Group items tagged

"I have been throwing some coding challenges up on my Twitter steam lately using the #WSDHSchallenges hashtag as a kind of test to see what kind of response I had to this sort of thing. The response has been fairly strong and so I am exploring the next step. I really can't take credit for this whole idea actually. It's really modelled after the Hour of Code activities, and the Twitter challenge connection was suggested by the incredibly smart cookies that attended my coding session at this year's CHARGE 2016 conference for preservice teachers at the University of Winnipeg I had the honour of being asked to participate in."

"While my girls have been in a little bit of camp this summer, it's mainly been Camp Mom for our family: local adventures, crafts, and lots and lots of unstructured play. We're lucky to have some great neighbors with kids, and our girls have been lost in imaginative play that expands beyond the reach of anything I could possibly fabricate for them. However, we've had a few mornings filled with creative projects and this stop motion animation project is a winner.  If you're looking for a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) project, this is for YOU!"

"A google search of "Maker Movement and Education" reveals more than 36 million search results! That's just one piece of evidence that the Maker Ed Movement is on the rise across formal and informal learning environments. Head to any education conference, talk to any STEAM teacher, ask anyone who tracks innovations in teaching and learning, or check out the new infographic featured below and you'll be sure to find a lot more."

"While the introduction of FabLabs and makerspaces into schools tends to focus on the importance of hands-on projects in the STEM or STEAM fields, it's just as important that students engage in maker projects in their humanities and social science classes. History teachers should bring making into the classroom, even at schools that don't have formal makerspaces."

"When I first started my makerspace at Stewart, I had no idea what I was doing.  I just had three bins of K'nex and a vision for what our makerspace could be.  Shortly after we got our supplies, we began 6th grade clubs that met during school.  I started the K'nex club.  The next year we created during school clubs for all grades, so I started STEAM clubs for each grade, which was basically open exploration time in our makerspace.  The next year I helped co-found our afterschool club program, where my Makers Club took off. Now at Tampa Prep, I've started a Maker Mondays club where we have different themed projects each week after school for an hour.  Since we already had a VR lab when I got there, I started an 8th Grade VR club this year during middle school lunch. At both of my schools, variations of Makers Clubs have been a huge catalyst in my makerspace programs."

"I am a big advocate for embedding a maker culture in my classroom to deepen students understanding of topics. With an interdisciplinary approach, making, tinkering, and STEAM activities enable our students to design and create a piece of work that is embodied by teamwork, problem solving, and critical thinking. "Maker centred learning helps students see themselves as people that can effectively take action in the world". (2017, Clapp, E. P., Ross, J., Ryan, J. O., & Tishman, S). Designing lessons around making principles empowers students to embrace a continuous learning cycle, where a growth mindset and accepting failure is part of the journey to achieve success. "The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge" (Seymour Papert)."

""The Big Guide to STEM" is a free e-book containing resources and STEM ideas from educators on integrating STEM/STEAM into the classroom. It also contains a collection of top 10 STEM lists: * Top 10 STEM apps * Top 10 STEM tech products * Top 10 STEM blogs and online communities * Top 10 STEM websites * Top 10 STEM events * Top 10 STEM Software Solutions * Top 10 Resources for STEM Funding * Top 10 STEM Resources for Girls This is a great resource for any teacher at all, but especially those working with STEM courses or projects."

"The Hour of Curiosity is a set of free lesson plans, professional development activities, videos and more developed to support student engagement, 21st century education and STEAM."

"Connecting STEM and the arts is an increasingly popular method of teaching as the STEAM movement gains momentum. It's easy to recognize the benefits students will enjoy when educators teach STEM through music. After examining the required curriculum for the year, incorporate music into lesson plans to engage more students and expand their STEM repertoire. "

"I work part-time with elementary learners - with gifted learners during the school year and teaching maker education camps during the summer. The one thing almost all of them have in common is yelling out, "I can't do this" when the tasks aren't completed upon first attempts or get a little too difficult for them. I partially blame this on the way most school curriculum is structured. Too much school curriculum is based on paper for quick and one shot learning experiences (or the comparable online worksheets). Students are asked to do worksheets on paper, answer end-of-chapter questions on paper, write essays on paper, do math problems on paper, fill in the blanks on paper, and pick the correct answer out of a multiple choice set of answers on paper. These tasks are then graded as to the percentage correct and then the teacher moves onto the next task. So it is no wonder that when learners are given hands-on tasks such as those common to maker education, STEM, and STEAM, they sometimes struggle with their completion. Struggles are good. Struggles with authentic tasks mimics real life so much more than completing those types of tasks and assessments done at most schools. Problems like yelling out, "I can't do this" arise when the tasks get a little too difficult, but ultimately are manageable. I used to work with delinquent kids within Outward Bound-type programs. Most at-risk kids have some self-defeating behaviors including those that result in personal failure. The model for these types of programs is that helping participants push past their self-perceived limitations results in the beginnings of a success rather than a failure orientation. This leads into a success building upon success behavioral cycle."

"Google Arts & Culture partnered with Château de Versailles to create an extremely detailed VR tour of the iconic French palace, aptly named VersaillesVR - the palace is yours (2019). The free app, which is now available on Steam with support for Rift, Vive, and Index, takes you through the centuries-old palace, letting you inspect and learn about the UNESCO World Heritage site's many paintings, sculptures, furniture, as well as few of its gilded halls."

"Inspired by kids and grounded in research, Novel Engineering is an innovative approach to integrate engineering and literacy in elementary and middle school. Students use existing classroom literature - stories, novels, and expository texts - as the basis for engineering design challenges that help them identify problems, design realistic solutions, and engage in the Engineering Design Process while reinforcing their literacy skills."

"Worldwide, just 14% of engineers are women. Stanford-educated engineer Debbie Sterling is on a mission to increase that percentage by encouraging girls as young as four years old to start tinkering with toys and building simple machines. Since 2012, her company GoldieBlox (No. 59 on the BI 100: The Creators) has sold more than 1 million sets of narrative-driven construction toys. Getting girls interested in engineering at an early age was an easy sell, Sterling told Business Insider in an interview. Changing attitudes about girls' capabilities in STEM, however, proved much harder."

"The entire concept is really quite simple.  The Mobile MakerSpace carts that line the hallway leading into our Media Center are capable of transporting new opportunities and tools to virtually any space in our school.  Whether it's high-tech 3D printing and modular robotics or low-tech knitting and plastic construction blocks…the carts contain tools that elicit collaboration and unleash student creativity."

"Our foundational belief is that teachers teach how they are taught. If we want teachers to teach from a foundation of learning by doing, then we want to provide professional learning in that same, or a very similar, way. STEAMmaker Camp is intentionally designed to replicate the highs and lows teachers might encounter with students over a year­ long program. Therefore, each camp is best­ designed as a multi-­day event with each day running longer than the typical school day. This causes students to "hit the wall" that typically surfaces in the third quarter of school and teachers can experience how to remain positive and supportive in this type of environment, especially when they are also very tired. A trainer balances the fine line of guiding, role modeling, and directly instructing the participants, based on their individual and unique needs."