Author: sylviamartinez

Sylvia Libow Martinez is an education change agent, writer, speaker, consultant, engineer, maker, and mom.
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How tos: New Making in Education posts from the FabLearn Fellows

Several recent FabLearn Fellow blog posts have created a lot of room for discussion around the topics of fabrication, making, and design in museums and classrooms. Please comment and add your voice!

A brief overview of recent posts:

In 18th Century Buildings, Vector Drawing, History, and Math, Heather Pang explores how a project designed to be a simple skill-builder evolved into something more.

Christa Flores tackles Making for Making Sake? or STEAM for 21st Century Job Skills? weaving in educational philosophy, economic policy, and reaching out to FabLearn 2014 Netherlands attendees to create a global conversation.

Avoiding Cookie Cutters by Keith Ostfeld muses on redesigning an Inventor’s Workshop in a museum setting to help partcipants create more diverse, but still successful projects and includes a terrific video showcasing some young creators in action.

Addressing another perceived roadblock to projects in the classroom – that one teacher simply can’t support students all doing different projects, Christa Flores documents students as co-teachers in The Role of Co-Teachers in a Maker Classroom.

And Heather Pang considers “… the question of how much guidance, how many constraints, how much help to give students…” in Where is the line?

These posts all explore some of the most-asked questions hands-on authentic learning: How do students build skills? How does a teacher assess project work? How does a teacher reflect and iterate on lesson planning and design? Doesn’t this take more time than traditional instruction?

But most of all, these posts all help answer the question, “Can authentic learning be done in real schools and learning spaces?” Obviously the answer is YES!

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Are programmers born that way?

A comment I hear every once in a while goes something like this: “Why teach programming to everyone? There is a “programmer type” and not all kids are “that way”. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time!”

I don’t agree. I believe programming is a liberal art – a way to express yourself and make sense of the world.

I recognize the stereotype. I was that kid. Driven, intense, socially awkward, and able to tune out the outside world. I also believe that many programmers today do fit that “nerd” profile because the artificial nature of computer science in school creates a pathway that is amenable to this personality type.

The more I learn about learning, the more I realize that school often “coaches out” people who think differently and have different problem-solving styles. People who might have become amazing programmers if there wasn’t only “one way” allowed. There have been many studies about teaching programming and many point to ways to teach it that are very different than we use now. More inclusive, but untraditional ways.

We desperately need a wider variety of people to become programmers, makers, engineers and scientists. I firmly believe that allowing young people the chance to follow these paths, no matter who they are or what they natural styles are will create a stronger, more vibrant citizenry who understand science and can make good decisions about their lives.

What I’m saying is that the fact that programmers tend to be a certain personality type is a symptom of the way we currently teach – not that they naturally make better programmers.

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Should schools embrace making because it develops job skills?

I often hear that making, especially learning to program, is valuable because it develops “job skills”.

However, I don’t advocate for programming or making or tinkering because it’s a job skill. In fact, the “STEM crisis” is largely a myth. (See this IEEE article series.) There is even speculation that this is largely manufactured by companies trying to get more visas for lower paid workers, plus drive down salaries for veteran engineers and scientists by inflating the numbers of graduates.

That aside, I believe that programming is strongly a part of any real “maker” program and should not be artificially separated. I also don’t believe that kids learning programming or doing hands on work is “job training.” I believe it creates habits of mind that serve everyone. Logical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity are good for everyone. All students should have access to this basic literacy just like reading and writing is taught to all even though we don’t believe that everyone will be novelists.

 

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New report: Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature

A new literature review was just released by the Board of Science Education (an NSF funded program associated with the National Academies) called:

Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature, by Shirin Vossoughi and Bronwyn Bevan (The PDF is linked from a list, click here and scroll down)

The Board of Sciences has commisioned this and several other papers focused on informal and afterschool STEM learning. More information and links to the other papers are on their website.

The paper is a goldmine of research supporting tinkering and making activities that support learning – not just in STEM and not just in informal settings. Paulo’s research, Papert, and Leah Buechley’s FabLearn 2013 speech are all referenced (and my book too!)

The list of the other commissioned papers is interesting as well. All the papers are linked from this site.

Commissioned Papers

Formative Assessment for STEM Learning Ecosystems: Biographical approaches as a resource for research and practice by Brigid Barron

Citizen Science and Youth Education by Rick Bonney, Tina B. Phillips, Jody Enck, Jennifer Shirk, and Nancy Trautmann

Evidence & Impact: Museum-Managed STEM Programs in Out-of-School Settings, by Bernadette Chi, Rena Dorph & Leah Reisman

Children Doing Science: Essential Idiosyncrasy and the Challenges of Assessment by David Hammer and Jennifer Radoff

Broadening Access to STEM Learning through Out-of-School Learning Environments by Laura Huerta Migus

Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature, by Shirin Vossoughi and Bronwyn Bevan

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Is “Student-Centered” Just Code for Lord of the Flies?

Working this past year with the FabLearn Fellows has been an incredible experience. These 18 educators from around the globe are leading the way to understanding the benefits of “making” in formal and informal learning spaces.

This post from Christa Flores, called, The “Unstructured Classroom” and other misconceptions about Constructivist Learning tackles some of the misunderstandings that people have about making in the classroom. There is fear that “letting go” of the reins as a teacher means that students will just wander aimlessly or worse, the anarchy will ensue. On the flip side, people have ungrounded hopes that simply giving students choice and agency over their own learning will magically create perfect learning conditions.

Christa explains,

“In the three years that I have been teaching science through the lens of making or inventing and problem solving, I have often heard the iLab, referred to as “unstructured,” by some well meaning adults. This harkens back to the discord between what we know progressive education can be versus what we envision when we think of a “progressive classroom.” When I worked at Calhoun in New York City, we were considered a progressive school and we often had the debate about what we mean by the term “unstructured.” The debate would invariably follow a conversation with a nervous parent that would go something like this, “Its good for some kids maybe, but my son doesn’t do well in an “unstructured” classroom.”

Christa tackles the claim that unstructured classrooms are unplanned classrooms by offering examples of student-centered work in her classrooms. Teacher planning and preparation do not mean that the teacher is planning everything that happens in the classroom, but instead is shaping a learning environment with care AND pedagogical and content knowledge.

Please read the rest of Christa’s blog post on the FabLearn Fellows site!

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Carefully calibrated details with no meaning – measuring learning

I’ve been thinking a lot about measurement lately. It feels like a key factor in distinguishing “making” that matters in the classroom. Student’s capacity to use measurement, and its little sisters, precision and accuracy, should get more refined and complex as they get older.

The flip side of teaching students to measure is to measure student learning. How does assessment work in a classroom where students are doing different and unexpected things?

I just ran across this article by Robert Crease, a professor of philosophy at Stony Brook University and the author of “World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement” – Measurement and Its Discontents.

It’s a nice exploration into the two meanings of the word “measurement” – something to keep in mind as we introduce measurement to children, or try to use it to shape our own view of the world. Standardized testing, masquerading as measurement of “a complex ideal” is not adequate to describe learning, an extremely complex concept. Adding more “carefully calibrated details” does not add meaning.

The problem is not that we don’t yet have precise enough tools for measuring such things; it’s that there are two wholly different ways of measuring.

In one kind of measuring, we find how big or small a thing is using a scale, beginning point and unit. Something is x feet long, weighs y pounds or takes z seconds. We can call this “ontic” measuring, after the word philosophers apply to existing objects or properties.

But there’s another way of measuring that does not involve placing something alongside a stick or on a scale. This is the kind of measurement that Plato described as “fitting.” This involves less an act than an experience: we sense that things don’t “measure up” to what they could be. This is the kind of measuring that good examples invite. Aristotle, for instance, called the truly moral person a “measure,” because our encounters with such a person show us our shortcomings. We might call this “ontological” measuring, after the word philosophers use to describe how something exists.

The distinction between the two ways of measuring is often overlooked, sometimes with disastrous results. In his book “The Mismeasure of Man,” Stephen Jay Gould recounted the costs, both to society and to human knowledge, of the misguided attempt to measure human intelligence with a single quantity like I.Q. or brain size. Intelligence is fundamentally misapprehended when seen as an isolatable entity rather than a complex ideal. So too is teaching ability when measured solely by student test scores.

Confusing the two ways of measuring seems to be a characteristic of modern life. As the modern world has perfected its ontic measures, our ability to measure ourselves ontologically seems to have diminished. We look away from what we are measuring, and why we are measuring, and fixate on the measuring itself. We are tempted to seek all meaning in ontic measuring — and it’s no surprise that this ultimately leaves us disappointed and frustrated, drowned in carefully calibrated details.

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Research brief: Good learning involves direct experience, focus, motivation, and relationships

Quoted from “Conditions of Learning” – A research brief from the What Kids Can Do site How Youth Learn: A Portfolio to Inform and Inspire Educators, Students, Parents & More

In a recent paper, “Realizing the Potential of Learning in Middle Adolescence,” cognitive psychologists Robert Halpern, Paul Heckman, and Rick Larson remind us:

  • Good learning involves direct experience, “deep immersion in a consequential activity” (Bruner, 1966).
  • Learning works best when young people can focus in depth on a few things at a time; when they see a clear purpose in learning activities; and when they have an active role—co-constructing, interpreting, applying, making sense of something, making connections.
  • Motivation is a powerful engine for learning, and the right conditions can foster it. Motivation to learn is stronger when it emerges from the young person’s prior knowledge and interests, when it springs not from reward or punishment but from the task itself, and when it is driven by a desire for mastery and by identification with
    others who do it well.
  • Learning is often most effective when it is social; when it occurs as a shared activity within meaningful relationships; and when it allows for increasingly responsible participation—within a tradition, or a community of fellow learners, or one’s culture at large.

The bottom line: Young people can be—and want to be—fully engaged learners. The evaluation research on longstanding school networks that put these principles into practice—like Expeditionary Learning, Big Picture, Early College High School, and High Tech High—finds deeply engaged students motivated to do their best (National Research Council and the Institutes of Medicine, 2004; Castellano, Stringfield & Stone, 2003; Kemple, Hirliahiy & Smith, 2005).

The prevailing narrative, however, is one of student disengagement.

Read the rest of the research brief at “Conditions of Learning”

But look how beautifully supports hands-on, authentic learning advocated by educators involved in the Making in Education movement!

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Quoted in the New York Times on ending student cell phone bans

I was quoted in this article in the New York Times about what the impact will be of removing the ban on students using or even having cell phones in New York City.

With School Ban Nearing End, New York City Works on How and When to Allow Cellphones

As New York prepares to lift its longstanding ban on cellphones carried by students in schools, it joins an increasing number of cities, including Chicago and Miami, where school leaders are yielding to the ubiquity of mobile phones and the futility of trying to keep them out of the classroom.

Some education experts say schools have a responsibility to help students learn self-control over devices that will be integral to the rest of their lives.

“Did kids never doodle in the columns of their textbooks and always pay rapt attention to their teachers?” said Sylvia Martinez, former president of Generation YES, a nonprofit group that helps schools integrate technology, and co-author of “Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom.” “Blaming the cellphone or laptop for kids being distracted is kind of silly.”

Administrators acknowledge that banning cellphones can actually create discipline problems. In Chicago, where individual principals set cellphone policies, the district changed its citywide policy regarding suspension this year to differentiate between social and disruptive uses of mobile phones. Before the policy change, a student who used a mobile phone at all in school could be suspended.

In New York, Ron Gorsky, who recently retired as the principal of Concord High School on Staten Island, said trying to enforce the ban caused more conflict than having phones openly in schools would.

“I’ve seen the stress when we take phones away from students,” he said. “They’d rather leave school than give up their phones.”

The haphazard enforcement of the cellphone ban in New York also disproportionately affects low-income minority students, who tend to be the majority in high schools with metal detectors at the entrances, where mobile phones are confiscated.

Read the rest of the article

 

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Top Ten List: How to get started with making in the classroom

This is possibly the question I hear most frequently – “Where do I start incorporating making in my classroom?” I wish there was a single, simple answer! But here are a couple of ideas of where to start.

1. Start with your kids – What are their interests? What would they like to make? It may take some time to get beyond the typical answers, but a patient and non-judgemental listening session (or two or ten) might spark a few ideas. Success with a few projects might get the ball rolling for others that really push the envelope.

2. Bring in the cool. Sure a 3D printer is cool, but there are lots of things out there in the world that might make your students wonder “how did they do that?” leading to “How can I do that?” Remember show and tell and current events? How about following some science websites and bringing in things to inspire, or have your students try to find the coolest new technology to share. Let students collect from sites like NASA for Students, while you do some curating yourself by keeping up with sites likeInstructables, DIY.org or How To Smile. You will need to curate on these sites, because just because people post projects doesn’t mean they actually work or are appropriate for your classroom. Or tackleEngineering.com for stories like the “Robot Swarm” coming out of the cutting edge labs at Harvard. Who doesn’t want to speculate on what a robot swarm is, could do, or how it might be created? Worried about understanding Arduinos or figuring out Raspberry Pi? If your kids are old enough to use it, they (some of them at least) should be old enough to do the legwork on what to buy, download, how to set up, and then DO it. Don’t be the perfection bottleneck, be the master of cool!

3. OK, do some shopping. I know, I’ve said a million times – Making is not a shopping list or a special place, it’s a stance towards learning. However, bringing some new things into the classroom can be fun and spark a lot of new making potential. A favorite for all grades is the MaKey MaKey. Check out the amazing videos on their website, project ideas and even detailed guides shared by other educators and makers. And don’t forget, you can go “shopping” in your own space – what about those gadgets and broken things that got shoved into the closet? Can you fix or repurpose them? Can students bring in things from home that need fixing? If you want to see what we buy for our Invent To Learn workshops,check out our shopping page with bonus handouts for different centers, and our super-cool TMI Robot Poster.

4. Check in with other maker educators. You are in good company! There are lots of educators asking this question and hurray for the Internet, there are starting to be more answers. Check out:

5. See what others have shared and share your own! There is a growing list of maker education resources created by the members of the K-12 FabLab Google Group.  The Invent To Learn resource page has resources organized into useful categories.

6. Read up! I humbly suggest you start with Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, because this is exactly why we wrote the book. Ready for more? See a list of books that will inspire, inform, and instigate!

7. Check local. Your local museum, library, or community college may be planning or implementing a makerspace. There are many community makerspaces sprouting up around the US and worldwide. Don’t be afraid of the term “hackerspace” – it may seem edgier and not really appropriate for school, but it’s likely you will find the same kinds of people passionate about making and changing the world.

8. Give it a go. The Maker Movement for education is like channeling MacGuyver. Remember that 80’s TV show where the hero’s main superpower was fixing the world with a paperclip and twisty tie? OK, that was fake, but you can do more than you think just by trying something, refining it, and trying it again. And if you notice, that’s exactly what iterative design is. Why let the kids have all the fun? Try some iterative design on your classroom and see what happens. You can check off the standards you saw being met after you are done.

By the way, one of the best parts of the maker education movement is that it’s NOT new. It fits right in with what we know about real learning and good classroom practice. Chapters 4-6 in the book paint a picture of how tried and true PBL models fit the modern maker classroom such as: What does a maker classroom look like? What does a teacher do? Where do you start and how do you get your students on board? Resources for Chapters 4-6.

9. Be brave, not a martyr. You know where you live and work better than anyone else. Decide what to do, and then be bold. Take it 20% further than where you might have gone in the past. In fact, be “unreasonable” – you have my permission. Whatever you do, go for it. You want to be the “good” example in this post of “good, bad, worse” implementations.

10. Involve parents and students. The most effective allies and advocates for your cause will be students, but you have to share your newfound insight and enthusiasm with them. Ask students to support making, by being helpers, TAs, your support system, experts, etc. This walks the talk of student-centered learning and is a wonderful experience for students. Go beyond the usual suspects and bring in students who might really benefit from being the expert in the coolest thing on campus. Student leaders create a culture that is self-sustaining, leading away from everything being generated by adults to students understanding that they can be effective leaders and learners. Many parents too, are finding that the school culture of test prep isn’t serving their families. Ask them how they feel, how they learn best, and then SHOW them what real learning looks like in a hands-on classroom. It’s a bit of a Catch-22, as Gary says, “People can’t choose from what they haven’t seen.”

I’d love to hear more about YOU got started! Share your story and inspire others.