I’m very excited to announce the NoVa Maker Educator Meetup at Maker Faire NoVa on March 19, 2017. Details about the event are available at https://designmaketeach.com/2017/01/26/319-nova-maker-educator-meetup/ The original idea was sparked during a conversation at the FabLearn conference in Stanford, California last October. I met two maker educator from the Flint Hill School, Joey Starnes @joeygstarnes and… Read more »
Category: Cohort 2 Fellows
Quick SVG for DigiFab
A friend is getting started with the Silhouette Cameo vinyl cutter and was trying to cut a vinyl sticker of New Hampshire. He wasn’t happy with the quality of the outline he had found. I was able to send him a much better quality file in a matter of minutes. Here are the steps I took… Read more »
WIP 005: More Questions Than Answers
My son’s Peace and Love car entry into the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. A maker rite of passage for scouting family in the US. (My daughter’s Girl Scout troop also participates in an annual derby.) Woodshop Cowboy published a blog post this week about the experience of making a Pinewood Derby car in the home makerspace…. Read more »
How Do We Scale Up MakerEd?
What is the essential question that drives your work as a FabLearn Fellow? I spoke with Chief FabLearn Fellow Cat Herder, Sylvia Martinez, today. It was a mix of status report, pep talk and kick in the pants. In core maker educator mode, it doesn’t matter what the student has accomplished up to that point… Read more »
Mystery Artifact: Getting Started and Rubric
I’m working with Super Star Social Science educator Andrea Relator, @AndreaRelator, on a Mystery Artifact project. Over the last 2 days, we kicked off the project with 4 of her classes, taking approximately 45 minutes of class time. Students will be creating an artifact related to a specific president that illustrates the Constitutional powers of the… Read more »
Lesson Plan: MLK March on Washington Artifact
Introduction The 1960s Civil Rights Movement sought to end segregation and discrimination against African Americans. One of the largest political rallies of the Civil Rights Movement was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. A key moment of the march was the “I have a dream” speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. from… Read more »
New Year’s Resolution: Meaningfully Engaging Families.
Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1893 painting The Banjo Lesson is one of my favorite depictions of inter-generational learning. So many details from the painting illustrate my vision of what a perfect moment of mentorship looks like: The comfort and trust embodied in the way the boy is perched steadily on his grandfather’s knee. The trance of learning. The flow state. The “hard… Read more »
A good rubric for projects
It’s hard to get a good rubric to fit the type of scaffolded, interdisciplinary, team oriented, projects we often do in our classrooms/labs. Here is one that I have found pretty worthwhile. It is editable! https://www.edutopia.org/sites/default/files/resources/edutopia-dl-camarata-editable-rubric.doc edutopia-dl-camarata-editable-rubric-1
Swarm Intelligence and how it relates to Making, Design Thinking, and Creativity….
A couple of years ago I attended the 2014 WESTAF Cultural Policy Symposium, co-hosted by the California Arts Council and Gehry Partners. It had a rock star line-up of big brains talking about creativity, many of them referred to STEAM education, Makers education, and creativity. Today I was reminded of one speaker in particular of… Read more »
WIP 004: Getting Things Done
This week’s Work In Progress has a number of ideas for articles and designs that I managed to publish before uploading this post. The time from idea to product is getting shorter. I’m approaching publishing something every day or two which is a step up from my typical post every two weeks. Sylvia Martinez’s urgings to the… Read more »