Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"We started Made with Code because even though increasingly more aspects in our lives are powered by technology, women aren't represented in the companies, labs, research, creative arts, design, organizations, and boardrooms that make technology happen. If girls are inspired to see that Computer Science can make the world more beautiful, more usable, more safe, more kind, more innovative, more healthy, and more funny, then hopefully they will begin to contribute their essential voices. As parents, teachers, organizations, and companies we're making it our mission to creatively engage girls with code. Today, less than 1% of girls are majoring in CS. Tomorrow, we can make that number go up."

"Kids have always made in my library. We encouraged digital and visual and dramatic and rhetorical creativity before, during, and after school.  But for a while, I've questioned the value of using already heavily used real estate to randomly carve out space for a 3D printer, electronics stations and sewing machines. I had my doubts about the makerspace movement in school libraries. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to chat with Amos Blanton, project manager of the Scratch online community, and a member of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab.  On his profile Amos notes:  I design and sustain creative learning environments for people with agency. Amos makes the case for makerspaces as powerful, authentic, relevant learning experiences, and for when and why library may be the very right space to create a makerspace."

"With the evolution of technology today make sure you give a head start to your kids and help them learn and understand some basic programming skills. There are few apps on the market such as Tynker, Move the Turtle, Light-bot Hour of Code … and today, a brand new one ScratchJr by MIT Media Lab."

"Students in our 1:1 iPad class bring their own devices to school, loaded with a set list of apps. There are very few "drill and practice" apps, rather those that allow for creativity and true demonstration of understanding. Our maths lessons have been completely transformed with the wide array of opportunities now available with apps such as Doodle Buddy, Number Pieces, Captions and Explain Everything."

"Now it's the phone's turn. The smartphone began with a promise of productivity. Its first "killer app," in the parlance of those developing for it, was email. Smartphones let us send messages without launching a computer; that's what made them smart. Web browsing followed, but the device was still seen as a surrogate for the computer at your desk-something to keep you productive while out in the world. Today, though, the phone has become something else. The smartphone, like the PC and the Internet before it, has turned into a unique outlet for our creative impulses, and it will affect our creative lives even more fundamentally."

"The maker zeitgeist has evolved far beyond the day when an educator might set objects-say, a box of robotic LEGOs-in a library corner and call it a "maker lab." Educators are now focusing on how the maker movement can be truly meaningful: it's not about where making is happening, but about how creating, experimenting, and collaborating impact education. In addition, some high schoolers tinkering their free periods away can discover a passion-sometimes leading to a future educational focus or even scholarship money. "The maker movement…encourages a growth mind-set, which tolerates risk and failure and maybe even encourages it," says Laura Fleming, library media specialist with the New Milford (NJ) High School. "It has been the great equalizer within, and in some ways against, our modern education system by allowing opportunities for creativity and innovation to take place through informal learning.""

"As tablets move from novelty items to staples in the classroom, teachers are finding new ways to make them more than just another screen for students to look at. One way to make the devices more interactive and collaborative is to extend their reach by connecting them with external sensors or robots. According to Sam Patterson, a technology integration specialist at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, a K-8 school in Palo Alto, CA, "What we are seeing is technology becoming more and more transparent." Years ago, if you had a computer for every student in the class it would look like a computer lab. And then each student had a laptop, and it was a classroom full of screens, he noted. "Now students have the ability to connect to other things in the room, so that when we are collecting data we can do it directly and do observations," he said. "It is amazing that in a seventh-grade science class, you can import data and it is in a spreadsheet already. You can start to work with that data without having to teach the students how to build a spreadsheet.""

"Hackathons, tech shops, makerspaces: These terms are increasingly prevalent in today's vernacular, and for good reason. They represent a burgeoning global movement with people of all ages developing, designing, and often marketing their creations. In the age of the maker, anyone can be an inventor. Their potential impact on the world is enormous. Innovations and discoveries are no longer produced exclusively by scientists in white lab coats or research and development departments of major corporations. Thanks to affordable technologies and online environments, individual makers can launch small companies to manufacture and market their goods. This shift in industry is influencing the way we learn, shop, sell, and interact. Here are four ways this movement is changing our world. "

"As the director of a maker lab at Castilleja School, an independent all-girls school for grades 6-12, I, along with my team, have witnessed dramatic changes in skills and confidence that can occur when we give young women not only the opportunity but also a safe space to make, build, tinker, and create. In line with multiple articles calling for empowering a more diverse and inclusive community of makers, we strongly believe that maker programs and inclusive maker spaces are particularly important in girls' education."

"For many teachers, online games are the scourge of the classroom - a drain on students' attention, time and potential. Any educator who has ever tried to teach a lesson using online resources or taken a class in the computer lab has probably experienced the frustration of finding a student on a gaming site instead of sticking to the intended lesson plan. But online games don't always have to be a distraction (see last week's post 5 Reasons to Embrace Gaming in the Classroom). In fact, there are many brilliant educational games out there that can actually engage and inspire students and equip them with the tools and ambition to approach a whole host of exciting careers and academic paths"

"Tickle (Tickle Labs, Inc, free) is a free app that lets you program a wide variety of robots through a simple programming language and drag and drop visual interface, then control them from an iPad. Just some of the 'bots and systems controllable by Tickle include the Sphero robotic ball, a wide variety of flyable drones, the Arduino open-source electronic prototyping platform and Philips Hue smart home lighting. You can also program interactive stories and simple games using a library of animated characters and sounds."

"After a fun, tiring first week of school, I had the privilege to attend a conference on Makerspaces hosted by ICE Indiana. This conference was well worth the drive to see a makerspace being developed by Creativity Labs at Indiana University and to connect with other educators who wanted to bring this experience into their classrooms or learning spaces. I was inspired and want to make this a reality for our students, in our building!"

"These are project options and ideas for students working in our "Maker Studio." In STEM class students alternate working in the Maker Studio and learning in our STEM "Learning Lab." Maker Studio projects are also available for students in our after-school Maker's Club. "

"It has me thinking about my own experience with creative work. When I first got into drawing, I copied the styles of other artists. When I first got into poetry, I copied the style of my favorite poet. When I first wrote a novel, it was essentially fan fiction -- albeit at a time when no one knew that term. I have noticed similar trends among students. They often go through a phase of copying and mash-ups that occur before creating something truly original. I see this trend in art class, wood shop, in writer's workshops, and in STEM labs. So, this has me thinking about stages that I notice as students move from consumers of media to creators of media. I admit that this is not very scientific. There might be a better model out there that explains this phenomenon. However, here are seven stages I see students go through as they shift from consuming to creating: "

"I participate as a parent in our middle school Tech Club - the TechDetectives. The 8th graders in the club came up with this great end of year project idea - they wanted to take apart one of the lab computers and re-mount all the parts on the wall so that future students could easily see all the parts of this working computer. It was something they saw done on YouTube. I've been calling it the "CoW" (Computer On the Wall). I loved this idea - and quickly volunteered to help out after school - knowing we didn't have enough time in tech club before the end of their graduating year to finish it. As I described in a few posts previously, this project also turned into a great opportunity for some #3DPrinting solutions."

"The flipped classroom model is here to stay. This model, although not a golden bullet, puts the student firmly into the educational process. Think back over the last few years that you have been teaching or learning about teaching. What did you do when you came across a new idea? Did you investigate on your own? Did you seek others who had experiences they could share? This is what the flipped classroom is all about: Putting students in charge of their learning process and allowing them to wrestle with ideas and topics before coming back to class with their own specific questions and seek guidance from the teacher. Often (but not always) there is some sort of online activity outside of the school day that students are responsible for. This could be a video lesson, a video about a lab set up, a discussion board inside of a learning management system (LMS), or any other vehicle that communicates the topic of the lesson outside of the normal class time instruction. "

"If you build it, will they come? That is the question many schools have about finding room on campus for a "makerspace." The just-released 6th annual New Media Consortium Horizon Report K-12 Edition listed makerspaces as an emerging technology in the year-or-less adoption timeframe. "Makerspaces are increasingly being looked to as a method for engaging learners in creative, higher-order problem-solving through hands-on design, construction, and iteration," the report noted. That sounds great, but what is the definition of a makerspace, and how do you launch one? As Dale Dougherty, one of the founders of the maker movement, has said, a makerspace might share aspects of shop class, an art studio, science labs and home economics. It could focus on electronics, robotics, woodworking, sewing, laser cutting, programming or any combination of those."

"Hackathons, tech shops, makerspaces: These terms are increasingly prevalent in today's vernacular, and for good reason. They represent a burgeoning global movement with people of all ages developing, designing, and often marketing their creations. In the age of the maker, anyone can be an inventor. Their potential impact on the world is enormous. Innovations and discoveries are no longer produced exclusively by scientists in white lab coats or research and development departments of major corporations. Thanks to affordable technologies and online environments, individual makers can launch small companies to manufacture and market their goods. This shift in industry is influencing the way we learn, shop, sell, and interact. Here are four ways this movement is changing our world. "

"I participate as a parent in our middle school Tech Club - the TechDetectives. The 8th graders in the club came up with this great end of year project idea - they wanted to take apart one of the lab computers and re-mount all the parts on the wall so that future students could easily see all the parts of this working computer. It was something they saw done on YouTube. I've been calling it the "CoW" (Computer On the Wall). I loved this idea - and quickly volunteered to help out after school - knowing we didn't have enough time in tech club before the end of their graduating year to finish it. As I described in a few posts previously, this project also turned into a great opportunity for some #3DPrinting solutions."

""NSF funds compelling ideas, help test them and helps bring them to wider audiences," said Janet Kolodner, who ran the Cyberlearning program at NSF from 2011 to 2014. "We're interested in helping researchers envision the technologies that will impact learning in a decade and then assist them in transitioning the best ideas from research to practice. On top of that, we want to help scientists overcome the complexity of moving research ideas to real world use." The speakers in the lecture series, all leading cyberlearning scholars, represent the range of technologies, approaches and research practices being pursued today. They're only a small fraction of the remarkable projects being developed and tested at universities across the U.S. - in education departments, computer science departments, robotics labs and even neuroscience departments - but together, they represent the forces transforming what education may look like in the future. "