Category: MakerEd

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Make it, wear it, learn it – session slides and links to wearables resources

At ISTE 2016 I presented a new session called “Make It, Wear It, Learn It” about wearable electronics. It’s a combination of what’s out there now that can be done by students today, some far out gee-whiz stuff coming in the next few years, and how to start with wearables for young people.

Wearables are a way to introduce people to engineering, design, and electronics that are personal and fun!

Screen Shot 2016-07-03 at 3.21.15 PMHere’s the PDF of the slides. Video links are below. ISTE didn’t record this session, but someone said they were periscoping it. If anyone has that, I can post the link here!

There were some powerhouse tweeters in the audience who shared links, photos, and sketchnotes! Thanks to all of you!

Links to videos in the presentation

3D printed fashion at home – Designer Danit Peleg creates fabrics and wearables using easily available 3D printers.

Imogene Heap – Gloves that make music (This is the full video. For the presentation I edited it for time.)

Super-Awesome Sylvia’s Mini-Maker Show (Making a soft circuit toy) – This video is good for showing sewing tips for conductive thread. (Sylvia’s full website)

Made with Code – Maddy Maxey – (This is the full video. I edited it down for time in the presentation.) There are other good videos on this page.

Fashion made from milk fibers – This is the “bonus video” I showed as people were coming into the presentation. Anke Domaske creates fabric from milk proteins, working at the intersection of biochemistry and fashion.

Links to shopping tips and resources for wearables

Resources – InventToLearn.com/resources

Shopping and vendors – InventToLearn.com/stuff

Professional development, workshops, and other links

Constructing Modern Knowledge Summer Institute

Sylvia’s website

Professional development opportunities – I can come to your school! Invent To Learn workshops, consulting, and other events are available.

All books available from CMK Press (publisher of Invent To Learn)

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Before you “do a makerspace” – four considerations

When we talk about making, there is a tendency to overlap our terms, like saying we’re going to “do makerspace”. I think unpacking these terms help uncover underlying assumptions, especially when designing new spaces and learning opportunities. I see this as four distinct aspects that work together:

  1. Place – Makerspace, hackerspace, Fab Lab, Techshop, shop, science lab, open classroom, studio
  2. Culture – Maker movement, hacker culture, craft, green, economic self-determinism, service-learning, artisanal, amateur science, citizen science, urban agriculture, slow food
  3. Process – Making, tinkering, Design Thinking, design, Genius Hour, PBL
  4. Underlying belief about teaching & learning – Instructionism, behaviorism, constructivism, constructionism

By looking at these four aspects, we can untangle some of the confusion about what “making” in education is. These can combine in interesting ways – you can have a Design Thinking program that is strongly teacher directed in a makerspace that has a green eco-streak that permeates the projects. The place doesn’t dictate the process, which is good and bad.

Many times, when designing new learning opportunities or spaces it is assumed that their current culture will transform as well. Space planning doesn’t magically transform pedagogy. You can’t assume that just because you build a flexible space with terrific materials, it will magically be filled with wonderful student-centered, open-ended projects.

Here’s a “cheat sheet” for the four aspects.

Place

Both formal (credit-bearing courses, primarily at schools) and informal (extra-curricular activities, clubs, libraries, museums, community organizations, commercial spaces)

  • Hackerspace – “Hacking” indicates both an activity and political belief that systems should be open to all people to change and redistribute for the greater good. (roots in the 1960’s). More prevalent in Europe than US.
  • Makerspace – MAKE magazine (2005 – present). Popular Science for the 21st century. DIY and DIWO. Maker Faires. Adopted as a softer, safer alternative to hackerspace. Can be a separate room or integrated into classrooms.
  • Fab Lab – Spaces connected to the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms (565 worldwide) with a common charter and specific requirements for space and tools. Fablab also used as a generic nickname for any fabrication lab.
  • TechShop (and others) – non-profit or commercial organizations offering community tool sharing, classes, or incubation space.
  • Shop, science lab, classroom, studio – traditional names for school spaces for learning via hands-on activities.

Culture

  • Maker movement – technology-based extension of DIY culture, incorporating hobbyist tools to shortcut a traditional (corporate) design and development process, and the internet to openly share problems and solutions. Maker mindset – a positive, energized attitude of active tinkering to solve problems, using any and all materials at hand.
  • Hacker/hacking – Essential lessons about the world are learned “..from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things.” – Steven Levy
  • Green – values of ecology, conservation, and respect for the environment.
  • Citizen/amateur science – participation of non-professional scientists in gathering and interpreting data or collaborating in research projects.
  • Artisanal/craft movements – engaging in mindful and ethical practices to humanize activities, products, and production.

Process

  • Making – the act of creation. “Learning by making happens only when the making changes the maker.” – Sylvia Martinez
  • Tinkering – non-linear, iterative approach to reaching a goal. “messing about” with materials, tools, and ideas. “Making, fixing, and improving mental constructions.” – Seymour Papert
  • Design Thinking – customer-centered product design and development process popularized by IDEO and the Stanford d.school
  • Design – “to give form, or expression, to inner feelings and ideas, thus projecting them outwards, making them tangible.” – Edith Ackermann
  • Genius Hour – specific classroom time devoted to tinkering and open-ended projects. Patterned after companies (Google and FedEx, primarily) that allow employees to work on non-company projects on company time, thereby boosting morale and possibly resulting in products useful to the company.
  • Project-based Learning (PBL) – Projects are…“work that is substantial, shareable, and personally meaningful.” – Martinez & Stager

Beliefs about teaching and learning

  • Instructionism – Belief that learning is the result of teaching. Lecture, direct instruction.
  • Behaviorism – Belief that behavior is a result of reinforcement and punishment. Rote learning, worksheets, stars/stickers, grades.
  • Constructivism – Piagetian idea that learning is a personal, internal reconstruction—not a transmission of knowledge. Socratic method, modeling, manipulatives, experiments, research, groupwork, inquiry.
  • Constructionism – Seymour Papert extended constructivism with the idea that learning is even more effective when the learner is creating a meaningful, shareable artifact. PBL, making, citizen science.
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Students as Digital Creators (COSN report)

ETN Digital Creativity3-31A_Page_01.jpgThe Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) just added a new report to their Ed Tech Next Series: Students as Digital Creators for CoSN members.  This report explores the ways in which K–12 schools everywhere are carving out space in their buildings and curriculum to empower students as storytellers, artists, performers, designers, engineers, coders, gamers, inventors, builders, producers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The report offers expert perspectives on why and how to foster digital creativity—and profiles leading districts, communities and educators engaged in this maker movement.

I was happy to provide CoSN with some quotable quotes, resources, ideas, and point them to some great maker educators for case studies and profiles. I wish everyone could see this, but it’s a member benefit for CoSN members.

Sneak peek:

“Design is the lever or engine for the T in STEM—the technology,” Martinez says. “Without design, there is no technology. Technology means anything in the designed world. Whereas in schools, technology has come to mean this very narrow computer literacy—using computers to do work, to look things up. We have to expand the definition of technology beyond how to use Google Docs and making the network run right, to this idea that you can change the world with the things you think up in your head.”

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What does “making” have to do with learning?

Learning is an engagement of the mind that changes the mind.

—Martin Heidegger

One of the biggest issues I have with many descriptions of “making” in education is that it’s about students just being creative with tools or materials.  I strongly disagree. Making is not just the simple act of you being the difference between raw materials and finished product, as in “I made dinner” or even “I made a robot.” I don’t think we always need to ascribe learning to the act of making — but the act of making allows the maker, and maybe an outsider (a teacher, perhaps) to have a window into the thinking of the maker.

So, do you always need a teacher for learning to happen? No. Some people are good at thinking about their own process and learning from that (“Wow, that butter made the sauce so much better.” “Next time, I’ll test the circuit before I solder.”) and some people are less likely to do that. But if I watch you cook, I will see certain things – how you organize your ingredients, how you react when you make a mistake, how you deal with uncertainty — and that is what teaching is about. A teacher who is a careful observer can see these kinds of signs, and then challenge the learner with harder recipes, a question to make them think, more interesting ingredients, or a few tips — all with an eye towards helping the other person learn and grow.

Technology like Arduinos and 3D printers have not become intertwined with the maker movement in education simply because they are new, but because they are some of the most interesting ingredients out there. Many of these “maker materials” rely on computational technology, which supports design in ways not possible otherwise. The command “Save As..” is possibly the most important design tool ever invented. Saving your design file or code means you can “do again” without “doing over,” supporting the iterative process and encouraging increasingly complex designs.

Complex technology, especially computational technology also allows educators to answer the question, “Isn’t this just arts and crafts?” And of course after defending arts and crafts – we can say that computational technology allows these same mindful habits to connect with the powerful ideas of the modern world that we hope children learn. Design and making are not just important for the A in STEAM, they are essential, but here’s a bigger idea, they are also essential for the T & E — and for them all to come together.

There is simply no technology without design; the definition of the word is literally “things in the designed world.” Making is a way to realize the “logo” part of the word – from the Greek word (logos) that means “word” but specifically words that express the order and reason of the universe. To Greek philosophers, a word was more than a sound or a mark, it was the embodiment of an idea — an idea made real. And yes, the Logo programming language owns this derivation as well.

The power of using computational technology in education is that the versatility and transparent complexity allows learners to make their ideas real, to make sense of the world, and to see their own capacity grow. This visible process also allows teachers to support and scaffold learners on their journey.

Learning by making happens only when the making changes the maker.

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Is Design Thinking the same as “making”?

People often ask me two questions about Design Thinking. First, is the same as making, and second, do I like it. It’s obvious there are similarities and overlaps, and similar ways that they can be implemented well (or not so well). I think design is the key to modern STEM education, but it’s a mistake to think that using Design Thinking methodology is the same as teaching design. Design Thinking gets the “big D, big T” treatment because it’s a methodology invented at the Institute of Design at Stanford University (also known as the d.school) with assistance from ideo, a product design and consulting company.

Design Thinking, both in its origin and existing implementation in K-12 schools is grounded in product design and end user empathy. It’s a good thing to design with the user (or customer)  in mind, but there are many more avenues of design than just making products that solve a problem for a specific audience. Many inventions were simply found by noticing unexpected results and following that path. Artists often say that the materials “speak” to them as they work. Authors say that their characters tell them how the story is going to unfold. In the same way, I think “making” values this kind of serendipity in the design process more than Design Thinking.

A search for solutions assumes that the problem is defined properly and we all agree on the values inherent in defining the problem — no small assumption. Basing everything on the “needs” of some group, audience, etc. is more about marketing than engineering, science, or art.

So, do I “like” Design Thinking? Sorta, maybe, kinda. I’ve seen nice things done in the name of Design Thinking, and I’ve seen too narrow, too constrained versions. It’s good in that I think empathy is a mindset that children should practice more often. But mainly, I distrust anything that’s been pre-packaged for K-12. Shrink-wrapping things  kills them.

There are three things that schools should consider as they think about how and why to teach design.

  1. Learning. If you believe that constructionism is a valid explanation of how people learn, then you want a design process that allows people to build on their existing experience, make sharable, meaningful things, have time to assimilate new ideas and thoughts, and then iterate. This is a living, breathing process that includes and responds to the participants in real time.
  2. Teaching. What is the balance between telling and allowing exploration? Are the steps necessary and valid for all occasions? Who chooses the materials? Will the process or product be graded or ranked?
  3. The product. Does your process end with a real product or an imagined product? What is the balance between marketing and actual design? What are the values of your product?

I know there are thousand ways that schools implement Design Thinking so my thoughts here are an amalgam of what I’ve seen in  conference presentations, websites, kits, and workshops for teachers and/or students. In many cases I’ve seen emphasis on teaching the steps, handouts that walk through every stage, and lots of post-it note driven group-think.

The focus on the steps and stages creates two problems:

  • If you commit to an audience and plan, it’s an investment in a path that becomes more and more difficult to change as time goes on. If the materials you have don’t really support your idea, or you find unexpected obstacles, or even have a better idea, it’s too much of a penalty to change it up and follow that new path. It makes it worse if the stages are assessed and become part of a final grade. The success of many of the designs in a Design Thinking workshop is not a signal that it’s a good methodology, but rather that it’s too constrained.
  • It fulfills the worst instincts of teachers to overplan and pre-digest any topic for their students. I’m sure it makes teachers feel better that they have a checklist and process to use back in their classrooms, but that’s a false sense of security.

Most things that people make for the first time don’t need a plan, storyboard, mindmap, outline, flowchart, diagram, etc. It’s false complexity to introduce those kinds of structures before they are really needed. If you make a wallet, make a wallet. Then and only then will you start to see how the materials work, what parts were easy and what was hard, that it might have been a good idea to make the outside a tiny bit bigger than the inside, etc. And then you must have time to do it again… and again….  A teacher trying to impose their favorite planning framework too early means that the student now has two tasks – to figure out what the heck the teacher wants in the bubble diagram, and also how to make a wallet.

Process is important, but so is the product. I’ve seen Design Thinking workshops that focus on imaginary products, probably for lack of time or proper materials. It’s great to have a vision of a trash can that floats around the ocean collecting trash, it’s another thing to make it work. Just making something float upright is pretty hard! But that’s how you really learn about floating (and leaking and density and absorbtion and making something work in the real world). I would classify designing imaginary products a bit like writing fiction — it’s a great literacy to have, but it’s barely design, and it’s certainly not engineering. Making things work is, to me, the most important part of design in the real world.

One more note about product – it’s not a given that just because a product solves a problem (as stated by one or more people) that this is a “good” product. What values come along with that decision? How is the design influenced by values – does it help or hurt the environment? Is it inclusive or only for some people? Does it make money at the expense of something or someone else?

Now, I’m not saying that “making” solves all these problems. The word has been handy — I can tell you there would be no “hacker movement” in schools. But the word is essentially meaningless. It’s what marketing people call an “empty vessel.” The art of marketing is all about searching for these kinds of words that people can fill with their own definitions. So everyone is happy but no one has to agree. I have no illusions that every time someone says “making” in education it’s automatically a wondrous experience of agency and enlightenment. Most of what I just wrote about the perils of Design Thinking I’ve seen unfold in exactly the same way in “maker” classrooms and workshops.

One final thing – I believe words matter. Of course thinking is good and making is good, and both together are even better. (Perhaps I should trademark “Design Thinkamakathon.”) However, the verbs “think” and “make” are very very different and signal the most important difference between the two. Thinking is internal, making is external. Thinking asks that an internal process happen in a certain way. It’s about intellectual behavior, which I think school already overemphasizes. It’s not wrong or useless by any means, just overdone territory.

Making asks the maker to create something outside of themselves that expresses their own thoughts and ideas. I believe learning (and thinking) happens inside a person, but when you make something meaningful and shareable outside yourself, it cements that learning in place as a building block for the next iteration, which of course includes thinking. School has unfortunately paid little attention to the making part of the cycle, since it’s seen as messy and time consuming. Being clear that making real things that work is part of any real design experience is something I believe that schools need to think about, even if it falls outside the comfort zone.

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Bio is the new digital

“Bio is the new digital” – Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab founder

When Nicholas Negroponte predicts the future, you listen (A 30 year history of the future). Now he says that biology is where digital was at the dawn of computers, and that synthetic biology and programmable organic materials are following the same pattern, with costs dropping and capabilities increasing even faster than Moore’s Law.

Watch this amazing 10 minute video from Joi Ito, the current director of the MIT Media Lab.

People ask me why the maker movement in the classroom is so focused on electronics, fabrication, and coding. The answer is simple — that’s what’s available now. More is on the way, and it’s happening quickly. Bio-hacking, organic sensors, and programmable bacteria will be in K-12 schools sooner than you think (and already are in some cases).

Biology or code? Both.
Biology or programming? Both.

When you see this, ask yourself — how long can we teach science and math as if time stopped centuries ago?

Classroom supplies of the (near) future
Classroom supplies of the (near) future

 

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Amazing! Life, art, and making.

This was from a panel discussion at the Crossroads 2016 conference on the culture of making. Brooke Toczylowski drew the scene and it’s amazing!

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Thingmaker – the 3D printer from Mattel – an answer for maker education?

Mattel’s ThingMaker brings 3D printing to iconic ’60s toy

Seen the headlines? 3D printing is coming, faster cheaper, easier to manage… but is it better?

Anyone who is thinking about “making in education” has likely bought (or at least thought about) a 3D printer for their makerspace or classroom. In our book, Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, fabrication is one of the three “game changer” technologies that have the most potential for schools. But as anyone  who has tried 3D printing knows, it’s not a mature technology by any means, and takes work to integrate it into rich design experiences for young people. At this point in time, most classroom focused 3D printers are too slow and too glitchy to really serve a lot of students doing iterative design. There is no perfect software solution, and software is at the core of the design process. Of course, every day they get cheaper, more reliable, and these problems will decrease.

So the recent announcement by Mattel of a reboot of the 1960’s toy Thingmaker sounds too good to be true. After all, if Mattel believes this is reliable enough to sell at Toys R Us, it must solve all these issues, right?

Is this “the answer”?  It depends what question you ask. Do you like toys? Do you need more plastic stuff? Then the answer is yes. Do you want kids to engage in designing, mathematical thinking, and problem solving? Then the answer is no.

And hey, if my kids were still little I would totally buy this. And play with it myself. It’s a reboot of literally my favorite toy when I was a kid. I still have some of the dragons somewhere.

But – take a close look at what you get.

It’s not going to be an open design in hardware or software. There will be pre-designed parts you can drag and drop to make creatures, robots, etc. Pick Arm A and Body B and in several hours you can print and assemble your own little monster, or other Mattel branded stuff. It’s not going to be “maker” in the sense of “if you can’t open it you don’t own it.” For those people who find that important, this is a mockery, for those who just want to reliably make plastic toys, it’s perfect.

Because from a stability and reliability standpoint, the whole “open” concept is deadly. What if you design something that can’t actually be printed in real life? A learning opportunity, you say? For Mattel, that’s a design that cannot be allowed. Locking down the design process into a drag and drop app makes it reliable. It’s not a BAD app, or a BAD corporate decision, it is what it is.

Once they sterilize the design side, and use proprietary software all the way from design to the hot end, then it’s just a hardware problem that remains. No worries about strange g-code or updates to open source code.

On the hardware side,  Mattel is good at making cheap, reliable hardware. They will require their filament (you can see it in the photo above), so that helps them maintain consistency as well.

So is it a bad thing for schools to consider? No. Depends how much money you have for toys. Will kids like it? Of course. Will some enterprising hacker figure out how to hack into it? Highly likely.

But think of the parallels. Do kids like EZ Bake Ovens? of course. Can you make edible stuff? Yes. Do some people hack them to turn out gourmet meals? No doubt. So would you turn your culinary arts program (if you are lucky enough to have one) over to all EZ Bake Ovens?

Let’s also differentiate between parents getting these for kids, and schools buying them and pretending it’s a STEM initiative. Schools buying these should consider the whole picture of the design cycle, not just the plastic parts that spit out at the end.

My childhood in black and white…

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Tech support for innovative schools

I had the opportunity to be the closing keynote for CETPA, an organization of K-20 education technology professionals in California. There were a lot of sessions about tech support, networks, and infrastructure, but it was great to see a lot of attention paid to the fact that education is the primary job of schools.

I shared some of the exciting new things happening in schools in California and around the world using technology and tools from the maker movement. But for those people who work hard to keep existing school networks and technology viable in times of zeroed out budgets, it’s not good enough to just toss more technology into classrooms without considering who will support it.

School Leaders say…

  • 75% they don’t have enough IT staff to support their needs effectively
  • 55% can’t maintain their network adequately
  • 63% can’t plan for new technologies
  • 76% have trouble implementing new technologies. (e-School News)

In the article, Forrester Research is quoted as saying that large corporations typically employ one support person for every 50 PCs, at a cost of $1420 per computer, per year.  According to this model, a school district with 1,000 PCs would need a staff of 20 and an annual tech-support budget of $1.4 million.

Yeah, go ahead, laugh! Everyone in a school knows this is ludicrous!

Center for Educational Leadership and Technology says that some larger school districts are approaching a ratio of one IT person for every 1,500 computers or more. I think that may even be low.

This creates an untenable climate in schools where tech support professionals are put in a lose-lose situation. They are responsible for everything that plugs in from the payroll system to the network to the student devices. There is no way to make an impossible situation work without being a constant state of vigilant triage. It’s common – and not unreasonable to develop a circle-the-wagons mentality where blame and finger-pointing is rampant. And the blame goes all around – teachers are slackers, students are hackers, admin is clueless – and comes right back at the tech support team. They become network nazis, the department of no, and worse.

Innovation is unsustainable in this kind of atmosphere, even with the most compelling ideas and plans.

So how can we move forward? This is the “to do” list I proposed.

  • Refocus – Move beyond fixing broken things (Reactive & negative)
  • Support a culture of innovation (Find ways to say yes)
  • Reduce shame (Genius bar)
  • Leverage untapped resources (Students)
  • Reduce cost of failure at all levels (Leadership)

I believe that these goals are not only useful for schools with plans for innovative technology, but can create a synergy that actually is more than the sum of its parts. Collaboration between tech support, students, and teachers, creates a more trusting climate at the same time as leveraging student time and energy. Leadership that supports innovation, even when the road is bumpy, creates trust, which in turn increases responsible behavior.

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I believe that every person in a school is an important part of making education better!

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Putting Away the Books to Learn

Bright.com (the education section of Medium.com)  has published an article called Putting Away the Books to Learn by Jackie Ashton.

It starts with the question: “The “maker” movement has swept across schools in California and beyond. Can it fundamentally change K-12 education?”

The article profiles several schools involved in “making” and quotes some folks, including me, about how “making” has the potential to change education. Most of my interview ended up on the cutting room floor, unfortunately. But that’s the way the media cookie crumbles, as they say!

It’s an interesting take on “making” and the article struggles a bit, I think, to situate it in a learning context. Not that I’m surprised or criticizing. It’s the heart of the difficulty of advocating for “maker education” – the examples start to sound like you are cheerleading for any techy type thing that kids put their hands on, whether it’s thoughtful, challenging, academic or not.

Even the title “Putting Away the Books to Learn” is a misinterpretation of the kind of classroom experience I advocate for. In a maker-enabled learning space, books and reference materials (both online and physical) should be one of the most important tools available to students.

For example, at our summer institute, Constructing Modern Knowledge, we bring cases of books to build a library for participants. We believe that this highly-curated library is one of the most important aspects of creating a model maker learning experience. Books can inspire and inform, or sometimes just provide a coffee-break for a tired brain.

Maker education is not an either/or choice between old-fashioned and new-fangled stuff. It’s grounded (hopefully) in ideas about the ways learning really happens inside the learner’s head. Beyond that, there are definitely some technologies that can enhance the quest to teach students about the real world, but to me, the “stuff” should take a backseat to the learning.

  • Can you do “maker” without a 3D printer? Yes
  • Can you do things with a 3D printer that give students access to ideas otherwise nearly impossible? Yes

Both of these can be true, and that may seem confusing. But I think the possibilities inherent in all these seemingly contradictory paths are worth exploring. There is no one model of maker education that is going to work for every learning space and every learner. That should be seen as freedom to be nurtured, not a deficiency.