Virtual session handout – Sylvia Martinez

Sylvia Martinez – Session Resources

Making in the classroom is not a shopping list or a special place, it’s a stance towards learning.

Recent slidedecks & session resources

Making in Education Resources

Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager. (Second Edition) Completely revised and expanded, the book called the “bible of the maker movement in schools” has helped thousands of educators embrace the tools, technology, and mindset of the “maker movement” in learning spaces. The website contains resources, links, a free book club guide, recommended books, workshop handouts, and more.  www.InventToLearn.com

Invent To Learn is available at Amazon.com and other online retailers in paperback, hardcover, and e-book format. For volume discounts, wholesale, or POs, contact CMK Press.

Getting Started with Making in Education (Articles by Sylvia Martinez)

Girls and STEM Resources

I believe that there are many good things happening to support gender equity in STEM education, however, there are many things left to do. This presentation offers a view from K-12 through college to the job market with recommendations about what’s working and what still needs to happen. Extensive resource list included.

See more books from Constructing Modern Knowledge Press (cmkpress.com):

Presentations, webinars, and blog at sylviamartinez.com

The Professional Learning Event of the Year!

Constructing Modern Knowledge Summer Institute 2023. CMK  is a minds-on institute for educators committed to creativity, collaboration and computing. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in intensive computer-rich project development with peers and a world-class faculty. Inspirational guest speakers and social events round out the fantastic event. Join us July 11-14, 2023 in Manchester, NH.

More information at ConstructingModernKnowledge.com

Bring Sylvia Martinez to your school, organization, or conference!

Professional development, workshops, and consulting are available. See our calendar of events or choose from topics.

Stay in touch – subscribe to the Invent To Learn email newsletter.


Writing about learning

I run a publishing company called Constructing Modern Knowledge Press. At this time, we have twelve books published, most of them written by educators. These books represent a wide array of content, but all are about creating modern, creative learning opportunities.

Educators often ask me about writing their own books, and I highly encourage it. I’m not just looking for new authors, even though I’m happy to talk about joining the CMK Press team. I believe that there are multiple benefits to writing about education, both for the world and the writer.

  1. The world needs to see real models of learning. I hear all the time about how all schools are boring test-prep factories and that will never change. Yet I talk to educators daily who are breaking the mold and doing amazing, creative, wonderful things with students. People don’t believe it because they can’t see it. You can fix this.
  2. Nobody else can do this. The New York Times or Oprah is not coming to tell the story about how wonderful your classroom is. We can’t wait.
  3. It will be eye-opening for you. There is nothing like trying to write down what you do every day to make you think deeply about your own process.

What’s stopping you?

  1. I don’t like bragging. Teachers especially worry that talking about what they do looks like self-promotion. Get over it, it is self-promotion. But that’s different than bragging.
  2. What I do isn’t special. I talk to teachers EVERY DAY who start by saying, “Well, this isn’t that great but…” and then proceed to tell me a fantastic story.
  3. It’s hard. Yes it is. So are most things worth doing.

Getting started

If writing a book seems impossible, do it a step at a time. You know the saying, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. No one sits down and writes a book all at once!

Blogging – Blogs are perfect platforms for compiling a book. A typical book is about 50,000 words. Most blog posts are about 1,000 words. That’s 50 blog posts. If you write once a week, you will have enough for a book in a year. You do not have to attract a following or be “popular.” It does not matter if no one ever comments on your blog. You are the audience.

Podcasting – Similar to blogs, podcasting is a way to start small and work your way into more content. If you want to turn your podcasts into a book, there are amazingly inexpensive transcription services that can take your audio files and send you a document in no time at all. Most people speak at about 150 words per minute, so if you make a 20 minute podcast episode, that’s about 3,000 words. Let’s say 2,000 because there is always extra stuff in podcasts, so that 50,000 word book is only 25 podcast episodes.

Find your way – Both blogs and podcasts have an advantage of spacing out your thoughts and letting you find new ways to express yourself. You may find that as time goes on, you start to focus in on different aspects of your topic, or find a new topic that consistently comes up. Be flexible. Don’t restrict yourself to only what you think you “should” write.

Presenting – If you have ever spoken at a conference or event, one great exercise is to take each of your slides and try to write 1,000 words about each one. Since you have already gone to the trouble of making slides and thinking about what you want to say, this is a jumpstart into writing.

Play with genre – There are LOTS of different ways to write a book. Not every book about education is the same, there are plenty of ways to capture your topic. Think about the variety of books that influenced you at various points in your own journey as an educator. Or you may want to try to write a how-to book about a particular method, tool, or model you use.

Be the expert + share your passion – These may seem like two different things, but they are a matched pair. You won’t get far if you aren’t passionate about your work, and the reader won’t find it compelling if you don’t present the tale, or share the content with a confident voice.

Getting over your fears – One of the hardest parts about writing is that it exposes everything you worry about yourself. I’m not interesting, I’m not good at writing, I never have the right words, I can’t spell, my grammar is terrible, there are thousands of people better than me to say this, what I want to say has been said before… the voices in your head will pound you into the ground. The only way to get over your fears is to write anyway.

Outlines – I’m honestly not a fan of outlines as ground zero for starting a book, I think it’s unrealistic and a bit of a straitjacket, making you feel unnecessarily guilty if you have to deviate from the path you thought you had perfected. It often takes time to figure out what it is you want to focus on, and getting started with the writing is the best way to work it out. For my own work, I tend to write some, and then “chunk” it into sections, sorting what I’ve got into 5-7 piles and seeing what those piles turn out to be.

Just do it – Don’t worry about having the perfect idea, the right software, or a fully fleshed out plan. The only way to get started is to get started.

Aren’t books over?

You might think that in this digital era, books are not the best way to get your message out. But, actually, books are exploding. Books give people a way to dive into a subject, to read, think, jump around, and really dig in. Around the world, book sales continue to climb, while e-book sales have plateaued. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t offer an e-book version of your book, in fact, many people tell me that they have purchased Invent to Learn in both paper and e-book versions, and use them both for different reasons.

However, there has been little take up in interactive books like Apple’s i-book platform which was supposed to “revolutionize” book reading, and then “revolutionize” textbooks… and then didn’t.

Will it make a lot of money?

No.

Do I need a publisher?

No, in fact, I think it’s a better idea to start with your own ideas and start the writing process yourself. Now, if a publisher has approached you and asked you to write a book, that’s a different story!

There are multiple options for publishing a book, and only one of them is with a traditional publisher. It used to be that a publisher was the only way to get your book into stores where people could buy it. Now, there are many options for publishing, because there are more options for buying. I’ll share some of these options in a future post.

Pre-Service and Inservice Professional Development Papers (open access)

Teachers and teacher educators are facing great challenges teaching during this worldwide pandemic. With many conferences either cancelling or postponing their events, these sources of ideas and best practices are not available when critically needed.  

SITE-Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education shifted its spring conference to an online event this past April and which featured many timely sessions on the challenges of teaching during the pandemic. I keynoted this conference on the topic of making, hands-on, and PBL during this crisis.

In order to support teachers and teacher educators around the world who are working through the COVID-19 crisis, a collection of papers, many from the conference, documenting best practices have been published in a special issue of SITE’s flagship Journal of Technology and Teacher Education (JTATE).

This JTATE Special Issue highlights numerous and varied efforts by teacher educators, researchers and practitioners across the globe as they rapidly responded to remote teaching and learning.

View this special issue

CMK 2020 Cancelled – Save the date for CMK 2021!

CMK logo

It is with great sadness that we are forced to cancel Constructing Modern Knowledge 2020, our annual summer institute. We have waited for months to make this decision, hoping that the COVID-19 crisis would end and we could all learn together in Manchester, NH this July. Sadly, many states have closed school for the year, travel may still be limited in July, and it would be very difficult to maintain adequate social distancing during the hands-on activities of CMK.

This breaks our heart. CMK is our life’s work and is needed now more than ever. Each year, educators like yourself prove your competence and creativity while demonstrating that things need not be as they seem. The lineup of guest speakers we assembled for July 2020 was spectacular. Our hearts go out to our colleagues in Reggio Emilia, Italy who have also suffered unspeakable tragedy and are unable to join us in July.

The good news is that Constructing Modern Knowledge 2021 is scheduled for July 13-16, 2021 in Manchester, NH. All of the guest speakers scheduled for this summer have been invited to return next summer. Equally stellar replacements will be made if necessary. Our colleagues from Reggio Emilia should be able to join us as well for a spectacular workshop on documentation. We hope we can count on you to join us and help spread the word once life returns to some level of normalcy.

If you would like to learn more about CMK 2021 and other learning adventures as we move forward, please subscribe to our occasional newsletter.

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ISTE 2020 – Accepted and waitlisted sessions

I’m honored to have the following proposals accepted for the ISTE20 program. ISTE 2020 will be in Anaheim, California in June 2020. I will be leading two sessions, maybe more, if some of the waitlisted sessions are accepted!

Maker 2.0 – Now What? 
You have “making” going on in your school, or maybe even a makerspace! Congratulations… but now what? This session will help educators, both teachers and administrators, build a roadmap for their own making and makerspaces programs that will succeed now and in the future.

  • Scheduled:
    • Tuesday, June 30, 9:00–10:00 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time)
    • Building/Room: Available in May

STEAM to the Future: The 4th Industrial Revolution is Here! 
Let’s time travel fifty years forward to see what science, technology, engineering, and math will be like, and the prominent role that the arts, design ,and creativity will play. This session will provide entertaining and thought-provoking insight into the challenges of adapting today’s classroom and curriculum for the future.

  • Scheduled:
    • Wednesday, July 1, 8:30–9:30 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time)
    • Building/Room: Available in May

Waitlisted proposals

I was very excited about this new session on ethics, empathy, and educational technology. It wasn’t accepted, but is waitlisted, so maybe it will have a chance!

Ethics, Empathy, and Educational technology 
Go beyond digital citizenship to innovative technology to help students develop ethics and empathy for others. Breakthroughs in AI, algorithm bias, bio-hacking, face recognition, digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, robotics, media manipulation like “deep fakes,” and digital fabrication offer interesting opportunities for students to learn about cutting edge of science and math, and how ethical decision-making can make the world a better place for all.

This session will dive into the role and responsibility of the educational technology community to offer be leaders in how students learn ethics. Ethical behavior is an outcome of identifying with other people, and students of all ages can learn about ethics in the context of cross-curricular projects that include both digital and physical components. This has always been part of school – we want students to understand how their behavior impacts others. But the new role of technology in every aspect of life expands this mandate.

In the past, ethics has been taught to younger children in the context of personal responsibility – knowing right from wrong, behavior, etc. As children grow up, they are exposed to a larger sense of the world – are laws fair, what is justice, how can we make good decisions as a local or global community. In this transition, the child gains a view of the world that grows from the self to the community.

However, the world is changing. There are now decisions to be made about the ethics of systems, of technology, and of inventions that have yet to be invented. How will our children learn about these? How will they make decisions and not feel powerless in the face of this uncertainty? And what can we as educational technology leaders do about this?

Other Waitlisted submissions (panels submitted by others)

  • Bringing Bio into the Makerspace: Accessible BioFabrication and Biomaterial Explorations 
  • Hot or Not? Trending Topics in EdTech Judged by… YOU! 

Let’s meet at FETC 2020 – Miami in January!

I hope to see old friends and new at FETC 2020 in Miami, Florida, January 14-17, 2020. I’ll be talking Biomaking, Inclusive Makerspaces, STEM/STEAM, The 4th Industrial Revolution, Creativity, Disruptive Leadership Lenses, Ethics & Empathy, PBL for Making, What’s New/What’s Next for STEAM, and more.

If you can’t make FETC – check out these new Invent to Learn workshops in February in Florida!

This is a new city for FETC – after many years in Orlando, the conference is moving to Miami. FETC is always a terrific conference, attracting an international audience with stellar keynotes, a huge exhibit hall, and featured speakers in multiple tracks for a wide variety of educator interests.

Future of Education Technology Conference | January 14 - 17, 2020 Miami Beach Convention Center, Orlando, FLA.

My sessions – collect them all!

Wednesday January 15, 2020

W151$ | Disruptive Lenses for School Leaders: Making, Agile Development, Design Thinking

  • Room: Lincoln Road C
  • Wednesday, January 15, 2020: 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM

C024 | PBL Gets a “Make” Over — Prompts and Assessment for Maker Classrooms

  • Room: 224-225
  • Wednesday, January 15, 2020: 1:00 PM – 1:40 PM

C065 | STEAM to the Future: The 4th Industrial Revolution is Here!

  • Room: Lincoln Road C
  • Wednesday, January 15, 2020: 3:20 PM – 4:00 PM

Thursday January 16, 2020

W205$ | Grow is the New Make: Bio-making and Bio-hacking

  • Room: 238-239
  • Thursday, January 16, 2020: 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM

C150 | Making for All: Inclusive Maker Projects and Makerspaces

  • Room: 224-225
  • Thursday, January 16, 2020: 11:00 AM – 11:40 AM

C228 | Ethics, Empathy, and Educational Technology

  • Room: Lincoln Road C
  • Thursday, January 16, 2020: 2:00 PM – 2:40 PM

Book signing – NEW edition Invent to Learn – Main Exhibit Hall

  • Exhibit Hall Booth 2740
  • Thursday, January 16, 2020: 12:15 PM – 12:45 PM

Florida – Invent to Learn Workshops

Florida workshop map

2020 Florida Workshops
Feb 10, 2020 Fort Lauderdale, FL

Feb 12, 2020 Jacksonville, FL

Join me and Gary Stager as we host one-day workshops on coding, making, and physical computing in Florida.

This workshop will focus on the amazing opportunities for students to code and make across the curriculum using new micro-controllers like the BBC micro:bit. Even better, every participant will go home with a micro:bit of their very own!

More details and registration links. (Bring a buddy and save!)

Podcast: Mindstorms – A Maze of Cognitive Turbulence

Mindstorms – A Maze of Cognitive Turbulence is an online book club/conversation on Facebook plus a radio/podcast series about Mindstorms, a seminal book by Seymour Papert about his theory of learning, Constructionism. I’ll be a guest with Gary Stager on the third interview installment, airing live Sunday February 24, 2019 at 8PM EST, 5PM PST.

Future Episodes

  • This Sunday, Feb 24: Episode 3 – Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. We will be talking about Seymour Papert and Mindstorms. I can tell you that I’m re-reading Mindstorms and it’s as relevant and powerful today as it was when it was written. If you stare hard through Invent to Learn, you will see the imprint of Mindstorms like an X-ray image. (Update: Direct link to the recording)
  • Sunday, March 3 Episode 4 – Jim Cash, an Ontario Canada educator well-versed in constructionism.

Recordings

  • Episode 1 – Carol Sperry. Carole was a teacher in the 80s entranced by the way Logo opened the door for her to teach (and better understand) math. Carol wrote the introduction to the second edition of Mindstorms and was the teacher who told Seymour about her student who said that Logo was “hard fun” – a phrase that has become synonymous with constructionism.
  • Episode 2 – Brian Silverman and Artemis Papert. Brian was at MIT when Logo was created, and has a hand in designing and programming many of the versions, including Scratch. Artemis is an artist and the daughter of Seymour Papert. Together, they designed and now support Turtle Art, a lovely representation of Logo with Scratch-like blocks.

The interviews are being conducted by Brenda Sherry and Peter Skillen, Canadian educators and long-time advocates of constructionism. The sponsoring project is Code To Learn, “…a project funded by the Canadian government’s CanCode initiative, brings you this Mindstorms book club. Code To Learn is based heavily in the work of Seymour Papert and provides the latest version of the all-Canadian MicroWorlds JR and MicroWorlds EX at no cost to all Canadians. These come in French & English and there is even a version of MicroWorlds JR in the Ojibwe language (with others to come)!”

Hope you tune in!

ISTE 2019 Sessions

ISTE 2019 will be June 23-26, 2019 in Philadelphia. Hope to see you there!

Accepted proposals

The case for creativity and design in STEAM

  • Scheduled:
    • Sunday, June 23, 1:30–2:30 pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)
    • Building/Room: Available in May

STEAM to the Future: What’s Next in STEAM, Design, and Making 

  • Scheduled:
    • Monday, June 24, 1:30–2:30 pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)
    • Building/Room: Available in May

We Have a Makerspace, Now What? Four Directions Forward for Leaders 

  • Scheduled:
    • Wednesday, June 26, 8:30–9:30 am EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)
    • Building/Room: Available in May

Panel Conversations

More Stupid Ideas in EdTech (and why you should totally do them) 

  • Scheduled:
    • Monday, June 24, 10:30–11:30 am EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)
    • Building/Room: Available in May

Waitlisted proposals

.Girls & STEAM: Equity, Inclusion, and Excellence

Declined proposals

What’s a microcontroller and why should I care?

New! Second Edition of Invent to Learn Released

We are excited to announce that a newly revised and expanded edition of Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom has just been released.

It’s been five years since Gary Stager and I published the first edition of Invent to Learn. In that time, schools around the world have embraced making, makerspaces, and more authentic STEM/STEAM experiences for all children. It’s been fun to be a part of this worldwide phenomenon!

The brand new second edition includes a lot of new material reflecting how much has changed in a few short years. There are many new microcontrollers to choose from, and many more that are better for school use. The fabrication chapter has been updated to reflect how the design process has been streamlined by hardware and software progress. There is an entirely new section on laser cutters and CNC machines.

Programming options have expanded as well with software appropriate for students as young as four years old. Finally, there are some fantastic and accessible environments for programming microcontrollers. When we published the first edition, we were positive that a good block-based programming language for Arduino was just around the corner. Although new software environments emerged, they lacked the polish and stability required to make a difference in classrooms. Now things are different.

There is more research about the positive impact of fabrication, robotics, and coding to share. All of the suggested resources have been updated and expanded. The online resources here on inventtolearn.com are even more extensive.

The additions and updates to the book go beyond mentions of new technology and fixing broken URLs. There are new examples from educators around the world who have embraced making in their classrooms. There is more context provided for the connections between project-based learning and making. We attempt to be clearer about the real reason that making matters—not to build a special room or purchase equipment, but to make schools a better place for ALL students and teachers to learn.

The second edition is now available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle on the Amazon website and other online retailers. For volume sales, using a PO, or international sales, please contact sales@cmkpress.com.