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"I have been asked to return to teach summer enrichment classes on maker education for elementary-aged learners at a local school during the summer of 2016. One of the new classes I am designing is called Coding and Bots. The description is: Learn how to code first by playing games and then by coding some bots including Sphero, OZOBOT, and Dash and Dot. All ages are welcome but the child should have basic symbol recognition/reading skills. Two things to note about this class are, first, I learned last summer not to underestimate the learning potential of very young kids. These classes are mixed ages ranging from 4 to 10 year old kids. For most of the maker education activities, the very young ones could perform them, sometimes better than the older kids. Second, I am a strong proponent of hands on activities. Although I like the use of iPads and computers, I want elementary aged students to have to directly interact with materials. As such, I am designing Coding and Bots to include using their bodies and manipulating objects. This translates into having all activities include the use of objects and materials excluding and in conjunction with the iPad - not just using the iPad and online apps/tools to learn to code. The activities I plan to do follow:"

"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."

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects

"Inquiry-based learning is more than asking a student what he or she wants to know. It's about triggering curiosity. And activating a student's curiosity is, I would argue, a far more important and complex goal than the objective of mere information delivery. Nevertheless, despite its complexity, inquiry-based learning can be somehow easier on teachers, too. True, it's seemingly easier because it transfers some responsibilities from teachers to students, but it's really easier because releasing authority engages students. Teachers who use inquiry-based learning combat the "dunno" -- a chronic problem in student engagement.  Let's face it, when you ask a student something like, "What do you want to know about _______?" you are often met with a shrug, or a, "dunno." Inquiry-based learning, if front-loaded well, generates such excitement in students that neurons begin to fire, curiosity is triggered, and students can't wait to become experts in answering their own questions."

"July 16, 2014 While searching for some resources on a paper and writing on  the 21st century learning skills I came across this skills checklist created by the university of Toledo. This checklist is meant to help students build powerful resumes outlining all the skills they master. I spent some time going through the components of this sheet and found it really sharing with you here.  You can use this sheet with your students as an explanatory guide of some of the important skills ( I said some because some other important skills particularly those related to digital citizenship and digital literacy are missing) they need to work. Below is a round-up of the 9 most important skills which I selected from the entire list. You can acccess this list from this link. 1- Research skills Know how to find and collect relevant background information Be able to analyze data, summarize findings and write a report 2- Critical Thinking skills Be able to review different points of view or ideas and make objective judgments Investigate all the possible solutions to a problem, weighing the pros and cons 3- Organizational skills Be able to organize information, people or thins in a systematic way Be able to establish priorities and meet deadlines 4- Problem-solving skills Be able to clarify the nature of a problem Be able to evaluate alternatives, propose viable solutions and determine the outcome of the various options 5- Creative thinking skills Be able to generate new ideas, invent new things, create new images or designs Find new solutions to problems Be able to use wit and humour effectively 6- Analytical/ logical thinking skills Be able to draw specific conclusions from a set of general observations of from a set of specific facts Be able to synthesize information and ideas 7- Public speaking skills Be able to make formal presentations Present ideas, positions and problems in an interesting way 8- Oral communication skills Be able to present information and ideas clearly a

"You keep hearing about this hour of code thing, but you're not a "hacker," and aren't real comfortable with teaching what you don't know. Especially when it relates to technology and its fundamental programming. You know this is some kind of "coding week." You've seen our tips for integrating coding into the classroom. Now what to do? Turn students loose with Scratch or Codea or Kahn Academy? Well, maybe. Self-Directed Learning is a core learning fluency in an age of access."

"SoloLearn's Learn Java is a comprehensive guide to one of the most popular programming languages in the world. And here's a big bonus: Learn Java is FREE! The Learn Java lessons are fast, easy, and effective; the app is set up so that you can complete the work in less than three hours. No prior programming experience is needed. Once you have completed the course, you will have learned object-oriented Java programming and have the ability to write clear and valid code in almost no time at all."

"Last year I took a group of students to Cuba to produce documentaries about the island nation's culture and history. The main objective was learning how to produce documentaries, but one of my students learned a much more powerful lesson through the process. After completing her project, she posted it publicly to YouTube and received critical comments from someone living in Cuba. The feedback from an audience member in another country profoundly affected her, making her aware of what she was missing in her piece, and the impact that her work can have on others. No test, grade, or teacher evaluation could have come close to helping her learn that deeply, and it made clear to me how important it is for teachers to reexamine why and how we grade our students if we truly care about their success."

"My objective with this wide-ranging set of skills, and involving the community so closely in their development, is to give kids the chance to practice whatever makes them passionate now and feel encouraged -- even if they're obsessed with making stuff exclusively with duct tape. It's crucial that kids learn how to be passionate for the rest of their lives. To start, they must first learn what it feels like to be simultaneously challenged and confident. It's my instinct that we should not try to introduce these experiences through skills we value as much as look for opportunities to develop them, as well as creativity and literacy, in the skills they already love. MAGICIANS CRAFT ILLUSIONS THAT BAFFLE THE SENSES AND CONFUSE OUR REASONING. THEY PLAN LIKE SCIENTISTS, BUT PERFORM AS ARTISTS. ONLY THROUGH LONG AND DISCIPLINED PREPARATION DO THEY SUCCEED. It's difficult to predict which skills will be valuable in the future, and even more challenging to see the connection between our children's interests and these skills. Nothing illustrates this better than Minecraft, a popular game that might be best described as virtual LEGOs. Calling it a game belies the transformation it has sparked: An entire generation is learning how to create 3D models using a computer. Now, I wonder, what sort of businesses, communication, entertainment or art will be possible? Cathy Davidson, a scholar of learning technology, concluded that 65% of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven't even been invented yet. I bet today's kids will eventually explore outcomes and create jobs only made possible by the influence of Minecraft in their lives. Why take any chances and build your dream house with blueprints alone? The Minecraft kid could easily make a realistic 3D model of one for you to walk through before you build. That's why DIY treats Minecraft as a tool, not a game, and encourages our members to use it to pursue art, architect

"This is number 31 in my series on learning theories. I'm working through the alphabet of psychologists and theorists, providing a brief overview of each theory, and how it can be applied in education. Previous posts in this series are all linked below. My last post explored Donald Norman's ideas around perception and the design of every day objects. In this post, the work of Seymour Papert will feature, especially his work on learning through making, also known as constructionism."

"The students in Molly James's kindergarten classroom were tasked with creating a mathematical art gallery. They had each drawn a number and then searched for two types objects they could use to compose a visual number sentence - such as two rulers plus three scissors to equal five objects. After photographing and mounting their pictures on the wall in numerical order, the students sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and began to draw and talk. "I had expected them to learn something about number composition," James said, "but I didn't expect the remarkable observations they began to have about the photographs." For example, when one girl looked at a picture of two red scissors and three blue scissors (2+3=5), she noticed that the direction of the handles gave rise to a new number sentence: 4 scissors pointing left + 1 scissor pointing right = 5 scissors. James, who recently published a paper about creativity in the classroom, said moments like these remind her that "creativity is not fluff or an add-on, but is instead an essential part of what it means to be a mathematician."  In fact, she believes creativity is the key to helping her students become confident and skilled mathematical thinkers."

"In this AutoCAD tutorial, you are going to learn the basics of how to use AutoCAD and create your first objects. AutoCAD is a powerful tool to create 2D and 3D objects, like architectural floorplans and constructions or engineering projects. It also can generate files for 3D printing. If you want to start this AutoCAD tutorial for beginners, you should be able to spare roughly one hour for it."

"For the last two years, everyone's been talking about learning to code. From Google chairman Eric Schmidt, to will.i.am and Barack Obama. But what is coding and why is it important for our kids to learn to do it? Coding, also known as programming, is giving a computer instructions to follow in a language that it understands. It can be as simple as programming a short sequence of instructions into a robot to make it move, or as complex as creating an app using a language called Objective-C. Political leaders and technologists believe it is important for the current generation to learn to code, so that in the future we have people with the necessary skills to create the new technologies we will need. This is going to be great for our economy in the future, but there is much more to it than this: it's also empowering, creative, social and great for developing problem solving skills."

"Whether we're talking about preschool, elementary through secondary school, college, or even adult learners, I have serious objections to the idea that learning supposedly only comes via the eyes, the ears, and the seat of the pants. Schools -- and policymakers -- have for too long accepted the belief that learning best occurs while students are seated (and quiet, of course). The theory may have been understandable back when they didn't have the research to prove otherwise. But today we do."

" More and more teachers are beginning to realise that creating environments and possibilities where students make things is a very powerful pedagogy. Students learn a number of skills and draw on a variety of subjects when they design and create objects. Teaching takes a back seat and product based education is sidelined in favour of process based learning. "

"What are the real benefits of a maker-centered approach to learning? It's often described as a way to incubate STEM skills or drive technical innovation - and it is probably both of these. But as a new report from Project Zero's Agency by Design concludes, the real value of maker education has more to do with building character than with building the next industrial revolution.  "

"We have handpicked for you today a list of some very good iPad apps that you can use with your students to create time-lapse and slow motion videos. Time-lapse is a cinematographic technique that involves compressing several photos (or frames) into a high speed video. This technique is usually used to photograph slow-changing scenes or objects (e.g cloudscapes, plans growing, crowds…etc). Stop motion is "an animation technique which makes a physically manipulated object look like it's moving on its own". "