Author: sylviamartinez

Sylvia Libow Martinez is an education change agent, writer, speaker, consultant, engineer, maker, and mom.
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8 Great Ideas to MAKE Back to School 2013 Memorable

Start the year off with hands on!
Think you need to wait for kids to settle down and learn the basics before you let them do projects and hands-on work? Not according to this expert teacher.

Making the Case for “Making” in the Classroom
Check out my new book – Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. Educators can use the tools, technology, and “can-do” attitude of the global maker revolution to revitalize learner-centered education. A teacher PD book club read, perhaps?

Marketing your tech vision. What message will you share?
What message does your Acceptable Use Policy send when it goes home with students for them and their parents to sign? This year, change overly complex, negative language to language that celebrates the potential of technology – and students.

Games for collaboration and teamwork
Want to create a more collaborative, constructivist classroom? Instead of traditional icebreakers, try these games that encourage collaboration and teamwork.

What do students want from teachers?
Listen to what students say they really want from teachers. And no, it’s not “more recess.”

Student technology leadership teams for laptop and BYOT schools
Are you getting more devices this year? Laptops, iPads, iTouches, netbooks or going 1:1? Do you have enough tech support? Enough support for teachers using new technology? Enough support for students? No? Well then learn how students can be a great resource when to ease the burden on overworked teachers and IT staff – and mentor other students. Student run “Genius Bar”, anyone?

Ten commandments of tech support
Ten ideas for making technology support more learner-centered and less network-centered.

8 Big Ideas of the Constructionist Learning Lab
Last but by far not least, if you are looking for some inspiration to post on your wall, here are 8 Big Ideas of the Constructionist Learning Lab. These eight ideas give actionable advice to create opportunities for deep learning for all. (Also in Spanish)

Happy back to school! MAKE it a great one!

Sylvia

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Should we teach all kids to code?

This is a comment I put on the blog post: We’re Not Ready To Teach Kids To Code: Think Kids Should Learn To Code? Teach The Teachers First. It said, “We need a paradigm shift in education before we even dream of making coding part of the curriculum.”

My response:

I don’t think we can wait. My answer to this is yes, you are right… but we have to do it anyway. We have to teach kids to code as a necessary part of that paradigm shift. Changes as big as this need to come both bottom up and top down, and we all have parts to play in making that happen.

We have to teach teachers to code so they know what it feels like to think that way. We have to change our institutions and curriculum to match our ideals. All of this sounds impossible, and yet, must be done.

I refuse to say it can’t be done and give anyone an excuse not to try. Are we completely, perfectly, ready? No. Must we do it anyway? Yes.

There will come a time when kids insist that the education they get at school at least meets the expectations they have developed for education outside of school, and parents like your mom will be there to make that case.

I’m not waiting – and from what I’ve read about The Estuary, you aren’t waiting either. So why say we aren’t ready?

In my new book, Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering the Classroom, we make the case for programming as a necessary skill for students to understand the world around them, and tackle how teachers can learn to teach in this brave new world.

Sylvia

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“The Maker Movement in schools now has a bible”

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Maker Movement Taps Into Deep and Rich Tradition

By Larry Magid, Technology Columnist Huffington Post

The maker movement in schools now has a bible. There is a new book aimed at educators wanting to inspire students to become makers called Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering in the Classroom, by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager.

Part philosophical treatise, part hands-on recipes and part inspirational, the book helps teachers and parents come up with projects to engage kids. They range from creating customized projects to programming computers and mobile devices to creating your own wearable computers such as a sweatshirt with turn signals that flash while you peddle your bike. There is advice on how to use Legos to make your own robots or how to incorporate Arduino, an open source single-board microcontroller that’s being used increasingly to create or control objects or environments that can interact with sensors.

The book’s page on “The eight elements of a good project” is worth the price of admission because it helps the reader understand what can work in a classroom. Martinez and Stager don’t want teachers to dumb down projects but encourage ones that “prompt intrigue in the learner enough to have him or her invest time, effort and creativity in the development of the project.” There is also advice on how to plan a project and how to find the necessary materials.

I was also glad to see the authors put the maker movement into an historical context with a chapter devoted to the history of how educators, artists and inventors — beginning with Leonard da Vinci — have been encouraging DYI projects. I was pleased to see them pay homage to John Dewey, who, they write, “advocated for students to be actively engaged in authentic interdisciplinary projects connected to the real word.” And I was personally gratified that they mentioned the resurgence in “open education, classroom centers, and project-based learning” during the ’60s and ’70s, because I was deeply involved in that during my UC Berkeley days, when I helped run the Center for Participant Education. Later, I ran the Center for Educational Reform, in Washington DC.

Read more of the review here

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EdSurge Review: A guide to why ‘Making’ should be in every class

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Ed Surge article

EdSurge Review of Invent To Learn by Betsy Corcoran, CEO and Founder of EdSurge:

Okay, I confess: I love this book.

Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroomby Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager, does a fantastic job of laying out the pedagogical underpinnings for why “making” has a place in school.

In their readable, down-to-earth style, Martinez and Stager provide a rich history of why making activities not just belong in school but are the root of genuine learning: “The maker movement may represent our best hope for reigniting progressive education,” they write.

Read more…

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Why Kids Need to Tinker to Learn

From: Why Kids Need to Tinker to Learn (Mind/Shift KQED)

The Maker Movement has inspired progressive educators to bring more hands-on learning and tinkering into classrooms, and educator Gary Stager would like to see formal schooling be influenced by the Maker Movement, which has inspired young learners to tinker, to learn by doing, and take agency for their learning.

One way teachers can incorporate the Maker Movement into the classroom is through project-based learning (PBL), and learning prompts should be “brief, ambiguous and immune to assessment,” Stager said at ISTE. “The best projects push up against the resistance of reality. They work or they don’t work.”

Kids simply need a supportive environment to tinker with an idea long enough to make it work, Stager said. They don’t need to be burdened by explaining which stage of the inquiry process they’re demonstrating. “We need to ask ourselves is there less we can do and more the kids can do?” Sager said.

Allowing kids to deeply engage with a project they are passionate about also helps produce more positive memories of school, Stager said. “The reason the Maker Movement is so exciting is it can re-energize the classroom and it can make high quality memories of education,” he said.

To make his point, Stager gave the example of the wily Super Awesome Sylvia. Stager said that when adults get out of the way and let kids shine, they produce amazing things, like “Sylvia’s Super Awesome Mini-Maker Show.” Sylvia’s only 11, but she’s already taken the world by storm by challenging herself with complicated projects in science, technology, engineering and math in her own fun and quirky way. She’s become an Internet phenom, and President Obama even invited her to the White House Science Fair.

Read more from: Why Kids Need to Tinker to Learn

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“Hard fun” at Invent To Learn @ ISTE13

Lindsey Own writes in her blog “Teaching Science in the 21st Century”

My 5 Biggest #ISTE13 Take-Aways!

2.) The best sessions are those where we *DO* stuff!  I immensely enjoyed the Invent to Learn workshop with Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager (as is very clear by the photos snagged by workshop buds), and I literally got my hands filthy playing with different tools I want to bring into my classroom.  I *have* to have a physical interaction with a tool to be able to think through how it could work in my classroom… just looking isn’t enough.

Progress on my electronic greeting card, and my finished LED/felt flower brooch
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Q&A: How Students Can Help Teachers Use Technology for Learning

From Common Sense Media

A thirty-year veteran educator, technology trainer Lisa Hogan teaches students and faculty in Topsham, Maine to better use new digital media tools to transform learning as part of Maine’s innovative 1:1 laptop program. We talked with her about how technology is changing learning and her school’s student-led iTeam.

Common Sense Media: Tell me about your school’s iTeam. Who’s on the team and what do they do?

Lisa Hogan: They are a group of high school students that help me support teachers. They help with the deployment and collection of 900 laptops, which means they must come to school as early as 5:30 a.m. for deployment. They also attend professional development days and help me help teachers with projects they want to develop.

They’ve also created a video for faculty and students about caring for laptops, and have presented their work to international visitors from Sweden, Denmark, and Singapore. The kids actually give up their lunchtime to work on the iTeam. The iTeam includes everyone from athletes to musicians, and they aren’t even exactly what I would call tech-savvy kids, but they’re willing to learn. They keep me informed about what’s going on with the school network such as slow downs or blocked websites. They’re a good voice to have within the school.

Read more of the interview on Common Sense Media

Sylvia

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Did you know Google Reader is going away?

Google is a company that likes to release products in “beta” – meaning, “we’re just dating” not getting married to the app. They support lots of products for a while and then when they feel they’ve had their day, shut them down. Google Reader, although a particular favorite of many blog readers, is being shut down on July 1.

There are other alternatives for RSS readers (See Larry Ferlazzo’s post The Best Alternatives To Google Reader Now That It’s Being Shut Down).

But Google seems to be betting that RSS is not the way most people get their news. This blog is also available through email (see subscribe box on the right) or by following me on Twitter or Linked In.

As they say, the only thing that never changes is that everything changes!

Sylvia

PS ISTE is coming up next week – the “big daddy” of all educational technology conferences. Check out our exciting lineup of sessions and events!