Category: Cohort 2 Fellows

Basic Engineering Skills Meet Young Students in Developing World of the 21st Century

UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova mentioned in the 11th annual Education for All global monitoring report that “poor quality [of education] is holding back learning even for those who make it to school.” (Provost, 2014). This is about literacy, though. What about fabrication and making? The remaining question to answer is: how can we get millions… Read more »

Toy Hacking for Accessibility

One of the most impactful projects my fifth-grade students take part in is a project to hack toys to make them accessible for kids with disabilities. This simple project, that typically costs families upwards of a hundred dollars can be done for under one dollar. The toys, which began as a standard plush toy with… Read more »

Mission “A”

“Steam” for a well-educated German speaking science teacher is an invisible form of water which is around us all of the time but nobody takes notice of. “STEAM” is the same thing in a capital letter headline – any drunk graphic designer may have thought this would be funny like Comic Sans. Just a few… Read more »

What do they Learn?

The FabLearn conference in October 2016 signaled that Maker Education is ready for the next phase. After lots of try-outs, freedom and pleasure it’s time to face the difficult questions. How does Making in education fit into a set curriculum? When you read Papert, or ask Gary Stager, then the answer is clear. Both Papert… Read more »

Othermill Linoleum Stamp

This is a quick project journal entry to document creating a linoleum stamp on the Othermill Pro. I have been trying to figure out workflow and some project examples to share with teachers on the use of desktop CNC machines in the classroom. One of the advantages of CNC machines is that they can utilize… Read more »

The Making of the Ghost Ship Fire

Rooted in legacies of struggle and resistance, the story of the Fruitvale district in Oakland, California exposes the historical displacement and disenfranchisement for intersectional communities of race, class, and gender.  The Fruitvale was named after its beautiful fruit orchards and most poignantly after experiencing the first wave of refugees displaced by the 1906 San Francisco… Read more »

IEP+P: How Makers Could Change Special Education

  One of the best makers I teach hardly ever shows up for class.  Of course I can’t use his real name, so let’s call him Andres.  When Andres does come to class, he finishes the project we’re doing in a single class.  For context, it often takes many of the other students weeks to… Read more »

Touching Gears.

  If you’re familiar with FabLearn, you’ve probably read Seymour Papert’s canonical essay “The Gears of my Childhood” where he describes his formative experiences with gears, cobbling together interlocking systems from an erector set and finding pleasure in their rudimentary functions. Gears became a schema through which Papert could access and understand the world around him and provided a comfort that informed his life-long passion for mathematics… Read more »

First posts from the 2016 FabLearn Fellows – Inspiration, resources, and confessions

The 2016 Stanford University FabLearn Fellows cohort is getting started on a year long journey of sharing their diverse experiences in  schools, community organizations, and museums. They are educators who serve a variety of age groups and populations in North and South America, Africa, and Europe. They are newcomers and veterans, all devoted to the idea that… Read more »

Reinventing the Makerspace Starter Kit

One of the most popular resources on my blog DesignMakeTeach.com is the Makerspace Starter Kit. It is designed to empower educators to claim space in their instructional area for learning by making. I give out the kits at my workshops to motivate and inspire educators to action. I ask educators to plant a Makerspace seed… Read more »