Category: Makers in the Making

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Makers in the Making PBL (Project-Based Learning)

(Re)Making Learning: Creating a Space for Young Makers

Many educators are looking for tactical ways to bring the buzz of the maker movement to their schools and classrooms. In an effort to support educators and open-source the implementation process, here is a glimpse inside how one community in the Bay Area is redesigning their learning spaces.

LosRobles Makerspace

Robert Pronovost, STEM Coordinator for Ravenswood City School District in EPA is bringing the maker movement to life through the Ravenswood Makerspace Collaborative.  In partnership with Mario Cuellar, After School STEM Coordinator, and with support from his district, Pronovost transformed a portable at the back of a school into a vibrant and engaging space for students to tinker and explore hands-on learning opportunities.

Prototyping a Pilot

This video depicts early user testing Pronovost conducted to get a sense of what the students were most interested in and how best to design the space and curriculum around those interests. In keeping with the open-source ethos, Pronovost shares much of the reading and research he conducted to fuel his efforts and adds that “‘Invent To Learn‘ by Sylvia Martinez & Gary Stager, Ph.D. is a must read.” The curriculum which serves TK-8th graders currently focuses on three main areas; coding, making and robotics, which clearly have overlapping activities and learning goals. Pronovost then adds a layer of design thinking concepts across these three content areas, introducing kids to empathy building, rapid prototyping and user-centered design. For a deeper look into this process he has documented details of designing the space and curriculum on his own blog, ElementaryEdtech.

The space is equipped with a couple 3D printers, a laser cutter, several chromebooks and a set of BeeBots. Add in carts with the standard prototyping materials (post-its, pipe cleaners, etc) and you’re ready to go. Maintaining materials is a work-in-progress and he shares a list of other tools/materials they would love to get donated.

During this pilot period students are free to tinker in the space during recess and after-school time, however, as this initiative secures more funding the plan is to hire a full-time instructor and expand the content offering.

Robert w/Kids

Next Up

What began as a pilot at Los Robles Magnet Academy this past January will scale to the 7 other schools in the district this fall. In addition to expanding the sites, the goal is to broaden the content offering to include all students and not just those that currently choose to attend. In exploring models from other schools, Pronovost is considering a 4-6 week ‘Intro to STEM’ course that all 4th and 5th graders would rotate through.

Beyond serving EPA, the Ravenswood Makerspace Collaborative was recently selected to join the small and prestigious group of makerspaces in Stanfords’s FabLab@School network. In participating in this program they will likely collaborate with students at another makerspace in Russia or Thailand.

To further engage the local community and share learnings from this early pilot, Pronovost will be hosting an Open Make Day in May. (Details are still TBD.) If you’re interested in learning more about building a makerspace in your community, a good place to start is requesting a free copy (downloadable pdf) of the Makerspace Playbook.

 

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Conferences/Events Makers in the Making Tech in the classroom

STEM Expo: Not Your Typical Science Fair

If you’re a regular reader you know I’m a big fan of Angela Estrella and the community at Lynbrook High School. This afternoon I attended their annual STEM Expo, which Estrella describes as “a science fair on steroids,” and was blown away by the students and their projects.

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Pragna Upputri’s – The Application of Optical Lift on Micromotors

The STEM Expo is the school-level showcase event for students to practice their presentations before the Synopsis Regional Championship, which takes place on Wednesday, March 11th at the San Jose Convention Center. Lynbrook will have 90 students competing (full list here), 30 of which are members of the STEM Research class that was started 10 years ago by science teacher (and fellow Stanford alum), Amanda Alonzo. What began as an after school club with 6 students has grown into an award-winning program that introduces students to science, engineering and design thinking concepts. (Did you hear about the teenage girl, Eesha Khare, who invented a device that could charge your phone in 20 seconds? She’s one of Alonzo’s former students.)

Not So Weird Science

It is clear these kids are doing much more than tinkering in their science labs. One group conducted their research on gene synthesis at DNA 2.0 and many are coached by local experts and researchers from Stanford, Berkeley and Santa Clara University. The quality of the projects is so impressive that winners from the Santa Clara County regional competition bypass the state level and move directly on to Intel’s international competition, ISEF.

Having seen several startups and Stanford students try to hack the Kinect, I was impressed with Abhishek Johri’s Vision Kinection, which uses depth and RGB sensors to see how far an object is from a person without looking at the object. He described possible use cases for the visually impaired and the military.

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Johri, a senior at Lynbrook, explaining his Kinect-based project

She Blinded Me with Science

I immediately noticed the healthy balance between male and female participants. Though the initial group when she first started was all boys, Alonzo proudly shares that the number of female members over the years has grown steadily and this year there are slightly more girls than boys. “Girls have really excelled in this program since they seem less afraid to ask for help,” Alonzo adds.

The winner for me was Maitreyee Joshi, who is developing an automatic indoor mapping technique to create an indoor navigation system app for the blind and visually impaired. Joshi shared her passion for improving services for the disabled, which started back when she got involved in VIP soccer program that helps kids with physical and mental disabilities.

Developing an Automatic Indoor Mapping Technique to Create an Indoor Navigation System App for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Automatic Indoor Mapping Technique to Create an Indoor Navigation System App for the Visually Impaired

Through her research she learned that visually impaired people can take 30-40 tries orienting themselves to a physical space before being able to navigate comfortably. Her app creates a virtual simulation which dramatically improves that experience and cuts down on the time it takes to become familiar with a space. She has already collaborated with Google on how wifi strength fingerprinting and depth sensors can be used to automatically generate maps of indoor spaces and ideally create this simulation for any space in real time.

I wish I could have seen Ruchi Pandya, who developed a carbon nanofiber electrode based sensor for cardiac health monitoring, but was at another competition during the time of the Expo. Alonzo shares that the microchip she designed measures distinct protein composition and can detect one’s chance of having a heart attack.

Beyond the impressive ideas I was struck by the professional level of execution. If these children are the future, I am confident we are in good hands.

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Makers in the Making PBL (Project-Based Learning)

SparkTruck: Making Educators

The K12 Lab at Stanford’s d.school has designed a series of CreativityBoosters for Educators, to explore experiments in teaching & learning and building creative confidence. On Saturday in collaboration with MakerState, SparkTruck hosted a session on how to incorporate hands-on activities into lessons.

In true d.school fashion the brightly-colored post-its and creative juices were flowing. Inspired by the truck itself, the SparkTruck team created the session on a framework of IT BEEPS— Identity, Teamwork, Brainstorming, Prototyping and Storytelling.

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They did a terrific job modeling how to conduct activities like this with students and emphasized the d.mindsets that fuel their work: radical collaboration, bias to action, building to think, show don’t tell and overcoming stuck points. We began with a group activity centered around a common problem that has been frustrating teachers since the beginning of time–

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Groups jumped into the brainstorming process, moving on to prototyping and then went around and shared what they had made. Then MakerState took over and set up several stations around the room where participants could practice different maker-focused activities, such as creating a pop-up book or a 7sec stop-motion animation.

What was most impressive is the diversity of educators and enthusiasts that attend these events. In my own work with TeacherSquare I know how difficult it can be for educators to take time out of their schedules for sessions like this, no matter how engaging or relevant they may be. It is clear that schools that create a community and incentives around these experiences reap the most benefits.  For example, a group of teachers and their principal made the trip down from Tiburon together, and I’m sure it helped that they were all being compensated for their time and participation. However, I doubt everyone in the room receives that type support from their schools.

I’m optimistic that collectively we can change the face of PD by creating more opportunities like this for educators to put themselves in the place of students in engaging experiences and be compensated for their time and energy.

Wan to see for yourself? The next sessions are on March 8th and April 12th- RSVP here.

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Entrepreneurship Makers in the Making

Creating a Culture of i-Can

Where was this when I was young? I’ve been researching various STEM learning programs and recently came across Imagineerz, a design-thinking focused summer camp for elementary school kids.

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Imagineerz is the brainchild of Vaibhavi Gala, a fellow alum of the Stanford Graduate School of Education (ICE ’00), whose high school dream was to create a student-centered learning experience focusing on creativity and confidence building. Once her own children were in elementary school she knew the timing was right to explore her inner entrepreneur.

In March 2011 Gala decided to take the plunge, quitting her comfortable job in corporate training to focus on creating an experience for kids ‘to become positive and confident makers.’ The first program started in the summer of 2011 and in their 4th year of programming this summer they will serve approximately 75 students a week for four weeks in July. Building on her Stanford experience, she often recruits interns from the GSE to help her with the ongoing program and curriculum design.

As the camp and community grows Imagineerz is looking to deepen engagement with parents and kids during the year through a series of books and apps. With all the recent attention on the maker movement (the White House just announced their first MakerFaire), it would be amazing to see this type of programming become part of the K12 experience.