Making Education:

Designing Activities for Transformative Learning

The Maker Movement is beginning to transform learning in our schools. Makerspaces are areas designed to support the Maker Movement.  These creative spaces are where students can gather to create, invent, and learn.  This fresh approach emphasizes creation, creativity, teamwork and communication in order to prepare our students with skills for the 21st Century.   Museums, libraries, community centers and after school programs have designed physical and virtual "Makerspaces" to host communities of supportive peers and mentors invested in creating everything from cutout designs and webpages, to jewelry and robots . . . and now, even school curriculum.

One example of this movement is an after-school program beginning this year at Pointview Elementary. Pointview students are encouraged to join the tech club to experience wonderful hands on projects where this digital tool becomes part of the learning process. Several teachers including Ben Ashwill and Bill Goldner are leading this discovery adventure for students. Here’s a link to the Club’s introduction:

https://youtu.be/3HlLPLuVJdM

Another example of this style of learning is occurring at North High School.  North HS Warrior Learning Center now houses a special room called the “Imaginarium”.  In the Imaginarium, students have been creating and making new objects.  Buttons,  bracelets, origami, cutout designs and also learning about virtual reality. Every Monday, this space is open to students from 10:00 to 12:30PM for students to choose a learning activity.

The “Collaboratorium” and “Wonder Room” at Hanby Elementary opened this year with two exciting design challenges for students. The Collaboratorium is a available for students to make use of their science and math skills to solve problems.

The Wonder Room is used by students to create and discover art and technology.

In a recent Collaboratorium lesson, students were presented with a  Math and Science challenge called, The Penny Boat Challenge.  Students used the Engineering Design Process to design a boat for the Hanby Boat Company using aluminum foil that would hold the most cargo possible.

In the Wonder Room students were challenged to use the items in their brown bag to build the tallest structure possible.  Each Hanby class discovered the fun and excitement of building a tall structure with spaghetti and tape with a marshmallow on the top.    

Mrs. Brown, Hanby’s School Principal, is encouraging teachers, parents and community members to use these two new rooms to expand the Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM) experience for every HANBY student. Students enjoy the learning experience and are looking forward to their next design challenges.

Central’s New Makerspace Christened “The Hawk’s Perch”

This isn’t your grandfather’s library!

Libraries have always been a place for inquiry and deep learning, whether the medium is print or electronic, and at Westerville Central High School, the library is busier than ever. Recently, in partnership with the Renaissance team, Principal Todd Spinner, an anonymous parent donor, the library, and funding from the Westerville City Schools Educational Technology Department, a new makerspace area, nicknamed “The Hawk’s Perch,” was dedicated. The counter holds a host of small tech tools that students can experiment and explore with including a MakeyMakey circuitry kit, two Little Bits electronics kits, laser strategy games, Ozobot programmable miniature robots that teach students how to code, and much more. Students can use the Hawk’s Perch area before or after school, or during their lunch or study hall times, and the library maintains an open access policy for pupils.

In addition, the library has a green screen recording space, cameras, and a camera stand and easel
board students can use to make “Khan Academy style” videos using the district’s WeVideo editing program. WeVideo integrates with Google Drive, so students can edit from school or from home.

The makerspace movement is founded on the belief that learning is inquisitive and student centered
and is grounded in the educational theories of constructionism, constructivism, and Montessori, and aligns with the work of Piaget, Vygosky, and Dewey (University of Wisconsin, Teaching for Creativity and Innovation: The Maker Culture and Makerspaces).

Using Maker Workshop Theory in the Math Classroom

I was reading through my Twitter account last night when I came across this article from Mindshift, "How Turning Math Into a Maker Workshop Can Bring Calculations to Life." The article is a phenomenal read about how a Middle School Math teacher turned her remedial math class into a thriving student empowered learning community. The most fascinating line from the article to me is the teacher saying, “I didn’t know how to do it, but I could teach them how to learn,” when explaining the process of transitioning her classroom to a Maker workshop. Later in the article she shares her findings from her classroom in a report about how to start a Fab Lab in the classroom.  If you have a moment this weekend, this is definitely worth a read.