Author: sylviamartinez

Sylvia Libow Martinez is an education change agent, writer, speaker, consultant, engineer, maker, and mom.
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Video – New Research Seeks to Find Out How Making Becomes Learning

One of the questions we consistently get in our sessions and workshops is about assessment. How do we know what kids are learning if there is no written test? Is this maker stuff more than just a new fad? While there are traditional ways that projects can be assessed (such as teacher observation techniques,) there is new research going on at Stanford in Dr. Paulo’s Blikstein’s Transformative Learning Technologies Lab that is starting to answer these questions. This video is a terrific overview of several new research studies, called Multi-modal Learning Analytics, on what is really going on when students do hands-on, maker activities.

There is so much in this video, I’m going to try to explore each of these studies separately in future posts.

  • Differences between students starting hands-on activities with detailed instructions vs. very little instruction. Do they get lost with no instruction? Or do they get “addicted” to the cookbook? Can students change from one type to another?
  • Are digital simulations the same as students doing real experiments?
  • Is video lecture or textbook reading preceding classroom projects (flipped classroom) better than exploration before instruction? Does flipped model work better with video over text? In other words, does the order or the media matter?
  • Do tutorials help with exploration activities?
  • Why different programming languages work better for learning.
  • Is it necessary for maker classrooms to be “sink or swim”?
  • Gender and other equity issues in “Maker Movement” culture
  • Differences in use of makerspaces in low-income schools vs. wealthier schools reflecting differences in school-wide pedagogy.
  • Observation and assessment tools for maker activities – maker tables and logic flows.
  • Looking at body position, gestures, and eye movements to try to understand the learner.

While this is all early research, it’s rich with potential for understanding more about how we learn, and how we can create optimal environments for learning for all students.

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Educon session video – MakerEd Design Sprint

This is the video of the Educon 2014 session “MakerEd Design Sprint”. Unfortunately, it’s not very good audio or video. The first ten minutes or so are hard to hear, and then when we move into the actual working part of the session, there is not much to watch. Everyone there was working in small groups and sharing their ideas.

The website where we collected the group work (lesson ideas and prompts) is here: K12makers.org

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Self-esteem and me (a girl) becoming an engineer

 People often say to me, “You must have had great self-esteem when you were a kid to become an engineer, such a male-dominated profession.”

But no, that’s not true at all.

It’s not like I thought I was a bad person, it’s just that I never had much “self” anything. I was not a self-aware kid. Social and emotional situations were not my thing. There were lots of things going around me that I completely missed. I never got involved in what the kids today call “drama”, not out of any sort of good instinct or intent, but I just didn’t notice. I read a lot, had a very few close friends, and did what I was told.

Even though I got good grades I never really thought of myself as smart. I did homework and studied because that’s what I was supposed to do. If there were messages that “girls can’t do math” or “girls shouldn’t show they are smart” I simply missed them.

It’s not like I heard those cultural norms and thought, “But I’m special!” or  “I’ll change the dominant paradigm!” The good thing, I guess, is that it worked for me like blinders help a horse by lessening distractions.

When I hear people talk about increasing the opportunities for girls in STEM classes and careers, of course I’m interested. But some of the plans I hear just wouldn’t have been relevant to me. Like bringing in adult role models to give girls examples of successful women in science careers. I even remember a few of them – very nice women who were volunteering their time to come talk to girls like me. But even if they were young, they still looked like a different species to me. Hey, I thought the girls sitting next to me were a different species. I didn’t “identify” with anyone.

The teachers and family members who changed my life were both men and women. They impacted my life by talking to ME about ME – and offering me opportunities to experience new and different things.

Egocentric? I suppose. But aren’t most kids? When we take the time to talk directly to kids about what they are doing and who they are, I think the chances of them actually taking it in are greatly enhanced. When we offer them experiences where they can learn and grow on their own terms, it empowers them. To me, the stories of others’ accomplishments pale in comparison.

I recall one high school math teacher who said to me, “We aren’t really challenging you, are we?” and talked my parents into signing me up for an NSF summer program for gifted math students. I wasn’t the top student, but he said he saw something special and different in the way I solved problems. He may not have realized that him talking to me like that was stunning to me.

Kids develop the ability to do things by doing things. That may sound simplistic, but it’s true. Then when they do them successfully and someone notices, they start to believe they can do anything.

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Precision is precious

This article 3D PRINTING AND LEGOS: PERFECT TOGETHER is a great example of an engineering principle that says that you should only be precise where precision is necessary. Unnecessary precision is a waste of time, money, and resources. The article shows a prototype of a pair of goggles, where precision is needed for the areas holding the lenses. So they used a combination of the Legos (cheap, easy to work with, and abundant – but not easily modified) and 3D printed pieces (takes longer to make each one, but you can tweak them until you get it right.)

So yes, 3D printing and LEGOs may indeed be perfect together, but the real story is that any time you are designing something, you want to pay the most attention to the parts that matter most.

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Making is a stance toward learning – interview by Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold (yes, THE Howard Rheingold) invited me to join him for a web broadcast, so of course I said yes! Here’s the video capture.

Howard also said,

“Making and building projects that personally interest students and an iterative design process don’t mean that teachers’ guidance becomes less necessary. A good corollary to “education is an igniting, not a pouring,” is “without banks, a stream would be a lake.” Teachers are there more to show students how to learn than to instruct them, step by step, what to do – they can get that from YouTube or Instructables. By combining learner autonomy, powerful materials like Arduino or Raspberry Pi, and guidance, teachers can give students permission to explore and help them gain fluency in the art of learning in the real world. Listen to my conversation with Martinez. Read her and Stager’s book. Put less than $100 of materials out on the table in your classroom. Let your students dream, try, fumble, retry, learn.”

Thanks, Howard, that was fun and a great honor!

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Did “Hour of Code” work? One school’s experience

Whether you think the recent “Hour of Code” is a mindless PR stunt, a shameless data grab, a fake solution to a non-crisis, or an awesome way to introduce lots of folks to programming who would otherwise not be is up to you!

However, no matter your stance towards the scheme, there is no doubt that it actually made something happen in lots of schools around the world. What happens next, though, is what really matters.

With that in mind, it’s really helpful when people share in-depth reflections of what worked, and what could be done better next time (since hopefully there will be a next time.) This reflection (Hour of Code: Observations from a Middle School Classroom) is from Philip Guo, who volunteered at The Meadowbrook School, a private middle school outside of Boston, as part of the Hour of Code initiative.

Philip reflected on pair programming, how error messages helped debugging (or didn’t), the different languages used, differences between adults and youth, reflections on  participation based on gender and race, and numerous other interesting musings. This article is a MUST READ if you wonder how coding can be taught as a “regular” subject.

And hopefully it will also be a model for others who ran “Hour of Code” sessions, programs, and classes with kids. We need your thoughts and ideas!

Gary and I just lead a day long workshop for teachers at The Meadowbrook School and they are ready and eager to incorporate programming and making throughout the curriculum. It’s wonderful that they are so willing to share their experiences with everyone!

Please read – Hour of Code: Observations from a Middle School Classroom

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Failure is not an option. Unless it is.

finger pointing
Really, it’s not pointing at you.

In our book, Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, my co-author Gary Stager and I took what I would consider a fairly even-handed view of the current fad of celebrating “failure” in the classroom.

I’m starting to reconsider a more radical stance.

In the past few months, I’ve been seeing more and more articles about how kids should embrace failure as a path to learning. Mottos like FAIL (First Attempt At Learning), “Fail your way to success”, “Fail early, fail often” are being held out as examples of how students should be encouraged to be fearless and not let challenges or mistakes stand in their way.

I understand the intent. I’m all for the iterative design process where roadblocks or challenges are celebrated as learning opportunities.  Of course people learn from mistakes, if there is time to actually ponder those mistakes and try again.

Here’s the problem. It’s the word “failure.” Failure means a VERY specific thing in schools. The big red F is serious. In school, failure is NOT a cheery message to “try, try, again!”, it’s a dead-end with serious consequences.

Using this loaded word to represent overcoming mistakes, hurdles, challenges, detours, etc. is confusing and unnecessary. Teachers cannot talk about failure as a challenge, when failure also means judgment – the worst possible judgment.

And yes, I do just mean teachers. Specifically, teachers who are grading the work where the “failure” may take place.

For others, it’s not the same. I’m not saying that a teacher has to correct EVERYONE’S language, just your own – if you are the person with the power to grade. Parents, librarians, club leaders, even the students themselves can choose to use this word. If you aren’t grading a child, then the word is not as loaded. If a child wants to call something an “epic fail” then that’s their choice and represents their ownership of the process and the word.

Is this just silly semantics? I don’t think so. For example, there is plenty of research that students confuse feedback on their handwriting with feedback on their writing content and therefore their thinking. They hear “bad writing” and “bad writer” as one and the same. Kids mistake lack of speed at math worksheets with being unable to “do math.”  Do students hear “fail” and “fail” and get confused? Are you sure this can NEVER happen? If there is even the slightest chance of that, and there are so many other good words to use, why not choose another word?

Call them challenges, bugs, roadblocks, unexpected events, hurdles, mistakes, prototypes, drafts, or first tries. But why use the ONE word that means the ultimate, often unrecoverable, most humiliating judgment in school?

If you want to empower students, why choose a word that so forcefully communicates the ultimate teacher-power, the power to grade. Why privilege a word that reminds both teacher and student that ultimately, the teacher has the power to judge their work, despite cheery homilies or posters to the contrary.

Why spend time and energy trying to rehabilitate a word that has such baggage?

I know you may be thinking that students are smart enough to figure out the difference between “failure” that happens while a project is in process and “failure” that goes on your permanent record. But how does one make that distinction, except for the fact that it’s a “real” failure whenever the teacher decides it counts. Do we just have to hope that students grasp that subtle point?

I may want to fight to rehabilitate the word “failure”, but as long as it’s being used by school in its current form, there are better ways to communicate with kids.