GoGo Board in Brazil: The Engine of Digital Inclusion

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A device that transforms the traditional classroom into a space for innovation, creativity, and student entrepreneurship.

In this text, I report the experience of implementing maker education activities using the GoGo Board 6, a low-cost platform for science, computer science, and robotics, which has the potential to democratize STEM education in both public and private K12 schools in Brazil and around the world.

Context:

Brazilian schools are facing a demand to promote active and meaningful learning activities to engage the current generation of students in the classroom.

Today’s K12 students, most of them born in the 21st century, are digital natives who have access to real-time information at their fingertips through mobile devices (Pimentel et al., 2018).

In the past century, when information did not travel as quickly, most young people gained access to knowledge primarily at school through their teachers. Unlike the classrooms of past generations, where lectures were the norm, we now live in a context where teaching and learning activities that fail to connect with the world around the student only heighten disinterest in school.

Although researchers and educators like John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Seymour Papert have long advocated for more active and meaningful education, the technological advances of recent decades, combined with a connected and networked society, show that we can no longer delay putting such ideas into practice.

When it comes to STEM-related subjects, purely theoretical classes tend to exacerbate disinterest, as these subjects often become the most discouraging for students.

One potential way to redirect education in Brazil is through the introduction of new technologies in the classroom via hands-on activities, using resources that foster research, exploration, creativity, and entrepreneurship. In STEM areas, for example, robotics, automation, programming, digital games, and the integration of Artificial Intelligence (an increasingly ubiquitous technology in society) are tools used to engage students and develop their potential for future roles in these crucial fields.

However, some educational institutions and educators face another challenge: digital inclusion.

Digital inclusion refers to the process of democratizing access to technology (Freire, 2004), but some educators and school administrators believe this is only achievable through expensive resources, such as robotics and electronics kits from large companies, which can cost up to $700, making implementation unfeasible, especially in the Brazilian context.

On the other hand, Brazilian educators who have sought to overcome these barriers offer promising examples, such as the work of teacher and FabLearn Fellow Débora Garofalo in São Paulo. Garofalo popularized the inclusion of technology in public schools through her “Robotics with Scrap” project (Garofalo, 2019). By using electronic waste and discarded recyclable materials around the school as a generative theme, she inspired a shift in the mindset of educators and administrators who previously believed that digital inclusion required substantial financial investment.

Another initiative contributing to this debate is the development of the low-cost GoGo Board 6 robotics kit. This project was a collaboration between the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab (TLTL), coordinated by Professor Paulo Blikstein at Columbia University, and the Learning Inventions Lab (LIL), coordinated by Professor Arnan Sipitakiat at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

“The GoGo board allows computer programs to interact with the physical world. The GoGo board shares its fundamental functionalities with other devices in the programmable brick family. Users can connect various sensors and actuators to the board and write programs to read the sensor data and control the behavior of various physical objects using motors, small lamps, LEDs, and relays”  (Sipitakiat & Blikstein et al. 2003)

The GoGo Board is an open-source electronic platform designed for robotics, environmental sensing, and IoT. The current version, GoGo Board 6, can be seen as a combination of the Micro:bit, Lego EV3, and Arduino. Despite its extensive features, the board remains an affordable resource. It is highly powerful, and one of its key advantages is that it abstracts the electronics and circuit-building stage during the project prototyping process.

For educators looking to focus on Science, Engineering, or Mathematics, GoGo 6 is a technological tool that enables even those with no prior experience in automation, programming, or robotics to create meaningful projects, thanks to its minimal learning curve.

Also noteworthy is the possibility of creating codes in a visual programming environment in blocks (Image 1) [1], which simplifies and facilitates its use even more.

The GoGo 6 board offers a significant advantage that deserves recognition: its dashboard is accessible both within the programming environment and on the device’s integrated screen (Image 2).

Even before the automation and robotics project is developed, users can test the actuators and sensors that will be utilized in the project, without needing to first create a circuit or program the components.

Through initiatives aimed at promoting active learning with the GoGo 6, I present below two projects that implement robotics, automation, and programming using the STEM approach. These projects were designed for both High School and Middle School students in a private educational institution and a Brazilian public school.

 

Case 1 – Classroom at Polo Educacional Sesc – STEM Club

In the city of Rio de Janeiro, I am currently involved in the implementation of a hands-on Mathematics course using the GoGo Board 6. The focus is to transform the classroom itself—whether or not the school has a Maker Space with 3D printers and laser cutters—into a space for innovative initiatives, following the principles of Maker Education. This initiative is being carried out at Polo Educacional Sesc through a partnership with TLTL (Image 3).

Polo Educacional Sesc is a high school institution that provides free, high-quality education to students, primarily from public schools and low-income families. It serves as a hub for developing innovative educational practices, with the goal of replicating them in other institutions through technical cooperation and teacher training.

With the implementation of the New Brazilian High School curriculum, the institution developed Maker trails as part of its Training Itinerary, which consists of elective subjects known as Curricular Units.

The GoGo Board is integrated into the STEM Club Curricular Unit, which aims to develop mathematical skills and competencies through hands-on activities, allowing students to apply their knowledge to solve real-world problems.

In these activities, the traditional classroom is transformed into a space for innovation, where students have access to low-tech tools and recyclable materials (such as empty milk cartons, cardboard, and plastic bottles), along with resources like scissors, box cutters, glue, tape, and nylon clamps. These materials are combined with actuators that interact with the environment, responding to sensors programmed by the students.

During the activities, learning objectives are presented through guidelines given at the start of each project, which must align with the available resources. These guidelines serve as the foundation for completing the tasks.

Currently, the STEM Club has 13 students participating in the project, consisting of a mixed-grade class: five 10th-year students, five 11th-year students, and three 12th-year students. In the first month of the Curricular Unit’s implementation, students are encouraged to explore the board and its functionalities. After three weeks of work, the students are already programming the board, along with its actuators and sensors.

Two classic projects were selected for this stage: a traffic light with LEDs and a presence sensor, and a prototype autonomous car made from empty milk cartons. The car is activated by a lever button and programmed to avoid obstacles, lighting up LEDs when obstacles are detected (Image 4).

During these activities, students are exploring the visual/block programming language used in GoGo (code.gogoboard.org). They are being encouraged to incorporate key programming concepts into their code, such as logic blocks, loops, mathematics, sensors, and timing, which are considered the most important elements at this stage of the course.

The next phase will focus on the development of engineering and technology projects, where students will document all stages of prototype construction through worksheets. This will also include the *Mathematics Maker: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics* module, which integrates the Raspberry Pi minicomputer for Machine Learning projects using the WiSARD Weightless Neural Network, as well as platforms like Teachable Machine and Machine Learning for Kids.

Now, I present a speech by Nicolly Figueiredo, a student from the STEM Club who is participating in the classes with the GoGo 6:

 

Case 2 – Computer Lab of a public school in the Municipality of Tanguá – Summer Course

The transformation of a Computer Lab into a space for innovation (Image 5) at a public school in a small Brazilian municipality was the first initiative I implemented with Brazilian students using the GoGo 6.

In Brazilian K12 education, educational institutions often have Computer Labs, which serve as the primary means of introducing technology into the school curriculum. These labs typically consist of rows of internet-connected computers, where instructors teach students how to use operating systems, browse the internet, send instant messages and emails, and cover topics such as text editing, image editing, spreadsheet usage, and creating presentations with slides.

Indeed, these topics are important and form a key part of the Digital Literacy process. For many years, they represented the first contact students had with new technologies.

However, with the widespread availability of personal computers and mobile devices, alongside the significant rise in social media use, activities like text production, image editing, and video editing have become common, especially among the current generation of K12 students.

As a result, while Computer Labs remain important, the democratization of technology calls for an expansion of their role. One of the key topics in this area is the inclusion of Computational Thinking (CT) in the curriculum, which can be introduced through unplugged activities (those that don’t require a computer). Educational Robotics provides an excellent platform for fostering both teacher and student engagement in this area. CT refers to a problem-solving approach used to formulate problems and devise solutions, which can be applied to various fields beyond computer science (Wing, 2011).

With this in mind, I organized a workshop titled *Educational Robotics in Tanguá* for middle school students from a municipal public school, using the GoGo Board as the primary robotics tool.

Tanguá is a small rural municipality in Brazil, located 70 km from the city of Rio de Janeiro. The town has 35,000 inhabitants and is known as the state’s orange capital. Many families rely on small-scale fruit farming for their livelihood.

In a partnership between the Tanguá Municipal Department of Education, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and TLTL, a Computer Lab was transformed into a space for innovation and creativity using the GoGo Board 6 as an Educational Robotics tool over the course of three days.

Recyclable materials and low-tech tools were provided for the activities.

The workshop involved 10 students from the last year of middle school—6 girls and 4 boys—along with 3 volunteer teachers who were guiding students through Maker Education projects for the first time.

The workshop was structured into three three-hour sessions. In the first session, students were introduced to block-based visual programming using the code.org platform. This playful approach helped students grasp the use of logic blocks and loops. It’s worth noting that the game-like nature of code.org activities is a powerful tool for engaging students.

In this same session (Image 6), the students also explored the GoGo Board 6’s actuators and sensors using its dashboard. As mentioned earlier, the dashboard is a valuable feature of the GoGo Board 6, as it allows students to familiarize themselves with the functions of actuators and sensors without the need to build an electronic circuit or write code.

In the second meeting (Image 7), the activity focused on assembling and programming a car that would be controlled using the gesture sensor (a feature integrated into the GoGo 6). Programming the DC motors and the sensor presented a challenge, but it enabled the students to engage deeply with the project’s objective.

In the third meeting (Image 8), the challenge was to automate a house. Proximity sensors, light sensors, LEDs, a servo motor, and a DC motor were provided and incorporated into the students’ projects.

At the end of each meeting, the participating educators reported how easy it was to guide students in using the GoGo Board. The fact that they successfully used GoGo for the first time in activities with students during the Summer Course marked a significant first step for the municipality of Tanguá. This success has encouraged the Municipal Department of Education to consider implementing robotics and programming classes as part of its curriculum for interdisciplinary activities.

A notable report came from Professor Érica Soares, one of the municipal school system educators who participated as a counselor in the Summer Course. She said that:

“From the observation in the Summer Course and feedback from the students, I can say that the GoGo 6 is extremely accessible, from acquisition to use.”

 

Conclusion:

The experiences I describe in this text refer to the first months of implementing the GoGo 6 with Brazilian Middle School and High School students, both in public and private schools.

A notable aspect is the small learning curve required for both students and educators to feel confident in developing robotics, automation, and programming projects for teaching Science and Mathematics.

Some of the innovative features of the current version of the board will be explored this semester, such as IoT and the Data Laboratory (DataLab). The DataLab, in particular, is a new feature that will contribute to interdisciplinary classes, as it integrates various areas of knowledge.

This expands the possibility of integrating different curricular subjects through GoGo 6 projects. For example, History and Sociology educators can use the resource to discuss technological advances and their societal impacts, particularly in debates around employability and emerging professions. Likewise, Philosophy and Computing teachers can engage students in discussions about ethics in relation to data collection and usage.

These practices and initiatives demonstrate that faculty, beyond just STEM areas, can embrace and implement the GoGo board in their teaching.

Special Thanks: I would like to thank Professor Érika Soares,  English teacher in the Municipality of Tanguá, Isaac D`Césares, Analyst of Educational Technologies at Polo Educacional Sesc and Walter Akio, researcher at TLTL, for their invaluable contribution in reviewing this article.

[1] Visual programming environment in blocks – A type of programming language that allows users to code using graphical elements, such as visual expressions or graphical symbols, rather than textual ones.

References:

Freire, I. M. (2004). O desafio da inclusão digital. Transinformação, 16, 189-194.

Garofalo, D. D. (2019). Robótica com sucata. Revista Brasileira de Pós-Graduação, 15(34), 1-21.

Pimentel, C., Castro, B. B., Rodrigues, E. G., Almeida, G. H. A., Schaedler, L. S., & Pereira, M. A. (2018). Programação Visual em Blocos e Letramento Digital: Uma Investigação Realizada por Meio de Um Programa de Iniciação Científica na Educação Básica. In III Congresso sobre Tecnologias na Educação (Ctrl+ e), Fortaleza, Brasil.

Sipitakiat, A., Blikstein, P., Cavallo, D. P., Camargo, A., & Alves, R. D. D. L. (2003). A placa Gogo: robótica de baixo custo, programável e reconfigurável. XIV SBIE: Simpósio Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 73-92.

Wing, J. (2011). Research notebook: Computational thinking—What and why. The link magazine, 6, 20-23.

Children’s lived experiences an integral part of maker-space

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The people are the driving force of a maker space in a traditional rural community. Thus what we do and how we do both need to incorporate the cultural and contextual aspect of the community. This was the starting point of the recent set of activities that were driving our curriculum at Ramdwari Khojshala (makerspace). As in the words of a parent the maker space was a place where children go and do some fixing, repairing and breaking and they make things which were sometimes of use to the community. This motivated us to make a list of things which needed repairing in the community and was done by the community members by themselves. This way we were looking at a maker culture that already existed in the community. Using this traditional knowledge of the community we wanted to build upon it. When we compiled the lists we saw  the things which came on all the lists were a cycle, a handpump and an Umbrella.  

This was the starting point of our object based maker learning. As we know that people make things, from hand fans to telescopes, people throughout history and across cultures, contexts have been designing and making objects for everyday use. Objects are of different types they are practical or decorative, simple or complex. Some are crafted by hand while others can be manufactured by machine. On the other hand they can be made in a few minutes or can be built across generations. Usually objects are made by particular people for particular purposes although their use often extends beyond their makers’ original intentions. Even the simplest objects reflect the culture and more importantly the context (social and physical )in which they were created as well as the contexts in which they continue to be used. A close observation of these everyday objects not only sparks students’ curiosity but leads to increasingly complex thinking. 

So we started with a cycle that children used everyday and have seen the people around them repair it as well. The first step was to encourage students to make careful observations of the cycle as It helps stimulate curiosity and sets the stage for inquiry. They have to draw the picture by looking closely at its parts like nuts, bolts, rods etc. After drawing the picture they had to talk about the cycle of what they observed and write down about the parts their purpose and the complexities of all of them coming together. 

 

Observation led to exploration of the mechanism of the wheels, pedals etc. and the children tried making it with paper, cardboard to explore how the movement happens. This intrigued their mind as to how this parts were installed together so that they move and the cycle comes in motion. Children has many questions around the same so this gave us the opportunity to include one more task which we had not planned which was Take-Apart, so now they took apart all the parts of the cycle and re-build it (putting it together). The real reflections came in when they compared what they thought a part did and what it could actually do when they were assembling the parts.

As we were trying to include the contextual making culture so we thought to share some stories, well not only for fun but for empowerment. So we had 2 stories : 1) Cycling as a social movement for rural women in Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu 2) The amphibious bicycle (a bicycle turning into a boat) 

These two stories emerged a good discussion amongst students, one of them in her reflection said that “if we could break various objects and understand their working and then combine different parts of different objects we might be able to make things which we can’t afford or we need them but they don’t exist”. This reflection was the point where each student wanted to know what they wanted to make with the parts of the cycle, sometimes discussions lead to new beginnings. The next day the class went around the village looking for solutions in their neighbourhood which were Jugaad (a term used in India for things which are repurposed or something like a indigenous object made by them for a particular purpose) and they saw a list of objects and problems to which they wanted to look for solutions. 

Two weeks into the maker space and there were 8 projects that came up with the parts of the cycle which would be useful for the community. I would like to show the prototypes of a few of them :   

1. There was a problem to ride the bicycle in night due to lack of light on the village roads. Jasmeen, one of our student had thought if she could attach a light which can glow when someone peddles the bicycle, then it will be great. She made a small prototype in which she attached a motor, a bulb, some wires are fixed in the bicycle. The motor is attached with the crank and when the force is applied to the pedal, the chain wheel moves and in turn the motor moves which gives energy to the bulb.

 

2. To cut grass/weeds on the agricultural field is always a problem. Therefore Nazia, our student have thought if she attach a sharp blade from the front hub of the bicycle then she and others can easily cut the small and medium size grass/weeds by manoeuvring the handlebars of the bicycle. This will take less time and less effort and would cut the grass from the roots easily.

 

3. Rabia, one of our student has made a model to cut the grass/fodder with a fan attached with a rod and the rod is attached with the front part of the bicycle. The same fan like structure is available which runs on electricity but since there is erratic supply of electricity in the village, the student thought of making a design which can work with bicycle. The grass/fodder which after cutting can be given to livestock as food for their nutrition.

 

4. Lakshmi, Jaid and Raja, 3 students have made a bicycle-enabled pesticide spraying machine in which when you peddle the wheel the pesticide from the tank which is kept on the carrier comes out through a sprinkler attached on the front part of the bicycle. Through this attachment, one can save lot of time and effort. There are machines which run on battery but buying and maintaining them is a costly affair therefore students have thought about this solution.

 

5. One of our student attached a wiper through the front part of the wheel. During rains when the drains overflow, it becomes very difficult to ride the bicycle on swampy roads. Through this innovation when you are riding the bicycle, the sludge and the mud on the road could be moved to the sides of the road allowing movement on the bicycle. This could also prevent accidents due to balancing issues.

 

6. Noor Jahan & Shabana attached a fan with gears and levers with a bicycle. This fan with gears would help in going towards the water table so that water could be taken out for irrigation purposes. Also, it could also help in making drinking water available to the households. There are engines already available but that runs on petrol or diesel which is a costly affair and also add pollution to the environment.

7. Aafia and Sana, 2 students have thought of cleaning the village drains with an accumulator and tank behind the bicycle. While in rains, the drains used to choke which leads to overflowing of water and mud on the road, making roads extremely slippery and highly prone to accidents. With this innovation, the mud and sludge could be collected in the collector and discharged in the open space helping in cleaning the drains.

8. Naseem and Alisha made a bicycle-enabled handpump in which the instead of a handle the pump rod is attached with the crank of the bicycle. When one peddles, the crank moves which in-turn helps in moving the piston rod. When the piston rod moves up and down it helps in taking water out from the outlet thereby reducing the time and effort.

 

Apart from all this children also did a survey of the number of cycles in the village and how many girls have a bicycle. They found that very few girls knew how to ride a bicycle o they decided to start a bicycle club where girls would learn to ride and they could rent a bicycle for purposes of mobility and emergencies. 

Things often do not go the way we plan them and they take their own flow. But as a teacher I would admit that there were moments when I wanted to get into the discussion and make a point but my patience was at test, also after all these years I have understood that its not necessary that things would go as you plan but if the framework is going as you planned then what ever way it goes its ok. As when things take their own flow especially if the flow is guided by children then the content is owned by them and learning is deep. As teachers we come to our classrooms day after day with our burden of knowledge tucked under our arms or carried in our heads but If we stick to this identity then the atmosphere of the classroom would be defined largely by our authority. we need to see and face our own limitations and biases. When a teacher say, “I don’t know… I am also learning” that is when students respond freely, then knowledge or the lack of it is no longer a threat to personal selfhood. Only when student and teachers are in a relationship of learning together there is a release of creative energy. This was the essence of this lesson which brought forward students agency and ownership on their learning.

Cycle as an object offered a tactile experience for students, which challenged them to observe and conceptualise their thinking. While the teacher facilitates the session, the students construct meaning for themselves through their interactions with each other centred around the object (Hannan et al., 2013). It represents a social constructivist approach therefore in which the students develop their knowledge and understanding though interaction with objects based on a prior understanding (Chatterjee & Hannan, 2015). This approach enables the student to explore ideas, processes and events related to the object and further gives them an opportunity to build upon their ideas. Communities making culture and inputs along with students interactions was the key focus of the session . So we can say that the extent to which students are provided opportunities to interact and explore about disciplinary ideas as well as to build on others’ ideas and have others build on theirs provides a big opportunity for student empowerment. Thus we can say that the object not only focused on learning concepts or exploring way of making and fabrication it also was a way that could contribute to children’s development of agency (the willingness to engage), their ownership over the content, and the development of positive identities as thinkers and learners. 

our robotics workshop for children

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our robotics workshop for children

 

                                           

 

SENFABLAB is a space for creativity, learning, prototyping and sharing. Located in Grand–Yoff, a popular neighborhood It aims to spread digital technologi,s and to promote learning and training through practice. Its main objective is to engage young people, women, craftsmen and people with reduced mobility in the use of computers and digital technologies.

 

 

 

Picture of the lab

Senegal’s Senfablab, in partnership with the company Samarabot (My Robot),  -has set up Robotics clubs to welcome and initiate children aged 7 to 15 into robotics and computing. The objective is to allow them to become familiar with physical computing so they can have the same opportunities as those in residential areas.

We use the free educational software for children called GCompris.  Young people start their learning by using the keyboard and the mouse with G-Compris, learning to hold the mouse straight and then to make clicks (right, left, and the wheel).  The objective is to move the mouse to erase the blocks and make a drawing appear.

         

After this session of learning the mouse, they use the keyboard to write the letters. The goal is to type the words that go down, before they touch the ground.

Then we introduce programming with Scratch, which is very useful to learn programming through blocks.  After mastering the Scratch interface, Kene, the educator, asks them to think and then design a scenario.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Level 01 is led by Kene and Salma who are in charge of the children’s first learning in the lab. We work with a group of children every Wednesday between 4 and 6 pm in the lab. On Saturdays, a team goes to the schools with Bamba, to teach robotics. There are children who live in the neighborhood, but also others who live between 10 and 20 km from the lab.

The children can stay for hours, without even realizing it, because the classes are interesting for them. They learn by playing.

Currently we are setting up Lynx which we discovered with the Fablearn Fellows and will be taught to  the children next year.  

We need to make the school curriculum more flexible in favor of the Maker Culture

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I have had the opportunity to work with the maker culture in many ways, at school as a teacher of 24 classes and now at the Education Department working on public training policies for the transformation of Education.

Many teachers have questions about how to work with the do-it-yourself movement. This text is an invitation for reflection on the many possibilities of work and to understand more about the maker universe and to make the school curriculum flexible in favor of the maker doing.

The maker culture is the gateway to work with innovation and it invites students and teachers to learn through experimentation, in addition to allow youth protagonism by stimulating creativity, logical thinking and working trying to solve real problems.

To work with the maker universe, I believe that it is not necessary to have dedicated learning spaces, it is enough to reorganize the furniture, assemble corners with materials and tools and exercise creativity.  However, it is important to know that many schools have dedicated spaces in digital format  with equipment such as a 3D printer, laser cutter and supplies for robotics but they are all unplugged and the space is used for specific activities that include sewing, embroidery, woodworking, animation, 3D modeling with playdough and others.

Being a maker is, above all, having an attitude and transforming the class into collaborative learning! It is carrying out activities and living experiences, in this way, it ends up being a great umbrella for working with computational thinking.

I have recently carried out a training with teachers who made a mechanical hand with low resources and I was delighted with what the teacher did, he turned this learning into a robotic hand for the children of the early years to work with motor coordination and or for those who do not have movements. This is magic!

Making the school curriculum flexible

Culture does not replace the school curriculum, but it encourages you to do it in a different format! I can work in a history class with the central theme about Egypt and for that to play storytelling with the students and create games from scratch. And or I can work in the science discipline the environmental issue and address the recycling of materials and from this work to mobilize other areas of knowledge in this construction, but without losing the essence, of talking about the environmental issue and the time taken by materials to decompose.

 

Therefore, it is necessary to look at the school curriculum and understand that the maker culture is an ally to make it more attractive and meaningful to students, in addition to allowing the transformation of theory into practice; make learning meaningful and a more practical curriculum; experiencing learning in a singular and plural way and encouraging scientific thinking.

 

There are many benefits when working with the maker culture allied to the school curriculum, in addition to the opportunity to revolutionize Education by allowing youth protagonism and a meaningful education for all!

CONTEMPLATING EDUCATION REFORM IN TWO PARTS: Part 2

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Part 2: Education Reform

In my previous post, I explored the purpose of education as a crucial element in building a foundation for education reform.  I believe the purpose of education should be driven by students – who they are, what they want, where do they want to be – and these pieces of information should be used to identify how to best serve them.  For example, a Native Hawaiian student committed to restoring and revitalizing coastal fishponds interested in engineering and art deserves a curriculum and learning environment maximizing his/her commitments and interests, which means employing a variety of pedagogy and practice, including design-based learning (DBL), just-in-time instruction (JITI), and place-based learning (PBL).  This student would have the opportunity to perpetuate his/her cultural practice, while simultaneously learning and experiencing professional practices of engineering and expressing his/her learning and achievement through art.

Individualized student learning plans pose an issue for many teachers for many reasons.  One of those reasons includes not aligning with and/or containing content learning standards.  Consequently, teachers view individualized or customized curricula as requiring too much work to make it feasible for a classroom of between 20 and 30 students.  Adding to the issue might be teachers’ lacking the knowledge and experience with content standards alignment to curricula.  When contemplating the standards issue, I began wondering about the importance and need for content standards in K-12 education.  In a webinar, Gary Stager (2021) reinforced this contemplation when he shared that Papert “always fought against terrible ideas like a national curriculum and the Common Core” (9:34), which emboldened me to dive into the idea of learning driven by student culture, goals, and interests.

A Tradition of Standards

Western educational traditions began as religious requirements, such as “Puritans … required parents to teach their children to read and also required larger towns to have an elementary school, where children learned reading, writing, and religion” (University of Minnesota, 2016, ch. 16.1, para. 3).  At the culmination of the Revolutionary War, the publishing of textbooks started as first attempts to standardize learning content, and could be considered a first use of content standards.

From an educational reform perspective, content standards have “…three purposes … publicly identifying what is important for schools to teach and for students to be able to demonstrate. … guide … instruction, curriculum, and assessment … providing a map of where the curriculum should go and … to fit the needs of diverse learners.  Finally, … they can guide the allocation of instructional resources” (National Research Council, 1997, p. 114).  Unfortunately, a problem with content standards lies in the differing and varied content standards available for schools.  While content standards tend to have similarities, they vary depending on the publishing institution/organization and specific state needs, which begs the question, what are content standards standardizing?

To understand the breadth of this issue, we can review the content standards for mathematics.  As the chair of the National Governors Association, former Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano wrote an initiative that focused on improving math and science education.  This became the foundation for what would later be known as the Common Core State Standards.  However, not all states use these standards.  Some states continue to use the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics content standards, while others use their state-specific math content standards developed at the State Executive level for all public schools within the particular state.  When considering independent and parochial schools, these institutions claim their own modified and/or revised versions of a multitude of content standards possibilities.  These variations found for mathematics, can also be found for all other content disciplines, which might translate to not having a truly standardized content area.

A New Tradition for Content Standards

Reigeluth (1997) believed that rather than using content standards “to help make students alike … they can be used as tools … to meet individual student needs” (p. 203).  The diversity of student abilities in learning supports his beliefs about how to use content standards, but beyond the need for meeting individual student needs, what purpose do content standards serve?

The education of Native and Indigenous peoples happened and continues to happen without the need for traditional Western education.  The inherently incorrect idea that Caucasian male colonizers know what is best for the educational and academic advancement of Native and Indigenous peoples is an idea that needs to be squashed.  Native and Indigenous peoples have been educating themselves and their youth for centuries before white colonization, and with this education, they built facilities that withstood natural disasters, attended to medical needs and issues, cultivated flourishing terrestrial and marine agriculture and aquaculture, and traveled vast distances over oceans without modern navigational tools; and these accomplishments represent only a fraction of what Native and Indigenous nations are capable of attaining.

These achievements came without the need for a set of content standards.  Native and Indigenous nations understood how to teach future generations the knowledge and skills necessary for any occupation without needing a written set of instructions.  Through practical experiences and efforts, masters passed on their knowledge and skills to apprentices.  An argument against this method of teaching and learning could be the limited number of apprentices masters could teach, which might have led to the need for large educational institutions teaching common knowledge and skills for a given profession.

Adding colleges to the conversation means thinking about how secondary educational institutions prepare students for success at the post-secondary level.  However, can success in college be completely attributed to demonstrating proficiency in content standards?  I posit that while it might offer some insight into the possible success of a student, it does not paint the whole picture of a student.  Therefore, there might also be some room for revisiting the need for content standards and looking at different options that allow schools to prepare students for specific college and career pathways without adhering to a full list of content standards.

Innumerable Possibilities

My school “prepares students for their futures, whether it be to pursue further education or training, to assume adult roles in their families, careers, and/or communities, and/or to cultivate personal well-being” (Nā Hunaahi, 2021), which means it is our responsibility to prepare students for a variety of future possibilities, which may or may not include traditional Western education.  Consequently, as we work toward accreditation, we are responsible for offering educational and academic opportunities that address the needs of our students, not necessarily the needs of education, as a whole.  As we continue on our journey of providing Native Hawaiian youth with an education they deserve, we continue to ponder and discuss these important issues with our peers and our ancestors.  In the words of Herbert Kane, “there must be another way, if only because there has to be.”

References

Achieve. (n.d.). Developing the standards. From Next Generation Science Standards: https://www.nextgenscience.org/developing-standards/developing-standards

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Development process. From Common Core State Standards Initiative: http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/development-process/

Cremin, L. A. (2021, April 30). Horace Mann. From Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Horace-Mann

Khan, B., Robbins, C., & Okrent, A. (2020). The state of U.S. science and engineering 2020. Washington, D. C.: National Science Board.

Lisa, A. (2021, May 10). History of the American education system. From Stacker: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/history-of-the-american-education-system/ss-BB1gzoNK

National Research Council. (1997). Educating one and all: Students with disabilities and standards-based reform. Washington, D. C.: The National Academies Press.

Reigeluth, C. M. (1997). Educational standards: To standardize or to customize learning? The Phi Delta Kappan, 202-206.

University of Minnesota. (2016). Sociology: Understanding and changing the social world. University of Minnesota.

Stitching roots – Exploring family history through code and stitch

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I would love to share my experience in a primary school in Italy. The school is located in a peripheral neighborhood where there is a lack of structured opportunities or places to socialize. The origin of the inhabitants is heterogeneous and often there is no family support network. The area is characterized by a constantly increasing population, both from non-EU immigration and from internal immigration of families who move to this area for work. As a periphery of the metropolis of Rome, it attracts families, even multi-problematic ones, and commuters who move in and out during the day for work or study.

In this context, I decided to experiment with a path of self-production and biotinkering (as described in my previous post here) with the girls and boys of the fourth grade, one hour a week. Kids involved in the learning activity didn’t have previous experience and one of the first challenges was to find good materials to use. They need to be low-cost, easy to grow, should not be frightening, and should stimulate creativity and curiosity. 

A material we have explored is kombucha leather. Kombucha is a fermented beverage enjoyed for its unique flavor and powerful health benefits. The fermentation process creates a scoby–a thick, rubbery, cloudy mass. Drying the scoby creates the kombucha leather, flexible material that kids used as a fabric and they embroidered the leather with designs created in Turtlestitch.

The production of kombucha, like other materials, requires patience and care. Before using the material, children need to wait, observe, and understand whether the conditions are right to form the material. This leads to a twofold action: caring for something so that it can develop, and scientific observation of variables to assess the best conditions for growth and/or production of the material.

After growing kombucha, we tried to create a simple project in Turtlestitch, a web-based application where everyone can create an embroidery pattern to stitch. As I said before, kids’ families are from different countries and they all have different roots. I asked them to create a little design that represents their family, something that they view in their home in a quilt or a blanket. 

The project was not simply due to the kids’ age but, helped by imported procedures that created modular objects, we reached the target. 

At the end of the lessons, students share what they did in a group, explaining what activities they plan to do in the next lesson and analyzing what they feel satisfied with. During this moment everyone compared his stitch to others and we noticed that in some way all projects were similar even if different. A representation of individuals, united by deep but unique roots. The floral theme was the most numerous.

The first observation I can make about the experience is an increased awareness by students. They have become aware of the sustainability of a biodegradable product rather than one with a negative environmental impact, and last but not least, they are aware of the time and effort needed to produce it, with consequent attention to its consumption. I noticed a great deal of attention to minimizing waste because the children knew very well the time they took to produce it. As a teacher, I can say that it is an enriching experience. It is not easy to manage biotinkering activities at the organizational level because, you often need heat sources for the production of bioplastics, with consequent challenges related to the safety of students or you need to set up special spaces for the culture of materials such as kombucha. On the other hand, it’s great to experiment and learn with my students. As is the case every time I offer tinkering activities, I also challenged myself on my ability to facilitate group work and to handle frustration with an activity that did not turn out as well as the students expected. I hope that the work started at school will be a starting point for conversations at home and with classmates. For the children, bringing home a product made entirely by them is the best way to get them involved and give them ideas to perhaps reproduce the activity with their families and raise awareness in the community about using sustainable products that are linked to their own culture. 

Biotinkering is still a very new activity in schools and for this reason, is still not well known. Thanks to the community of educators on social networks, I came into contact with pioneers in this field who gave me many ideas and support. I was able to ask for information, suggestions, and clarifications from people from all over the world and I am sure that without a group of teachers with the same goals and interests I would not have been able to find the keys to make this experiment so successful. I hope that this witness can be a starting point for other teachers who are looking for more sustainable experimentation linked to the culture and the territory in which they live. In the future, I hope to expand the trial to more girls and boys. Tinkering and making have taken off in Italy in recent years and many educators have appreciated its potential. The commitment is to be able to see the emergence and contribute to the construction of a local community around the themes of constructionism and pedagogy as a practice of freedom.

Tea Sippers & TurtleStitch

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For 24 Sundays in a row, I have set an alarm and jumped on a Zoom at 10 am.  Usually, Sunday is the one day a week I choose to sleep in, be lazy, and not do anything productive.  I do not like getting up early, but I can’t help myself; I just keep doing it.  I have Zoomed from all over the place these past 6 months, including a campsite in Kentucky with very spotty wifi, from the car in nowhere Georgia with an even less reliable signal on the way to a beach trip with 2 of my girlfriends, and from a friend’s kitchen with two very young kids bouncing around.  Most Sundays, however, I have been home in Tennessee in my PJs sipping coffee (ironically, not tea) and absolutely enjoying the heck out of the morning.  The craziest part of this whole experience is that I have been learning math & coding on these morning Zoom meetings as part of an amazing group, self-titled, Tea & TurtleStitch. 

 

Tea & TurtleStitch is a first-class group of educators and makers and intellectuals and artists from New York, Boston, Tennessee, Texas, California, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and China. What brings us together is that we are all interested in using coding to make embroidery.  Yes, you read that right, we use code to determine the size, shape, type, and color of stitches in an embroidery pattern.  TurtleStitch is based on the programming language Snap! However, I have noticed that we have done most of our coding in a LOGO kind of way. This is not surprising since Cynthia Solomon, co-creator of Logo, the first computer language for children, is one of our two fearless leaders.  Our other leader is Susan Klimczak, Education Organizer at South End Technology Center and FabLearn Fellow.  These two are a pretty hilarious duo and bring out each other’s strengths each week.  Cynthia is the master coder and Susan is the master maker (as well as an amazing coder).  Susan has inspired me to learn not only how to code for embroidery, but also make finishing touches to the design like adding zippers to pouches and laser cutting frames for display. The group itself is a who’s who of maker educators and computer scientists.  But the best part is the collaboration and joy everyone brings to the art and science of TurtleStitch.  The simplest achievements are genuinely celebrated on-screen and on Twitter.  As a novice coder (and embroiderer for that matter),  I have felt included and encouraged at every step.  

 

In conversations with friends of mine over the years who are math teachers, I have realized there are some serious gaps in my math education – and in my spatial reasoning.  I could memorize and pass tests (most of the time), but what I have been lacking is a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and any real practice in geometry.  Calculating the volume of a ‘cone of corn’ may have been part of my college entrance exams, but it never held any meaningful applications in my life.  I even worked at Baskin Robbins as a teenager and filled waffle cones with ice cream, but I was never asked to measure the volume because folks just wanted the most mint chocolate chip I could squish down inside! Logo and our friend the Turtle may have been developed for kids, but I am so grateful for the experience of finding joy in math for the first time.  

 

Best lesson yet – scale!  I made a witch based on Ed Emberly’s book teaching kids to draw entitled, “How to Draw Monsters and other Scary Stuff”.  The first version resembled more of a chicken on a broomstick than a witch (really check out the picture below).  What I figured out is that, unlike the Ed Emberly drawing, an equal-sized nose and chin give the impression of a beak especially if it isn’t filled in with green color.  I also realized after I embroidered the first witch that she was tiny and only about 1.5 inches tall.  The design needed to be big enough to make changes to her nose.  My first instinct was to quadruple the size of every shape.  While that did allow me to give her a proper nose, now she was too big to embroider with my machine’s 4-inch hoop.  Darn!  The next step was to scale her down by ¼.  Because I really did not want to sit and do the math for every step. I thought I was clever and multiplied all the move blocks by 0.75.  It worked!  Since turtlestitch.org makes every design public, Susan and Cynthia would check on our progress between Sunday sessions.  They would celebrate our successes, remix our projects, and offer suggestions when appropriate.  While the design was cute, Cynthia noticed a terrible inefficiency in my code.   During our next Sunday session, she explained how she improved my code by creating a variable called SCALE. Now the witch can be changed easily to any size.  In hindsight, it seems simple and so obvious, but for the mathematically disinclined, it was a revelation.  It is the simplest example of why variables are so important in both coding and math – but it took a relevant application to really see it.  This reminds me of my favorite quote by Seymour Papert when he says,  “Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models. If you can’t, anything can be painfully difficult.” Well maybe that is why math was always so difficult, I had no models with which to assimilate it.  TurtleStitch and these amazing fellow Tea Sippers made learning difficult concepts FUN for me.  I am as surprised as anyone that I want to spend hours after our Sunday morning Zoom sessions working on a new design or a new coding concept.

 I am the luckiest person in the world to have been led to this group.  Thank you!

It took several weeks before I was ready to start using my embroidery machine.  Learning how to thread the machine was a whole different learning experience.  In the meantime, here is Susan’s multicolor (variegated) thread embroidery of my shell2 design.  

 “Chicken” witch and code with inefficient scaling.

I used Cynthia’s improved code using SCALE and designed a final witch with a proper nose.

Joining our Tea & TurtleStitch Zoom group from my campsite on a Sunday morning in July. 

 

The importance of the maker culture in education

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Due to all my experience as a public-school teacher in Brazil, I am sure about the importance of the maker culture in the teaching and learning process.

I have always considered the maker culture as a great umbrella for working with innovation, as it allows the work with embroidery, sewing, programming, robotics, artificial intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things), among others, to be developed with the hands, different areas of knowledge and active methodologies, and also investigative approaches such as STEAM.

Everything that was mentioned before coming with the opportunity to take the students out of passivity and place them at the center of the process, as the protagonists of their story. Over the course of my 17 years as a teacher and more recently the last 6 years as a technology teacher, I have experienced this in practice, seeing a transformation in teaching at school, as well as in the community itself, by bringing a real problem to be solved: garbage being transformed  into an object of knowledge.

From this central axis, I had the opportunity to see distracted students up close, identifying a new meaning for the school and the students; students being awakened to reading and writing; students overcoming racial, ethnographic issues.

This work done in Brazil became a public policy by allowing students coming from other social and economic realities to have access to robotics, work with scrap and today it is present in more than 5100 schools in the State of São Paulo, adding electronic components to unstructured materials, creativity in different constructions and everyday solutions.

I still have big questions about how to take the maker culture to all students and especially students from public schools, here in Brazil that suffers from the devaluation of teachers, infrastructure, and connectivity of public schools. We have around 180 thousand schools in the country, among which 45% do not have basic sanitation and 81% of the Brazilian students study in these schools.

It is for these students that the maker culture can make a difference in the teaching and learning process and motivate them to be critical, creative students, based on a comprehensive education that involves problems to be solved at school, the educational territory, and the school community.

It is important to have high technological resources, but it is essential, as teachers, that we take the first steps towards an education that makes sense in the world, develop skills and abilities, and prioritize students and teachers.

And you, how have you been inserting and integrating the maker culture into your classroom?

 

Why teach maker education?

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If you have been teaching in a makerbased setting you probably know that it is a good learning experience. You would also know that there are a variety of challenges that both the teacher and the students meet, when they begin their journey into making. If you haven´t – then I strongly urge you to take on the journey!

This blogpost is about why we should consider these kinds of activities in our classroom, and what outcome you could expect from it. I will focus on the following statements

  1. Maker education allows the students to have a deeper learning experience.
  2. Maker education allows the teacher to learn along with their students.

First off, it is important to look at your own role as a teacher. On one hand you will be instructing some of the software, tools and machines that are used in a makerspace. This role is familiar to teachers. On the other hand, the students will follow their own ideas and bring them to life, which makes it a meaningful project to the student, but challenges teachers because they are not in control of the outcome. The role is more one of facilitating and guiding the student through their learning experience.

You could give them assignments for projects that are more limited in the possible outcome, thereby controlling that they would need to learn in order to succeed. Let´s say you have a project where you need to apply Pythagoras theorem to solve it. But this is far less engaging and motivating than following an idea or project that is of your own making. On the way from idea to object there are a lot of challenges you will meet, especially when you have not got much experience. If it is a narrow project that you are assigned to do it often ends in a feeling of “this is too difficult for me”. If it is your own project or you have a high degree og influence on what your project will end up with, it is more often a feeling of “I need to get this to work”. And here the students have a way of surprising your and to exceed your expectations.

This does in some way answer the “why should you change your role as teacher”. You will give your students a deeper learning experience, and you learn something along the way as well.

 

Here are some thoughts and observations I have made along the way. Not a complete list, but bullets for reflection of your own practice and a few tips.

Observations of students

  1. Students are used to get assignment that have a correct answer. Making open assignments that are more complex and does not have one correct answer is way more interesting, but also frustrates students because they can not rely on the teacher having solution cut out for them. The world is not based on a text book, and in that sense it prepares the student to be a part of the world outside of school.
    – When you do projects about “the real world” it automatically gets complex.
    – Building something from scratch will give you a lot of challenges along the way.
    – Prompts that are ambiguous will let the student be creative with their solution.
  2. Students will not be learning the exact same thing. Every project has its own challenges that calls for different knowledge from a variety of traditional school subjects. It could be mathematical tools that helps them in their work, knowledge about the materials they have chosen, rules from physics they apply, challenges in coding a microcontroller etc. The list could go on. I have met a lot of teachers that believe they should all learn the same things, in order to pass their tests. I believe that the knowledge acquired or constructed through a personal meaningful project is more internalized, and sticks to the memory. And I also think that students in the end of their school life will be able to fill in the gaps they might have. But that is my assertion.
  3. I have seen students that don´t do well in a traditional class flourish. In my line of work I have been doing workshops or one day events with groups of students unknown to me. Usually their regular teacher informs me beforehand that one or more students might not behave well or do much work. Those students actually do the opposite, and surprise the teacher in a positive sense. They are the do´ers – they get things done, and they often have the most funny or creative ideas.

Reflections from my own practice

  1. In a makerspace you will need to instruct in the use of the machines or learn how to use CAD-software to build something. My experience is, that minimal instruction, show-don´t-tell, combined with student peer-to-peer learning is a good approach. Let us take the vinylcutter as an example.
    I start by having it cut a sticker, weed it, add applikation foil and put the sticker on something in the lab. This can be done in under one minute. And now they known what the output and proces of the machines is. I have seldom met anyone that understood it before they have seen it done. Just telling what it does, does not help.
    Next step is to draw something in the CAD-software (Inkscape is great opensource tool) that will become a sticker. Students work in different tempi, and as soon as a few are finished with a design, I show them how to set up the machine and cut. When the next little group is ready to do their design I will point to the group before them, letting them show their fellow student how to do it. In this way you consolidate their knowledge by teaching it to their peers.
  2. Time is one of the main challenges in working with projects in a makerspace. It simply takes a lot of time, and should be allowed to take time.
  3. Prior to making larger projects I usually let the students do some narrow projects, to learn the basics of coding, CAD-design or using the machines (CAM). It often gives birth to new and more personal ideas that the student wants to make, which could turn into a bigger and more complex project. This is where you loosen the control and let the class go in different directions alone or in small groups. If they have sufficient experience they can use what they have learned to follow their own ideas. To take control of your own learning process is a powerful lesson that will benefit the student in numerous ways.
  4. Whether it is students or adults I teach, I use faded guidance. In the sense that I try to provide only the necessary help, ideally just enough to keep the project in flow. Over time, the help provided by me is lessened according to their achieved knowledge. Important part of this to work is to establish a relation with the student. Knowing when to push and when to hug. Encouraging them to just try to do what they think is the right way, when they are uncertain – else they will tend to seek confirmation from you even though they are 90% sure of what to do. This may be an obvious approach but, I myself, still sometimes fall in the trap and help to much, especially if it is something I can fix in a second – But I am aware of it, and ongoing reflection of your own practice, will help towards becoming a better guide.

As said, this is not a complete list. It gives a few reasons to why you should implement maker education in your life as a teacher. On a closing note I would like to point out some reason I don´t think should be your focus.

Maker education is not meant to evolve every student into a startup company or put out a kickstarter. Fine if they do, but I don´t see it as our goal as a school. My mission is one of enlightenment or Bildung. Understanding the technology that surrounds us and being creative with it. It is also a way of learning about the world, learn about STEM subjects in a hands-on way, practicing the art of wondering and asking questions.

 

 

 

Culture and making, strong and powerful connection

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During conversations between FabLearn fellows, the question often arises as to what is actually meant by the term “cultural making”: is it an action linked to the culture of origin or is it a human attitude that is declined according to the context of belonging? Personally, I’m becoming more and more convinced that it is an innate characteristic of human beings to build something linked to a need or an idea, and these two anecdotes seem to me to reveal small demonstrations of this idea.

From October 2021 I started a new professional path as a digital atelierista, a figure supporting the use of technology for school teachers in children’s hospitals. We began to experiment with new uses of technological tools, which in the hospital allow them to get out of the reality of the room where they are and go to many different places, simply using a tablet, sheets of paper, colors and creativity. With the 5-year old children and their teacher, we thought of representing the transformations of the natural environment, so that they could build worlds different from those they experience daily in the hospital.  First, the teacher looked with them at some examples of natural transformations, related to both the plant and animal worlds, and together with the children they observed the environments of origin of some animals.  The children chose to focus on the world of insects, especially ants, and they represented on a sheet of paper the anthill, the meadow and the sky, which they then photographed with the tablet. Then, on another sheet of paper, they drew some ants, photographed them and, using an app to cut out the photos, cropped the ants, resized them and inserted them into the anthill they had drawn: with their fingers they made the images of the ants move along the anthill, telling their story.

This is for me a valuable example of how, using simple tools such as a tablet, paper and colors you can build worlds with which to play and learn, even in a difficult context like the hospital, where it is not always possible to have many tools and spaces with which to experiment.

Another example is related to a workshop I did for the fablab where I work. We designed a creative coding activity for a group of university students from different courses, with the proposal to create, in small groups, a “wunderkammer”, using Arduino, LEDs, motors, recycled materials and cardboard boxes. The students could freely decide what to put in their wonderful boxes, building small objects and animating them with lights and code. After a brief introduction on the main commands of Arduino, each group used the skills of its members to define their own idea: some were mainly concerned with the construction and design part of the object, while others were involved in programming and assembling the circuit. While most of the groups decided to make a Christmas-themed object (despite the fact that Christmas was more than a month away), one group decided to make a miniature 80’s disco, complete with lights, music and moving objects.

Here, in my opinion, the cultural component of making emerges very strongly: the students were inspired by something close to them, that is part of their culture, and they used digital and other tools to make it. The idea of building something from scratch, starting from a cardboard box, didn’t scare them but it was an opportunity to experiment in a practical way. I think a lot also depends on the proposal that is made to the group, which must be open enough to ensure maximum freedom of exploration and experimentation.