriculum unit."

The Teachers' Guide to Global, Collaborative Teaching and Learning is a searchable database of global projects and resources to help educators foster global competence and build connection

"Professional coders work collaboratively, and rarely does a computer scientist create a program solely on their own. Every successful programming project evolves as a result of Iterations of code, the merging of ideas, and the contributions of the individual team members. Not only does coding empower students to think logically and critically, to collaborate, and to create meaningful learning, but it also provides them an authentic opportunity to develop critical communication and collaboration skills."

"Jennifer Wagner, creator of ProjectsByJen, has been successfully encouraging teachers since 1999 to use online projects in their PreK-6 classrooms. Using various ideas, Jennifer will help you understand how online projects will help you make the most of your time in a variety of ways. Winning numerous awards for her creative ways in encouraging teachers to collaborate, her teaching style is very user friendly, creative, and personable. "

"Project Tomorrow®, the national education nonprofit organization that annually facilitates the Speak Up National Research Project, conducted a special Speak Up survey in Spring 2012 for college students in teacher preparation programs. Since 2007, Project Tomorrow has collaborated with Blackboard Inc. to create a series of annual reports that focus on key trends in the use of technology to increase student achievement, teacher productivity and parental engagement. This new report, "Learning in the 21st Century: Digital Experiences and Expectations of Tomorrow's Teachers," is the latest in the series and provides new insights that will inform college and university based teacher preparation programs as well as the induction and professional development processes within K-12 schools and districts. Tomorrow's teachers may have the keys to finally unlock the potential of technology to transform teaching and learning, but much depends upon their experiences in their preparation program and how well future school leadership can support their expectations for essential technology tools and resources."

"So often, we make learning more complicated than it has to be. Local planning requirements are usually at fault here-plan this way and prove that you've done so here and here, fill out this and this, etc. Those legitimate concerns aside, the following series of fill-in-the-blank prompts can be used by teachers to create lessons, students to create projects-or teachers to collaborate with students to create lessons-or projects. Or, well, you get the idea. I use these sorts of stems to create "learning blends" for students-either with them, or for them. I couple these prompts with other components-technology like apps or social media channels, texts from literary classics to postmodern non-fiction, creativity, or even local matters of citizenship. Please steal them, add to them, or otherwise do with them what you will."

"Over the past decade, maker-centered classrooms and making-centered learning have become increasingly popular - young people (and teachers and parents alike) have greater opportunities to build, hack, redesign, and tinker with a variety of materials, in school- or community-based spaces, design thinking and engineering programs, and Maker Faires. Maker-centered learning not only offers opportunities to learn about new tools and technologies, it requires certain thinking skills - such as navigating uncertainty, adaptability, collaborative thinking, risk-taking, and multiple-perspective taking - that are critical to engaging and thriving in a complex world. Drawing on research from Project Zero's Agency by Design project, this course offers classroom teachers, maker educators, administrators, and parents an opportunity to explore firsthand maker-centered learning practices and the opportunities they afford. Discover what kinds of tools might best support this kind of teaching and learning, and examine the benefits (to both young people and facilitators) of engaging in this work. Through hands-on, collaborative activities, consider how maker-centered experiences might fit into your own contexts."

"Diigo is an excellent social bookmarking tool that enable you to save, annotate, and share bookmarks. The power of Diigo lies in the distinctive features that it offers to teachers and educators. There is a special account for K-12 and higher-ed educators that empower registered teachers with a variety of tools and features. One of the best things you can do with the Educator account is creating a Diigo group for your class. You can do this without the need for students emails. You can also set the privacy settings of your group so that only you and your students can access and see what you share there. You can also alternate moderators for class students can take turns in class moderation. Besides using your Diigo class to share with your students websites and content you find on the web, students can also use it for collaboration on research projects, group bookmarks and annotation."

"Chalkup is a powerful tool for changing the way you teach and interact with students. This online platform lets teachers take their classes to the next level by providing a way for teachers to engage their students. Classes of students can collaborate on shared files to complete projects and study in groups. Both teachers and students can track upcoming assignments and participate in discussions on course material."