Skip to main content

Home/ ChandlerTechTeam/ Group items tagged library

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Jill Bergeron

(Rethinking) Makerspaces - @joycevalenza NeverEndingSearch - 0 views

  • A Makerspace is not a one-size-fits-all kind of space.
  • What are teachers already doing? What is already there, and how can we add to and augment it?
  • When students have to spend all their time fulfilling an external agenda, they don’t have a chance to learn how to create their own agenda. Teaching kids only what adults think they need to know can take up all the time kids need to explore what it is that they care about.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Makerspaces in schools should connect to student’s authentic interests, or the experiences children have had.
  • But in the process of following their own interests, they’re going to develop a lot of other skills.
  • School does some things well, but what I love about the library is that when I enter, I set the agenda.
  • I am excited about Making in schools — it can be really great.  But if the agenda for what needs to be Made is coming from outside the Maker, then that could be problematic.
  •  
    How to think about making especially in terms of a library.
Jill Bergeron

When Kids Engage In "Making," Are They Learning Anything? « Annie Murphy Paul - 0 views

  • In all, self-directed maker activities may have students expending a lot of time and effort—and scarce cognitive resources—on activities that don’t help them learn.
  • cognitive load researchers caution that learning and creating are distinct undertakings, each of which competes with the other for limited mental reserves.
  • The best way to ensure learning, these researchers maintain, is to provide direct instruction: clear, straightforward explanation, offered before any making has begun.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Kapur has found that presenting problems in this seemingly backwards order helps those students learn more deeply and flexibly than subjects who receive direct instruction. Indeed, the teams that generated the greatest number of suboptimal solutions—or failed—learned the most from the exercise.
  • Learners pay especially close attention when the instructor reveals the correct solution, because they have now thought deeply about the problem but have failed themselves to come up with the correct solution.
  • Some tasks, like those concerning basic knowledge or skills, are better suited to direct instruction.
  • We should tell student makers exactly how to perform straightforward tasks, so that they can devote cognitive resources to more complex operations.
  • By applying cognitive load theory to making, we can “unbundle” learning and creating—at least at first—so as to reduce cognitive overload.
  • Instead of asking learners to learn and make at the same time, these two activities can be separated and then pursued sequentially.
  • Once students begin making, we can carefully scaffold their mental activity, allowing them to explore and make choices but always within a framework that supports accurate and effective learning. The scaffolding lightens learners’ cognitive load until they can take over more mental tasks themselves.
  • Fixed stations have “low barriers to entry,” says Fleming; students can walk into the library and immediately engage in the activities set up there, without any instruction or guidance. Fleming’s fixed stations include LEGOs and a take-apart technology area, where students can disassemble old computers and other machines to investigate how they work.
  • Flexible stations, by contrast, are periodically changed, and they involve much more structured guidance from Fleming, who might lead students step by step through an activity, modeling what to do as she goes.
  • “Before I ordered a single piece of equipment [for the maker space], I did a thorough survey of students’ existing interests,” says Fleming. “I also looked for ways that the maker space could supplement areas in which the academic curriculum was thin, or make available to all students activities that had previously been open to only a select group.”
  •  
    Two approaches to making- direct instruction and independent learning. Both have psychological studies backing them.
Jill Bergeron

Make the Most of the Maker Movement | Edutopia - 0 views

  • To realize the opportunity that the maker movement offers education, students need room for self-directed learning and interdisciplinary problem solving.
  • While setting up spaces for hands-on tinkering, schools also need to make mental space for creativity, risk taking, and learning from failure. Those qualities are central to maker culture, but still rare in too many school settings.
  • More important than gaining access to expensive tools is learning how to turn raw ideas into prototypes that can be tested, refined, and improved through feedback.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Students who gravitate toward an engineering or STEM approach to problem solving may get fresh ideas from watching artists work out solutions (and visa versa). Collaboration is more likely to happen when thinking and tinkering take place in the open.
  • If you're interested in seeing a school makerspace in action, check out this curated list from Bob Pearlman
  • Encourage students to tell the stories behind their ideas and describe the process that took them from inspiration to finished product.
  • parents team up with their children for monthly Maker Saturdays.
  • Maker Education Initiative maintains a resource library, including sample projects.
  •  
    Resources about in this article which emphasizes skills over stuff when it comes to making.
1 - 7 of 7
Showing 20 items per page