Author: Anne Bown-Crawford

Anne teaches secondary level visual/media art and STEAM curriculum. She is passionate about designing and implementing meaningful, relevant learning experiences for high school students. She is the Director of the Arcata Arts Institute and the Innovation Design Institute, both career pathway programs within Arcata High School. In partnership with her teaching Anne is founding member and Chair of CREATE CA, innovative thinkers from multiple sectors of California’s creative economy, public and private, and State education organizations, charged with rethinking and designing an educational environment for all California students that features arts education as a central part of the solution to the crisis in our schools. She is also a leader within State Superintendent Tom Torlakson’s Joint Arts Education Task Force, which has been charged with writing the Blueprint for Creative Schools - How the Arts and Creative Education Can Transform California’s Classrooms. Anne is a new media studio artist, and a freelance graphic designer who specializes in branding non-profit organizations. For more info go to - createca.net artsinstitute.net the-colab.net

Makers Course Outline – our starting point

We started with the Makerspace Playbook. Wait, that’s not true, we started with me becoming a Resnick groupie and traveling to Boston to a DML conference to meet him. The rest is a lively, scrappy history of my team and I carving out space at a rural public high school for a maker space, connecting… Read more »

Papert Poster in the works!

Cassia Fernadez and I are getting started on designing a dynamic poster with Papert’s Eight Big Ideas. Our goal is to have it downloadable in as many different languages as possible. We will start with Portuguese and English. I think we have other translations in the works, including Swahili!  One challenge is to see if… Read more »

A good rubric for projects

It’s hard to get a good rubric to fit the type of scaffolded, interdisciplinary, team oriented, projects we often do in our classrooms/labs. Here is one that I have found pretty worthwhile. It is editable! https://www.edutopia.org/sites/default/files/resources/edutopia-dl-camarata-editable-rubric.doc edutopia-dl-camarata-editable-rubric-1

Swarm Intelligence and how it relates to Making, Design Thinking, and Creativity….

A couple of years ago I attended the 2014 WESTAF Cultural Policy Symposium, co-hosted by the California Arts Council and Gehry Partners. It had a rock star line-up of big brains talking about creativity, many of them referred to STEAM education, Makers education, and creativity. Today I was reminded of one speaker in particular of… Read more »

OK Go takes it cue from Peter Fischli & David Weiss

In 1988 I found this video at SFMOMA. I’ve been using it in classes every year, every since. It is the precursor to OK Go’s wonderful performance pieces. They are resonant of maker curiosity……performance well choreographed with color, anticipation, and narrative….and physics! Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) – Peter Fischli & David… Read more »

Good start up resource

Not sure if you all saw this, but we love Dale’s guide to starting up a Makers Space.  Here it is. makerspaceguide

What do I do differently in my professional life as a result of FabLearn 2016?

My instant reaction was to pause, and reflect on what is my “professional”, since the roles I play in my life, educator, studio artist, mother, curious person, all seem to meld together……in what seems to be a constant quest for a fully integrated life, I suppose. Back to the original question – This experience has… Read more »