Time For A Change

For the past 7 years I have taught a "computer" class to middle school students twice a week. In that time the class has evolved from the basic class I inherited (aka typing for 15 minutes, work on making a digital poster of your science or ELA project using PrintShop and KidPix) to a curriculum that includes animation, computer programming, digital image making, physical computing and more. With this more intensive curriculum comes new problems and setbacks. I still teach the students for 50 minute blocks twice a week. Between testing and trips and vacation days this doesn't leave a lot of time to really develop deep understandings for many of my students. Because the class isn't a class "that counts", many students (and their parents), don't think it is an important class and tend to complain about having to do work and thinking that free time on the computers is what the students deserve more of.

Despite repeating the mantra "would you rather program the computer rather than be programmed by the computer", too many students consider themselves to be experts with little left to learn, and parents agree, telling me how their kids are using the computer all the time, watching YouTube and chatting with their friends. It has been an uphill battle that keeps getting steeper each school year.

This past year I have been immersed in reading and thinking and learning about all the different ways that the Making phenomena can be incorporated into the school curriculum. At times I have thought that school doesn't deserve the Maker experience, that the formal and conservative framework of what passes for most schools would only do to making as it has done to other innovations and ideas, absorb it into its rigid structure and change the innovation to fit school instead of changing school to fit the innovation. (see "Why School Reform is Impossible" by Seymour Papert, 1995 - "The Reform sets out to change School, but in the end School changes the Reform. School resists the Reform in a particular way, by appropriating or assimilating it to its own structure.").

Student soldering 3d printed LED flashlight

Well, I am going to give it a try anyway. With the blessing of my school and the science department, we are rebranding the "computer lab" as a STEAM Lab or iLab (official name to be determined), rearranging the room as best we can with our limited resources and electrical circuits, and attaching the two periods I teach each week to the science classes as a hands on science lab experience for the students. Typical NYC public middle schools don't have the time, space, or resources, to facilitate a true project-based lab experience for their students within the confines of 4 or 5 periods a week and 30 plus students a class. It is my hope that what I already do in my computer classes, and what happens in my lunchtime Makerspace, can be the foundation for hands-on inquiry based projects that connect to the existing science curriculum for the 6th and 7th graders. The approach will be framed in design thinking and using a design/engineering cycle that will allow students to work through problems and have the time to discover solutions through this iterative process.

I am excited for the possibilities, I am excited to be collaborating and working with other teachers at my school, for a subject "that counts", I am excited to be doing something new and figuring out what works and what doesn't. Sure there will be problems, but at least these will be new problems. I am looking forward to learning from those of you who are already doing this kind of work and incorporating ideas and best practices and project ideas into our new STEAM Lab.

Making A Case For A Makerspace

There was a recent discussion amongst educators on Twitter about measuring creativity. How do we measure creativity was the question although I was more interested in why would we even want to measure creativity. In this age of data and measurement, must everything be measured? If you listen to the current trends in education and teaching you must know that anything that cannot be measured is not worthy of focus. Either creativity is something worth "teaching" and therefore measuring or it is not and we can dismiss it as something that does not have an important place in schools and education.

Reflecting upon some of the conversations and readings for the Learning Creative Learning seminar I am more than ever convinced that we either need to keep creativity out of the current institution of school or we need to turn school upside down and inside out so that creativity and learning could be a part of school. But to force fit does a disservice to all.

So where does a MakerSpace fit into this paradigm then? Should it exist on the margins, in the classroom, after school at a separate location? Does putting the MakerSpace outside of the school curriculum reduce its legitimacy? Do we want our Makerspace's to be co-opted then consumed by "school"?

Leah Buechley commented on how "schools currently focus on subjects and efficiency". Schedules, curriculum and pacing drive our student's days in most public schools. Dale Dougherty said that educators have asked him what the standardized test is for "making". Which misses the point entirely since it is the making itself that provides evidence of learning.

Making IS learning, you don't have to teach a lesson after the fact, the teaching is taking place while students are engaged in the work. Making is also creative, but must we measure that? Making is problem solving and abstract thinking and computational thinking and STEM and STEAM. We have to be careful not to let Making be reduced to a Buzzword and the educator flavor of the day.


Thoughts and reflections and notes from Session 3 of the Learning Creative Learning Seminar MIT.

Fabricating Parts

We don't have a Fab Lab here at our MakerSpace, nor so we have a 3D printer (wish list!) but what we do have are "spare parts". I love saving things in case they are ever needed for something else. One look at my own basement confirms this.
What has been a great making experience for my students is understanding how you can re-fabricate one part from another. Two of my students needed a 3" x 1" piece of flexible metal they could use to mount 2 motors on. I showed them the storage bin that held old computer parts, hard drives, super drives, and other assorted things from technology's recent past. They dove in with screwdrivers and pliers and called me over not too long after to show me a couple of parts they thought might work. We were able to cut 3 of the needed pieces from an old SuperDrive, enough for other students wanting to make a similar bot.

Re-purposing parts can lead to things
you never ever thought possible!

Yesterday the same students needed a small switch to use for their robot. We had larger switches, but nothing that would work for their use. Then I remembered the remote control car that other students had brought in to disassemble for parts, and that there was a small switch attached to the components. After a "deal" was made between the two groups of students, the boys who needed the switch got busy. My attention was pulled away (as happens when there are 4 or 5 simultaneous projects going on in the room) and before I knew it, the team had removed the switch from its old location, figured out where it needed to be attached in the new location, and soldered it together. The switch worked perfectly!
It is exciting to see the students look at things and start to realize and understand that they can make other things. That instructions can sometimes be altered, or changed, or revised, according to materials on hand or need. That there is never just "one way" to solve a problem or attempt to find a solution and that just the act of trying to figure stuff out like that can sometimes be the best part of a project.
Too many times within the constraints of school students are taught that there is only one correct answer, or perhaps that there isn't enough time to really explore many other possibilities. It is crucial to learning to have space  for invention and innovation.

Letting Go

November 2012

One of the things I am enjoying most about my lunchtime Makerspace is the freedom that comes from exploration and playing with materials. One of the phrases I say a lot in both my classes or in my after school program, is "I don't know, let's try it and see what happens." An unfortunate consequence of the typical schooling that the majority of kids have received through the years is a fear of attempting something where the results are an unknown. In the Makerspace environment, freed from the confines and weight of the classroom agenda, I have been watching students take naturally to exploration. Which really shouldn't be a surprise.

I have been purchasing parts and supplies in small batches and some of the parts I had on hand at first were battery packs and small 1.5v motors. After working on soldering the switches and wires and battery packs for the glow bottles, a couple of students started exploring connecting switches, motors, and battery packs just to see what happens (but mostly because 6th and 7th grade boys like to make things move!)

So now there were new toys for the students to explore with, a spinning motor became a "drill" that was able to create patterns in a lump of conductive dough that had been left on the table. Then there were unintended results, soldering the wires from the battery pack directly to the motor makes for some very hot batteries and no way to turn it off.

So the result of "letting go" and allowing the students to tinker and play with these parts is where the learning takes place. Switches are something you might want to consider when designing a circuit, why do the batteries over heat when they are attached and then continually running the 1.5v motor, how can you measure the current that is flowing from one part to another and why is that important to be able to do sometimes, what are resisters and how might they be used.

We are planning to put the motors to use in some Beetle Bots this week, the rest of the parts arrive this week. I am looking forward to that.

To Tinker or To Not Tinker?

At this summer's Scratch Conference a recurring theme came up in many conversations and presentations, what does it mean to tinker? There was some debate as to whether tinkering always leads to anything tangible or if tinkering itself is what is important.

Here are some notes and thoughts from some of the conversations.

Mitch Resnick defines tinkering as "bottom-up, iterative, experimental, concrete, and object-oriented."

Adults defining tinkering, how do students define it?

Do we pay too much attention to outcomes with our students?
Does it have to always be about the finished product?

If a project is never completed is it a bad project?

Creating a space with freedom and away from the constrictions of the curriculum and the classroom.

These are also the thoughts that I have had when I decided that I needed to create a MakerSpace for my students this fall.

Making a MakerSpace

Soft & Squishy Circuits

This past summer I decided that I wanted to create a "MakerSpace" at my school. I teach a Robotics after school program once a week, and was already planning to introduce some Arduino boards into the mix of Mindstorms RCX blocks that the students currently build with.
My experience with making and electronics is limited, but I love to learn new things and was extremely excited about my new Arduino I purchased and playing around with the different (and very basic) things I could do with it. I am also very fortunate to have colleagues and friends who do have experience and knowledge so I could also learn from them.
This fall I put together a basic Donor's Choose grant to purchase some basic supplies. I already had some supplies I could bring from home, a soldering iron, wires, tools etc. The first time you put together something with Donor's Choose you must use their suppliers. This posed a small problem at first when I realized that I couldn't include any Arduino or LilyPad electronics or kits. But I soon realized that I could order switches, motors, LEDS, tools, hot glue gun, safety glasses, solder, and create the foundation for our MakerSpace.
My favourite purchase was the long folding table. My classroom is a computer lab with tables that are not moveable and have computers permanently attached to them. The table is "our MakerSpace", we pull it out and place chairs around it and we have our work area. I even wrote The Computer School MakerSpace along the edges of it. It is a symbolic thing I guess.
My students have taken to "our space" very quickly. This post will be the start of a series of postings which will document our MakerSpace adventure.