Kepler Tech Lab and its middle-high school students who take after-school engineering classes and workshops have had epic November and December of 2016! Wow, I cannot imagine it’s been two months teaching young students! It was an extraordinary experience to get young students with zero knowledge about engineering and tinkering with things get started with experimenting… Read more »
Category: Cohort 2 Fellows
Stuff for Cutting Cardboard
My daughter’s class is doing some sort of maker project and the teacher asked for students to bring in stacks of cardboard. To be helpful I grabbed a few shears from my personal makerspace and sent them in. The next day I was looking through a bin of odds and ends and ran into a… Read more »
What’s in Your Makerspace?
A common question I hear from fellow maker educators is, “What’s in your makerspace?” My school is one of 10 winners of the US Department of Education’s CTE Makeover Challenge so my answer is much different this year than last. In total, we won $50,000 in cash in prizes in addition to the existing hardware provided… Read more »
Giving a Makerspace
Today, my friend Nichole Thomas @MrsThomasTRT and I gave away a Super Deluxe Makerspace Starter Kit to a colleague. @DesignMakeTeach #lcpstrts helping TRTs. Maker space starter kit presentation. pic.twitter.com/51WKKErqMf — Joe Schwarz (@eLearnVL) January 11, 2017 Nichole and I hosted an Edcamp style session on makerspaces at the December meeting for Technology Resource Teachers (TRTs) in… Read more »
Mystery Artifact Lesson
What is this object? What does it do? What is its historical significance and value? You are professional appraiser brought in as an expert by shows such as Antiques Roadshow, American Pickers and Pawn Stars to determine the value of an unknown artifact. Your job is to research the object and give a 3 minute… Read more »
3D Printing with Primary Students
When I started teaching my students about 3D printing, I limited my audience to only students in intermediate and middle school grades. I knew there could be value in also having younger students experience the process, but I wasn’t sure where to start. In my experience, many of the apps that transform 2D drawing to… Read more »
Built to Last?
I try not to look at my old elementary classroom / lab / makerspace (sic) when I walk by these days. It doesn’t look like this, anymore: I have only been gone a year (I now teach in our middle school – in the same district and building). The space has since been repurposed (made… Read more »
WIP 003: All About Sharing
Problem: How do students share their 3D designs with the world? I’m a 3D printing enthusiast in the world of education and believe me when I say I understand the challenges of classroom implementation. Design / Printing / Sharing How to have each student contribute? Screenshots, Tinkercad embeds, Sketchfab, video, renders. Edith Ackermann Tribute: FabLearn… Read more »
Designs for Diversity and Equality
Design Challenge – MLK 2017
Thingiverse recently added MLK as a Featured Collection on their front page. Designs in a featured collection received huge increases in number of views and downloads. The problem is that the collection only features 3 designs and 2 of them are mine. When I first wrote about this issue in 2014, there were 0 relevant hits… Read more »