Makerspace for Education Blog

Makerspace in Education...

1/11/2017

About the Author: Trish is an Emerging Technology Consultant for Edmonton Catholic Schools in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In this role, Trish specializes in supporting teachers and students to explore makerspace, assistive technology, coding and robotics, and blended learning. Trish is also an avid maker who is always tinkering on her next project! You can follow Trish on twitter @MrsRoffey or contact her at Trisha.Roffey@ecsd.net

Have you ever asked your child the question “what did you do in school today?” to only be answered with “meh”, “I don’t know” or “nothing”? Parents want to know what their children have spent their day learning and are often faced with unenthused responses. This leads to the inevitable concern that their child hasn’t learned anything, is struggling or is unhappy with school. The year 2015 brought about a change in this passive response to education with the entrance of makerspace in education. Now before we all roll our eyes at yet another educational buzz word, makerspace is the resurgence of the foundational educational pedagogy of constructivism that is changing the nature of teaching and learning. Now when the question is asked “what did you do in school today?” parents are being given the detailed description of the best 7 hours of their child’s life thanks to the makerspace.

Makerspace is a global trend that is part of the DIY movement. These spaces started as community centers where the average Joe could meet up with local experts to pursue a passion project or hobby. Imagine a facility with tools and materials to invent, tinker and construct. This movement has found its way into education over the last year. Our libraries and classrooms are being transformed with 3D printers, robots and bins of recycled materials. What is exciting is that makerspace is more than just a space, it is an educational mindset. A makerspace mindset allows for educators to shift away from ready made knowledge to a classroom environment ripe for exploration, creativity, innovation and collaboration with hands on materials and real world problems (Donaldson, 2014; Papert & Harel, 1991; Schön, Ebner, & Kumar; Schrock, 2014, Hatch, 2013). In short teachers are changing the way they teach which is causing students to change the way they learn and this is a very good thing.

“Ultimately, the outcome of maker education and educational makerspaces leads to determination, independence and creative problem solving, and an authentic preparation for the real world through simulating real-world challenges. In short, an educational makerspace is less of a classroom and more of a motivational speech without words” (Kurti et al., 2014, p. 11).

This is not your typical science fair or project at the end of a unit. A makerspace allows for authentic innovation and invention, it embraces new ideas and failures, and it allows for students to pursue their passions and have a reason to learn and apply the foundational curriculum throughout a project as opposed to the end. Gone are the days of passive recipients waiting to have knowledge poured into their heads. Makerspace allows for educators to personalize learning, work as a guide with students of all abilities and dig deep into projects that combine many subject area disciplines at once.

Last summer my husband and I had the opportunity to care for our own three children aged 6, 8, and 11 along with our nieces and nephews. We decided to turn our garage into a makerspace for this vast range of ages and abilities. The project was to make skateboards for everyone thanks to an idea from Mark Frauenfelder’s book Maker Dad. Our garage became our classroom and we learned about weight, angles, design, speed, and friction. We sought out community experts, we researched blogs, we used tools, we created art, we tested, designed and improved, we made mistakes, and finally we made skateboards. This was a passionate groups of learners committed to a goal. Some of our “students” couldn’t read, some had trouble sitting still, some needed a little more help, but all had a chance to shine. This project turned out to be the greatest summer of fun learning ever, something everyone still talks about. Shouldn’t school be the same way? By moving makerspaces from our garages and community centers into our schools we have this chance.

In the movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks, there was a moment where he made fire. A passionate event where he was the creator of an epic moment of learning, so much so that he shouted “I made fire” to the heavens. This is the moment we want for our children. We want school to be an opportunity to make fire and love learning so that they come home and cannot stop talking about that moment. The greatest 7 hours of their life. That is an educational makerspace.

Trish Roffey
Maker parent and maker educator

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January 11th, 2017

1/11/2017

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About the Author: Catherine is an elementary teacher in the Niagara Region of Ontario. She has been a classroom educator for 25 years and has just discovered the wonders of makerspaces.

My journey into maker space began last January. I had heard about it, but never really understood what it meant. Last September I was introduced to a wonderful maker teacher and parent Trish Roffey. She often talked about maker space and how great it was. In January last year we worked together on a course project, along with Janelle. That project is the website you see today. At first I was skeptical of maker spaces: Who has the time? Who has the money? How do you do a maker space when you have curriculum to cover and provincial tests to prepare for. Over the past several months I have come to realize that maker space is not necessarily what you do in addition to the curriculum but rather an awesome way to deliver your curriculum. You can incorporate maker activities into every aspect of school life.
Kids eagerly engage in the activities and actually direct their own learning. (I have to say I was skeptical of this because; come on kids can direct their own learning they will sit and do nothing. Guess what? I was wrong).
Learning in the classroom comes to life when kids are up out of their chairs and actively engaged in activities and learning becomes fun; an adventure, a creative outlet, something they invest in and want to do.
My best advice is start where you are. Take a spin through the website. Find an activity that you can easily incorporate into your classes and run with it. For me the best place to start was with digital storytelling and stop motion animation. It required little in the way of capital expenses and kids new a bit about it already. You will be amazed at what even your most unmotivated student will create.
So join me as I continue my maker journey.
Catherine (maker newbie)

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Put on Your Collaboration Hat and Pick up Your KIBO

3/22/2016

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About the Author:
Cory Roffey is a school based Instructional Coach in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He has coached in a variety of educational settings from Kindergarten to Grade Nine. He holds a MEd in Elementary Education from the University of Alberta and has a particular interest in supporting teachers as they explore educational technology and constructivist practices. You can follow Cory on twitter @coryroffey

KIBO can wear many hats… literally (with the art platforms) and figuratively J. Students can use KIBO as a tool to think with, as a platform to make and invent, and as a medium to share the knowledge and understandings they have constructed, but over the past few months I have had the privilege of working with two teachers at St. Pius X School as they explored how KIBO can strengthen cooperation and collaboration skills. After providing their kindergarten and grade one students with initial experiences working in a small group to code KIBO, the teachers noticed that not all students had their hands and minds fully engaged as they programmed. After some professional dialogue they came up with the idea of scaffolding the collaboration using ‘KIBO JOB CARDS’.

The KIBO JOB CARDS divide the ‘work’ of coding KIBO into four distinct tasks or ‘jobs’. There is the CODER who is in charge of clicking the blocks together (the whole group collaborates on what the code should be), the SCANNER who scans the actual blocks of code, the CHECKER who makes sure the green light comes on with each scan, and finally a Button PUSHER who makes sure the button is flashing green and pushes the button to run the code (they also are in charge of clapping if that block is used).

After introducing and briefly explaining each job, students were given a choice in which job they would like to begin with. If too many students chose a certain job the teacher facilitated a discussion about how they groups would be uneven and we would have too many people doing the same job. During the course of the discussion students volunteered to switch jobs and even out the groups. Once the groups were set the students went to work coding KIBO each completing their specific job. In reflection and discussion, the teachers found that the cards raised the level of engagement in the task and allowed everyone in the group to contribute to the task.

The high level of student engagement fostered by KIBO, combined with the hands on nature of the tasks and the elements of problem solving presented by the coding blocks make KIBO an excellent tool to build collaboration skills in students …and it is fun to decorate and put hats on!

About the School:
St. Pius X Elementary school is located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Our school is made up up 300+ students from age 4-12. The teachers at St. Pius regularly use coding and robotics to uncover curriculum and support students in strengthening learning competencies such as collaborating, problem solving, thinking critically etc.

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It Started with a Pile of Cardboard

3/22/2016

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This blog post comes to us from Cathy Dohn, a passionate educator and maker in Edmonton Catholic Schools. To see more of Cathy's influential educational posts please also visit https://catherined2014.wordpress.com/

I love giving my students an opportunity to make things. I have maker bins in my classroom – Lego, Knox, Playdough, marble runs and all sorts of other things that involve them working together to problem solve, collaborate and just figure things out. However, I am also lucky enough to have not only one unit, but two, in my grade 3 science curriculum – “Building with a Variety of Materials” and “Testing Materials and Designs” where they are challenged to build something in the classroom and then test their design to see how it worked.
Last year my grade partners took a chance on a crazy idea I had and we had a giant cardboard arcade unit. (you can read about the experience here – Our Cardboard Arcade Journey) It was honestly a great project based learning activity and both my students and I learned a lot from it.
So when the time came around this year, there wasn’t much debate as to whether we would do this project again. It was more how could we improve it. The students were actually chomping at the bit to start – it was one of the first questions my students asked when they walked into the classroom, were they were going to be allowed to build their own arcade games this year too. (they had remembered going to the gym and playing them last year). So it was funny how quickly they all hit the ground running with this project.
Many started looking at YouTube videos to get ideas, many talked about how they had seen games they liked last year and were going to make them better this year. And they were correct in those statements – the quality of the games my students came up with this year were more better than last year. We gave the students the same parameters in our expectations. Their games had to be firstly functional – potentially over 150 people would be playing their games by the time the afternoon was done so it needed to be in good enough shape to play. Next the game had to be sturdy – and we had long discussions as to what this word actually meant. This was something that quite a few of the students found challenging this year – many of them thought that if they added more duct tape, then the sturdiness factor would just come. The “less is more” conversation came up more than once during the unit. But in the reflections after the build, quite a few talked about how they would have done things differently when it came to making their games sturdy so this was a good learning experience. The last piece was the extra add on -making their game eye catching so that it stood out from the crowd of over 60 games that would be in the gym. It was again a great learning moment when some realized that they themselves could be the eye-catching piece – that if they played their games or called friends over to try, that could be the catalyst that got people to come play their game versus another one.
I will warn you that while this unit is an amazing learning experience – it is not for the faint at heart. My room was a mess of cardboard, boxes, tubes, tape, glue and much more for over a month. I had to give up control of the room and just be willing to be okay with the organized chaotic mess (which was hard at times, I will not lie). But again the end result was I had students that were engaged and excited about their learning. The ones who found things easy in some areas (reading, writing) were challenged by bringing their design to life. Quite a few the design had to change because what they had on paper did not translate to real life. Some had to persevere because their designs did not pass the sturdiness test and there were quite a few back to the drawing boards for some. But I saw student after student digging in and being willing to try, even those who if this activity involved doing it on paper would have given up long before.
On that final day when we had masses of students running around the gym trying out games the students had built, I saw happy and excited faces. I saw quiet students coming out of their shells to talk about how to play their games. I saw students who might not have been the best writers beaming because grade 6 boys were excited to play the game they had designed and built. For me, the best moment came when one of my more challenging boys in my class came to life because his dad had taken the time to stop by for half an hour to see his game. The memory of the smile that lit up his face will be one that I tuck away in my own memory box.
And that is why projects like this are important. Why being willing to give up control and let my students just build, make a mess and figure things out is essential. When we do these things we give our students meaningful learning experiences that they will remember. And isn’t that at the heart of what we are hoping to do in the classroom??