At the Fab Learn Conference last weekend, I was struck that Paulo Blickstein set the tone by making a strong argument for maker education to focus on inclusion and equity even suggesting the importance of giving  “an unfair advantage to low income youth.”

Here in Boston I am part of the work of the Race, Education and Democracy STEM Network moving forward through the inspiring leadership of Dr. Theresa Perry from Simmons College.  Today, RED STEM held a community event at the South End Technology Center @ Tent City for local parents and teachers called, “Creating MakerSpaces:  Learning from Educators, Artists, Community Organizers, and Researchers.”

There were a number of wonderful speakers, but the one who stood out and dazzled me the most was Dr. Nettrice Gaskins who has the job of establishing a STEAM MakerSpace at a local public high school, the Boston Arts Academy.   I not only think that all of us should be reading and following her blog, but also that we should invite her to speak at the next Fab Learn Conference because she is also a dynamic and infectious communicator!

Today, Nettrice gave a talk that retold and rooted the history of making and tinkering education in the Black Community.  She was especially effective at arguing that hip hop legends like Grandmaster Flash and J.Dilla were/are extremely talented maker/tinkerer/innovators whose impulse to make and tinker was rooted in their desire to spread knowledge and educate the black community.  And that they should be firmly rooted in any intellectual genealogy of maker education.

Much of her talk came from a really rockin’ blogpost that I encourage folks to read. . .

http://netarthud.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/recontextualizing-the-makerspa…

Nettrice suggests that we put the characteristics of Culturally Responsive Education (CRT, Geneva Gay) at the heart of any makerspace :

• CRT acknowledges the legitimacy of the cultural heritages of different ethnic groups, both as legacies that affect students’ dispositions, attitudes, and approaches to learning and as worthy content to be taught in the formal curriculum.
• CRT builds bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences as well as between academic abstractions and lived sociocultural realities.
• CRT uses a wide variety of instructional strategies that are connected to different learning styles.
• CRT teaches students to know and praise their own and each others’ cultural heritages.
• CRT incorporates multicultural information, resources, and materials in all the subjects and skills routinely taught in schools

On Saturday afternoon, Yvette and I headed to Mpigi in Uganda which is about an hour from the capital, Kampala. Watoto Church Vocation Training Institutein Mpigi is based at the heart of a village and is home to hundreds of students, most of whom are orphans and some of whom come from the nearby villages.

Many homes in the villages do not have access to electricity and use candles for lighting. While most people have phones, you need to pay 500 UGX ($0.20) to charge you phone in town. Like several places in Uganda, boda bodas (motorcycles) are used for everywhere transport. What if people could charge their phones using the battery from a boda boda that more easily accessible than a charging shop? What if boda boda drivers could build or buy these portable mobile chargers and earn some extra money? We ventured out to Watoto Church training institute to find out.

Watoto Church | Vocation Technical Institute

Livingston Sebyatika, one of the institute’s administrators, gathered together 15 students from the technical school. These students, in their late teens, are currently studying carpentry, electrical installation and metalwork at the centre’s technical institute. Asked what they plan on doing after leaving the institute?  Most students want to become adept engineers and designers, something that come through strongly as we carried out the workshop.

Rolling up our sleeves and diving in

Our plan for the afternoon was to build a wooden phone block charger. How? Simply by using a 12v car/motorcycle battery, a car phone charger, wood, sheet metal, wires and a 13A fuse.

We put together the tools and materials, split the students into two team, rolled up our sleeves and dived right in to the build-it session. A build-it is a guided design activity aimed at systematically teaching an engineering concept. It also teaches the use of hand basic tools and fabrication processes.

The first step was to prepare the wooden block. This is where the phone charger would be plugged into so we needed to make 4 charging ports using a 7/8” drill bit. Alternatively, you could use a brace and bits of the same size (which is what we did when at some point we encountered a power interruption)

Now for conduction purposes, we cut and bent the sheet metal to form cylindrical inserts for the four holes that we had previously drilled. The tabs from these cylindrical inserts would stick out of the board and form the negative terminal of the circuit.

With the remaining sheet metal, we cut out the positive terminal for the circuit. This sheet was nailed over the holes. A second sheet was then nailed over the tabs for the negative terminal.

Lastly, we connected the positive terminal using a wire and 13A fuse to the battery. After ensuring we had a complete circuit and  that there were no short circuits and went on to test and power up the phone. And it worked! The students were so excited that their first reaction was to build more phone chargers and start a business sell them in town. They could definitely see how these units would come in handy in the neighbouring town and village.

Reflections

Great tools make everything run more smoothly, and the outcome meets the design requiremets of the build-it activity. Our team is deeply grateful to the vocation institute which shared their tools with us for the workshop.

At some point, Timothy’s (one of the team leads) group’s wooden block broke in half as they were nailing the pieces, their first reaction was ,”That’s easy to fix. We’ll just hold it together with a metal piece and some nails.” And they did. And it worked perfectly.

Having a smart, energetic and driven team of participants made the workshop have more meaningful and have impact as they were eager to learn a new technology that could solve a local challenge. What also stood out greatly was their dexterity and attention to detail, at every point of the build-it activity. I’m excited to see what they will have done with the technology months from now.

Future plans

Foondi plans to continue working with these students by following up on this phone charger project as well as conducting more creative capacity building sessions with them.

We’re looking forward to holding more workshops with relevant projects to the communities we work with. We want to see more people to make use of their hands-on skills and design background to develop tangible appropriate technologies for their communities.

Our workshops will continue to provide a platform for problem setting, designing and prototyping entrepreneurial-based ventures.

~ Juliet Wanyiri (Founder- Foondi Workshops)

A “What I am reading and thinking about” post!

Having a positive and playful relationship to failure is an important ingredient in making!  I have some very amusing video footage of our youth discussing the process of creating a perfect pressfit cube, advising each other that it takes at least 20 failures to really understand pressfit and produce a perfect pressfit cube.  (It usually takes 4 or 5, but teenagers enjoy exageration. Smile.)

In Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn’s work with youth of color and youth with families that live on low incomes, our participatory research has identified that our youth’s complicated relationship to failure often presents a formidable obstacle.to their skill-building, project-building and making.

While all youth struggle with developing a positive and playful relationship with failure, our youth of color’s struggle is complicated by the everyday behaviors and attitudes they encounter in people and institutions that are dysconsciously rooted in racism.  Examples include attending public schools with few resources and low expectations for what they can achieve, relentless negative media about people who look like them, relentless microagressions (and macro-agressions like stop and frisk, high penalties in school for common teenage oppositional behavior), lack of access to maker or geek role models who look like them which often generates an “imposter syndrome” (interesting discussions about this can be found if you google articles about the remarkable success of Harry Mudd college in attracting women to STEM)

Too often, because of the impact of these behaviors and attitudes, our youth are reluctant to try new things or learn new things if they even think they might fail.  I suspect that this is because the thought of adding one more failure to the constant messages they are up against is just too emotionally painful.

At L2TT2L we have collaborated with youth to create many strategies that give our youth opportunites to transform their relationship to failure.  These ange from developing a supportive and loving culture of near peer and peer mentoring to teaching the engineering design process where failure is a source of insight for improving projects.

This morning, I read an article that was featured as a link in an OpenIDEO tweet.  The ideas from the Co.Design blog about failure are intriguing. The strategy of presenting youth with opportunities to reflect on these questions around failure is one I would like to try in our daily circle-up reflection sessions:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027404/scared-of-failing-ask-yourself-these…

This evening I was reading this article by MIT Media Lab’s Joi Ito & feeling a “kindred spirit” tingle.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140930004656-1391-antidisciplinary

I feel as though the goal he sets forth for education activities to have “uniqueness, impact and magic” is a great one for all the special making spaces we are creating.  Our makerspaces should be such homes — and even sanctuaries — for the “misfits” and visionaries, those who are radically reimagining education, work, and community!

I really like how Joi defines “magic”:

“Magic” means that we take on projects that inspire us. In the Lifelong Kindergarten group, researchers often describe the “Four Ps of Creative Learning” as Projects, Peers, Passion and Play. Play is extremely important for creative learning. There is a great deal of research showing that rewards and pressure can motivate people to “produce,” but creative learning and thinking requires the “space” that play creates. Pressure and rewards can often diminish that space, and thus, squash creative thinking.

Yet rewards often accompany the inspired projects of our youth — others can palpably “feel” their magic, genius and passion.  Then, “way opens” for amazing experiences.   This fall, I am so grateful that our Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn youth teachers and college mentors have had some well-deserved recogniation for their remarkable accomplishments.

n the past week, 12 of my youth teachers and college mentors were invitied to represent Young Makers at the World Maker Faire in NYC (supported by Cognizant Making the Future).  They taught two workshops and demonstrated projects that delighted attenders young and old.  Then, three of our college mentors travelled to the White House to present projects and our Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn Model to Historically Black College and University Deans at an HBCU Maker Workshop.   Here are some photos:

Blowing into a wind sensor of youth teacher project “Picture Perfect Story” Interactive storytelling shadow box at NYC World Maker Faire

Proud Mom and her daughter with a “Machine Gone Wild” cam with a cat chasing a mouse at NYC World Maker Faire!

Young Maker at NYC World Maker Faire is proud of the Light-up Dragon “Electric Friend” he made with our youth teachers!

College Mentor David Solomon at the White House HCBU Maker Workshop preparing to present youth teacher projects to HBCU Deans:

I have an iPhone I bought the summer of 2011 for its better camera and larger memory size. I was moving my airstream, my dog and my scant belongings from NYC, back home to California, so I wanted to take a lot of pictures of this epic roadtrip. I didnt want to buy a separate camera, so I decided to upgrade my first iPhone when the iPhone 4G came out. When the first iOS update asked to be downloaded, it came with the controversy of losing Google maps as a result. I was furious at the aspect of having to use the less wonderful “apple map app” and refused to update my phone. As I saw no immediate consequences of having denied Apple’s commands on me, I continued to ignore the notices to update my phone. It is now the fall of 2014 and x amount of ignored iOS updates later, my phone is starting to “die.” Not in a real way, because the structural design of the iPhone is quite robust. It is more like my phone is getting senile and we can’t do the things we used to be able to do together. I sense the end is near for our kind of relationship, and just in time for the new iPhone 6, which I was reminded of this past weekend when I saw lines of people outside of my local Apple store.

The kind of consumer frenzy that inspires humans to stand in line for hours in order to give someone money for something non-essential to life, has always confused me. There was a stranger juxtaposition that caught my eye that day, however. A few feet from the line snaking out of the Apple store, a mother was sitting on the sidewalk with a toddler in a stroller and a young girl, holding a sign that read “I lost mi job” (yes she spelled my in Spanish)… “I have three children, please help.” Single mothers make up a significant portion of those in poverty, so I am guessing she really did need money and food for her three children. Thankfully someone agreed, and had bought the little family take out pizza, which they were enjoying.  The whole scene was confusing to me and I was inspired to write this blog in hopes of making sense of our current economy and how the maker movement presents us with a potential cure for what seems like an endless problem.

The Pedagogy of Consumerism

We are taught (though not always directly, more often just by example behaviors) by schools, parents, and perhaps most powerfully, the media, that newer is better! This is the root of planned obsolescence to generate revenue indefinitely, AKA our current model of economics. This is the unfortunate story of stuff, a term by Annie Leonard, filmmaker, activist, and creator of a nationally acclaimed documentary on the lifecycle of the products we sell and buy. Those that work for some companies wishing to sell their products to the same customers time after time are dealing with artificial constraints in their design process. If a product is going to generate revenue, it must find a way to be purchased more than once…therefore its very design can not be based on sustainability. We all know this is bad for the environment, but we are also taught that garbage is dirty stuff. While we may sympathize with those who live in such poverty, that garbage is their only option for food and other materials, we rarely deeply empathize.

Two books that have informed my teaching and changed my perspective on almost everything, are David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell and The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holliday. These books have re-focused my attention on our society’s forward march towards greater comfort and convenience, parodied best I think by the slightly terrifying Disney-Pixar version of a future human society as seen in Wall-E. These authors also remind us that being resourceful is a state of mind. It is a What if/I don’t know mindset, that can be the product of desperation, a refusal to go down without a fight, or built into the everyday experience of individuals who are unable to purchase new things and must make due with the refuse of others. One of my favorite stories highlighting the beauty of this kind of resourcefulness, comes from the children living in a Paraguayan slum who learn to play music using instruments made from trash.

Maybe we need to teach the value of scarcity and discomfort in our classrooms more. If so, how can our curriculum rebrand scarcity and discomfort, such that resourcefulness and creativity are valued over brand names? I believe the maker movement has the potential to answer these questions. Makers have the ability to redefine the term wealth to focus on quality of life, rather than socially agreed upon symbols of wealth and success, such as new products. Makers also pride themselves on creating versus consuming, therefore a maker classroom can be an incubator for thinking differently about the world in many ways, beginning with how we view our natural resources.

Scarcity as Constraints

My first experience with “teaching” scarcity came out of a mistake. You know, one of those teaching moments when you judge youself for not being prepared enough for your students? I’m talking about the day you run out of glue for the hot glue guns or duct tape and a child is left stumped on how to finish a project without it. The first time this happened in the iLab I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I guess you will have to engineer a solution now to attach those two pieces,” and out of that challenge came many inspiring and creative methods to attach two materials together. Now I have a hard rule: Any prototype not made of paper or cardboard can not be constructed with hot glue or duct tape. Having small constraints like this has led to a world of creative problem solving that can highlight the individual solution brainstorming potential of each student in unexpected ways.

Like all real learning, making is a messy, sometimes tear-filled process that can reward the maker with a sense of competence and pride when given the time and freedom to fail. It is also an opportunity to see available resources in a new light and to redefine garbage.  Two of my colleagues can provide a more intentional and beautiful example of teaching the beauty of resourcefulness through the lens of a science and art collaboration they prototyped last year. In an effort to show how found objects, and unused items like old bikes could be upcycled into a working musical instrument and piece of art, Hillbrook teachers Jenny Jones and Kristen Engineer spent weeks with their 3rd grade building these creations and constructing musical pieces on their new instruments. This applied science of sound and art project was a highlight for the school and it has inspired me to focus on an upcycling/design thinking challenge this spring with my fifth grade.

Like the idea of teaching scarcity? Please send me examples of your favorite up-cylcing projects! Lets share ideas.

Works Cited

1. Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.

2. Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph.

Hi all,

I just left Vienna after the very successful Constructionism 2014 conference. There were a few hundred educators and researchers from around the world talking about Constructionism, programming, and making. Up until a few years ago, the conference had been called the Eurologo conference, but they changed it to reflect a wider range of how constructionist ideas could be implemented. It was really amazing to hear how people are using all kinds of programming languages to teach students. There were a lot of Scratch sessions, but also some interesting variations of Logo for special purposes – network analysis, Snap!, 3D logo, and more.

But the biggest applause was for the session from Thailand featuring our own FabLearn Fellow Nalin Tutiyaphuengprasert who delivered a really inspiring session about what is happening in the Thai constructionist community. She was one of 17 members of the Thai delegation, by far the largest cohort there. In fact, the planning committee members were so impressed by their presentation that they unanimously voted to hold the next conference, Constructionism 2016 in Thailand. (it’s held every two years)

There is a YouTube channel with some of the plenary sessions (more may still be added)  – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUldl-JvVdukFpWdImz3NDCA

Highlights:

Constructionism in Thailand and its Transformative Effect on the Lifelong Learning Process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK6jZBJ7PXU&index=11&list=UUldl-JvVdukFpWdImz3NDCA

This is Our Moment – Gary Stager

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpVofXEMAQc&index=12&list=UUldl-JvVdukFpWdImz3NDCA

Give P’s a chance: Projects, Peers, Passion, Play – Mitchell Resnick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuDRojVe2o8&index=17&list=UUldl-JvVdukFpWdImz3NDCA

And if you really want something to think about, watch this one … (plus IF YOU TEACH PHYSICS…. at least watch the first 7 minutes… (but the rest is great too))

Deconstructionism in Education – A Personal Wandering Towards Constructionism – Pavel Boytchev

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpty4v7c8IE&list=UUldl-JvVdukFpWdImz3NDCA&index=5

Hi all,

Paulo gave me the tile of “Social Media Director” for the FabLearn conference this year, so, dear Fellows – you are all on the team too!

Let’s make sure every maker-educator, researcher, and maker proponent know about this fabulous conference. Here’s some suggestions below. I’ll remind you a few times this month and next – we want this to be the MUST ATTEND event of the maker-ed calendar.

And yes, even if you can’t attend (sadly, I know) you can still help. YOU have connections to others that no one else has. The networking capacity of this group is truly unlimited.

1. Twitter. Post early and often. On Twitter, it’s cool to repeat yourself. If you have a slick tool like Hootsuite, just set it up to post a couple of these announcements for the future.

• Use hashtags – not just #makered, but also any groups you belong to, like #txedchat or your “twitter tribe” like #geniushour or #sschat or #edchat. We’ll also be using the hashtag #fablearn for the conference so we might as well start using it now. Fill up your 140 characters with any hashtag that fits.
• Use the URL http://fablearn.stanford.edu/2014/registration (this will be shortened by twitter)
• Studies show that asking for retweets actually works! If you make your tweet less than 120 characters, it will retweet nicely.

Suggestions:

Register now for making, fabrication, and creativity in the classroom conference – #FabLearn 2014 http://ow.ly/Bb3d3

Passionate about creativity and fabrication in the classroom? Come to #FabLearn 2014 http://ow.ly/Bb3d3 Please RT.

Learn about the latest research support for authentic, creative classrooms! Register now #FabLearn 2014 http://ow.ly/Bb3d3

I’m going to #FabLearn 2014 in October! Join me. http://fablearn.stanford.edu/2014/registration

2. Facebook. You can post this with the link. If you want, change your privacy settings to “public” just for this post and you’ll get more reach. On Facebook, it’s best to get personal – share a story (1-2 sentences) about the conference if you can, and why you care… for example:

• I recommend all my educator friends interested in authentic, creative, hands-on learning attend this conference in October. The FabLearn 2014 conference is on the Stanford campus and it’s an intimate event focused on making schools better places for kids. (be sure to add the link http://fablearn.stanford.edu/2014/registration)
• Last year I attended this conference and it was great! (add reason why)…
• I wish I was going to this conference, (add your thoughts why)…

If you are in any education related groups, post there too.

3. Real life – tell your friends and colleagues what an awesome event this is. If you belong to any email listserves, send an email there too.

4. Blog – if you have a blog, post there! You can copy mine if you want. http://sylviamartinez.com/fablearn-2014-registration-now-open/

I always struggle with devising effective groundrules for our making learning communities.

There are obvious safety rules, but the “how to make and be with others in the makerspace” guidelines are tougher

Each year, we have the youth devise their own “We the People” set of expectations which we put on a big poster and get everyone to sign with colored markers.  This year we focused on positive expectations and tried to stay away from expectations that start with “No. . . “.  When issues come up, the college mentors and I refer to the “We the People” poster to guide group discussions.

This morning I was reminded of Sister Corita Kent and John Cage’s rules for artspaces and I really like them.  I think that I will revise them and hang them up and see what the youth think about them. . . smile.

The “rules” came to me via a Brain Pickings Blogpost that gives more information about their history:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08/10/10-rules-for-students-and-teache…

In my diverse and mostly low income urban community, parents of our youth teachers are sometimes fearful about having their children engage with technology.  This is because often the only technologies that they are familiar with are ones that they associate with risks and danger for their children:  facebook, video games, texting and the like.  These parents often are unfamiliar with the creative possibilities of technology that our youth teachers engage in Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn and don’t know about all the satisfying careers associated with STEAM.

I wanted to find more ways to get parents of our youth teachers to understand how important Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn can be so they would be more supportive of our youth teachers’ jobs!  I read about how Iridescent LA was engaging diverse families in STEM as a strategy and became interested in exploring family STEM experiences.

I found a kindred spirit in Ricarose Roque at the MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergarten Group a couple of years ago.  She was developing a series of “Family Creative Learning Workshops” that had a great format.  She arranged a set of workshops that had groups of families come in after work, eat dinner together and spend a couple of hours doing coding with scratch and physical programming with MaKey MaKeys together.

I volunteered at a few of these workshops and even hosted one at the South End Technology Center @ Tent City.  They rocked!  The families bonded and the interactions between parents and children were amazing.  Often, the children caught on more quickly than the parents and became “teachers.”  Ricarose had some breakout time with parents to talk about their hopes and fears about their children’s experiences with technology.

Ricarose continued to refine her work and has produced an excellent “Creative Learning Workshop” guide to help other folks who want to organize Family STEM events.  I think that these kinds of events would be great ways to develop school/teacher/parent relationships.

Here is an article about Ricarose and her work, as well as a link to the guide that she has created:

http://getpocket.com/a/read/687120687

and here is a little video that gives you an idea of what happens in such a workshop series:

Family Creative Learning Workshops from Lifelong Kindergarten on Vimeo.

I really enjoyed this youtube video by Mitch Resnick and especially how it applies to our reading of Mindstorms by Seymour Papert.