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Read one article and get ready to share your insights. 

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Read one article and get ready to share your insights. 

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As you are reading, write down the following:

1. Questions you have.

2. A Connection you are making.

3. A Key takeaway that you want a member of the team to know about.

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Article # 1 How can Making promote equity and excitement in STEM?

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Article # 1 How can Making promote equity and excitement in STEM?

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Link - https://stemteachingtools.org/brief/40

pdf- https://stemteachingtools.org/assets/landscapes/STEM-Teaching-Tool-40-Making-Equity-and-Excitement.pdf

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Article #2: The Other F Word: Making Sense of Failure and Nurturing Resilience 

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Article #2: The Other F Word: Making Sense of Failure and Nurturing Resilience 

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link - https://corwin-connect.com/2015/04/the-other-f-word-making-sense-of-failure-and-nurturing-resilience/

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Jessica, an alumna of Techbridge, came to visit. We talked about her plans for the future; she shared that she has a job lined up at Adobe after graduation. But Jessica's journey to Adobe almost didn't happen. During her interview-her first for an internship-Jessica was asked to work through a coding challenge on the spot. It didn't bring out her best and Jessica wasn't successful. While she might have left feeling defeated, she didn't let her performance in that moment define what she was capable of. That evening Jessica worked on the problem and emailed her solution despite believing she wouldn't get the internship. She was offered the internship, which gave Jessica the chance to prove herself. And now a job awaits her at Adobe upon her graduation from U.C. Berkeley.

What was your reaction as you read about Jessica's interview challenge? We both felt anguish; the failures of the kids we work with sometimes make us uncomfortable. While Jessica's story had a happy ending, that's not why we shared it. It's because Jessica had the confidence that allowed her to recover and rewrite her pathway for her future. Even if Jessica hadn't been offered the internship, she would have been successful because she defined her own success.

That's what we want for all the kids we work with-to feel that they can experience failures and not internalize them as indications of their capacity but as temporary setbacks. How can we create spaces where kids feel comfortable with unexpected outcomes and challenging learning processes? And when we see young women at Techbridge confidently present their work as a prototype at Maker Faire without cringing when an LED doesn't light up or when their projects don't run perfectly as planned, how do we build on their expanded vision of their future, not only toward securing great jobs, but also toward building persistence in pursuing personal projects or growing healthier communities through democratic participation?

We are working in partnership on a project to learn just that. Techbridge is one of four afterschool programs in the California Tinkering Afterschool Network (CTAN) which is housed in the Center for Informal Learning and Schools at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Each year, our Network reaches over 2,000 K-12 children through afterschool sites in non-dominant and low-income communities. By bringing together expertise from afterschool directors, facilitators, and researchers across our sites, we are building a professional community committed to supporting youth in seeing their intellectual potential while learning about science, technology, engineering, art, and math through tinkering/making activities. Our goal is to provide evidence-based descriptions of: 1) STEM-rich tinkering/making, learning, and teaching in afterschool; 2) the nature, focus, and formats of professional development that best support staff; and 3) the infrastructure and relationships necessary to sustain and scale STEM-rich afterschool tinkering programs.

How Do We Talk about Failure?

As part of this project we are thinking about how we talk about the iterative experiences that are part of tinkering. Do we use the F word-failure?

Fail early, Fail fast. Fail better. Fail forward. We hear these messages from the tech industry. Maybe these mantras work if you're the CEO of a tech giant or the lead at a startup, or maybe not. Is the willingness to jump into work on a new product or service without concern for failure truly characteristic of an innovator, or just hype?

With the Maker movement catching fire and engineering curriculum coming to K-12 classrooms, there is a lot of attention on iterations and the engineering design process. With these programs comes talk about celebrating failing; but is it really failing that we are celebrating? Or rather, are we trying to encourage kids to be thoughtful and purposeful at work and play? How can we support youth in brainstorming and sketching plans while learning through an iterative design process when they are creating prototypes?

As Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager note in the book Invent to Learn, iteration should not be confused with failure as they explain: "any iterative design cycle is about continuous improvement, keeping what works, and dealing with what doesn't. This is learning, not failure." And for Rob Shelton, the global innovation chief of PwC, what we should really be focused on is learning how to form a hypothesis and test it. That's not failing.

As we wrestle with focusing on processes over final products in our programs, we recognize that kids will be frustrated, stymied, and challenged when projects go in unexpected directions and original design plans seem to fail. One of the questions that we are asking is "What does failure mean if you are in middle school?" Maybe it depends on who you are and what experiences you bring to the situation.

For many children in our Network programs, failure is not just a momentary personal setback, but a heavy word that equates to being bad at school, being stupid, and being a disappointment to family or teachers. It's usually not okay for children to fail in schools and learn from those failures-the system doesn't make space for it. For most of our children and their families, the word failure doesn't describe the complexity of design experiments and situations: It doesn't describe why something failed or measure the amount of effort that went into the process that supposedly failed. In today's high-stakes testing era, failure carries new weight in terms of whether or not one will have to take drill-and-kill test-prep courses or graduate on time. Sometimes it's not the F-word either. For some communities (as our Network partners at the Community Science Workshop point out), it can be the "B-word" or "broken." In either context, there is the notion that something is beyond repair.
At a recent convening of educators and researchers for the CTAN project, we talked about the kinds of experiences that best support experimentation and perseverance. Since we are committed to equity and how to create meaningful learning opportunities for all kids, we believe it is particularly important to recognize the diversity of ways that people experience failure and what persistent challenges they may face in varying contexts. For example, the son of migrant farmers in central California may have a very different educational experience than the daughter of a wealthy Silicon Valley CEO. The historical and social contexts of learning matter.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about building grit into our students. While we agree it is important for our youth to develop a sense of determination and persistence that can help them through challenging situations into adulthood, we want to point out that we do not believe in persistence divorced from context. We aren't talking about persisting through failures regardless of the task at hand, nor do we believe in blaming individuals for not persisting without consideration of the larger system or context in which they live. We cannot expect people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in a world that gives some people boots and some people no shoes at all.

Techbridge and the other CTAN partners are deliberate in creating afterschool programs in which youth like Jessica have experiences working on activities that challenge them along with support that not only build STEM skills but also confidence to persevere in our programs and in life. We are learning together the kinds of practices that promote iteration in tinkering so that ideas are valued over final products and students can take ownership of their making processes. Here are eight strategies that are supporting our youth and staff.

1. Staff shares personal experiences and feelings around challenges. It's especially helpful for kids to hear about the setbacks staff encountered when they were their age.

2. Show examples of work in progress and talk about what didn't go as planned, where they got stuck, and what they are planning next to try. This helps kids see that the projects they will work on are messy and that it's okay to discuss these challenges with one another.

3. Ask kids how they want to talk about the iterative process especially when things don't go right. Let them define what's successful and not (yet) successful and talk in their terms.

4. Create a learning community in which kids feels safe to try something new and support each other's work in tinkering.

5. Try and plan for the right amount of challenge with projects; too much and kids might give up, go away, and never come back; too little and they won't have the chance to challenge themselves.

6. Help kids learn when it's time to take a break, ask for help, or just plain give up (for a while or move on to a different activity). At Techbridge, we create a "Glorious Goofs" space where girls can pause and write about challenges, which help them step back from feeling frustrated and step into a space of reflection toward reimagining new solutions.

7. Build in time and opportunities for redesign into activities. Projects always take longer than planned so make sure there is time in the moment, next day, or next week for kids to return to their projects and rework their ideas.

8. Value youths' creative abilities and thinking and be willing to embrace the unexpected directions that children take their work.

How do you help youth move beyond challenges, glorious goofs, or messy mistakes? We would love to hear your thinking and experiences around the topic.

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author: Kristin Cook, Thomas Roberts, and Cathrine Maiorca

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author: Christa Jackson and Christine A. Pickett

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The Other F Word: Making Sense of Failure and Nurturing Resilience - Corwin Connect

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How can we create spaces where kids feel comfortable with unexpected outcomes and challenging learning processes?

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Article #3: Designing ‘productive uncertainty’ into investigations to support meaningful engagement in science practices

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Article #3: Designing ‘productive uncertainty’ into investigations to support meaningful engagement in science practices

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link- https://stemteachingtools.org/brief/60

pdf- https://stemteachingtools.org/assets/landscapes/STEM-Teaching-Tool-60-Productive-Uncertainty-in-Investigations.pdf

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Article #4: Building Family-Centered Models for Science Education through Learning in Places

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Article #4: Building Family-Centered Models for Science Education through Learning in Places

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link- https://stemteachingtools.org/brief/77

pdf- https://stemteachingtools.org/assets/landscapes/STEM-Teaching-Tool-77-Family-Centered-Science-Education.pdf

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After you leave today and want more information, here are some links to some articles that might help.

1. NSTA Making the Most of Makerspace: https://www.nsta.org/science-and-children/science-and-children-february-2020/making-most-makerspace

2. Makerspaces for Rethinking Teaching and Learning in K–12 Education: This article focuses on the role of makerspaces in K–12 education research, particularly how student engagement in these spaces influences their learning and development. It discusses the varied configurations of makerspaces in K–12 education, from dedicated locations within a classroom to entirely separate rooms designed for creative making activities. The article could provide valuable insights into how makerspaces can be integrated into the curriculum and the potential benefits for students' learning experiences [Makerspaces for rethinking teaching and learning in K–12 education](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220671.2021.1914937)[1].

3. Taking the Maker Movement to School: A Systematic Review of PreK-12: This systematic review explores the integration of the maker movement into preK-12 education. It provides an overview of the study search and article eligibility/selection procedures, focusing on makerspace or maker education research. The review could offer a comprehensive understanding of how makerspaces have been implemented in schools and the effects on educational outcomes, which could be particularly useful for elementary teachers looking to adopt this approach [Taking the maker movement to school: A systematic review of preK-12](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X21000361)[2].

4. What Shapes Implementation of a School-Based Makerspace? Teachers as...: This article investigates the factors that influence teachers’ implementation of school STEM reforms, specifically the creation of a high-school makerspace. While the focus is on high school, the insights on organizational, classroom, and institutional factors that affect the implementation of makerspaces could be applicable to elementary education as well. Understanding these factors can help teachers effectively integrate makerspaces into their teaching practices [What shapes implementation of a school-based makerspace? Teachers as...](https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-023-00395-x)[3].

5. Makerspaces and the Characteristics of Effective Learning in the Early...: This article argues that to realize the benefits of makerspaces, teachers must experience maker-centered learning themselves. It discusses how teachers can integrate these types of activities into their curriculum by stepping out of their comfort zones with technology. This could be particularly relevant for elementary teachers looking for ways to incorporate makerspaces into their curriculum and foster an environment of effective learning [Makerspaces and the Characteristics of Effective Learning in the early...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1476718X231210633)[4].

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In freshman biology, lab work and design thinking come together through maker education.

Discussions of maker education often dazzle with stories of fanciful robots, exotic materials, and whimsical ideas for cross-disciplinary projects. These impressive examples showcase the amazing things creative people can do, but when I wanted to build making into my freshman biology course, I felt stymied. When I reframed making as integral rather than optional, I found a way to let students create.

Rewriting What's Already in Your Course

The first major step was not finding a place to add a making opportunity to my curriculum-there was no room for "extra" in my calendar, and I bet there isn't in yours either. Instead, I looked for places where the class material was related to things students could create in the classroom.

I chose water contamination because the topic wrapped up several major biogeochemical standards for my course: matter cycling, human impacts in ecosystems, and organismal interactions.

I've discussed research showing that giving students the freedom to explore a full, rich example yields better sense-making for students than many isolated pieces of work created by an instructor, and I scheduled about two weeks for my students to be making. We had a few class activities about natural water cycling, and then students had a couple days to build a small version of the same natural cycling systems. Next we took a couple days to examine the ways in which humans add nitrogen to the environment, and then students returned to their projects to see how their addition of human-processed soil added nitrogen to their systems. They then spent a few days building new prototypes of their systems, and then we moved back to another class discussion.

Switching back and forth kept students' interest in the project high, provided time for brainstorming and independent work, and let me make connections to our other class activities while the content was fresh because of their making efforts.

Providing Options, Feedback, and Space

My final worry was about how I could direct the students. If I just said "go" without any guidance, the students would all cluster around the simplest and most obvious materials, so I chose a more opportunistic approach and gave them just a little bit of guidance.

I projected a live stream of the makerspace onto my whiteboard when we started. Now all students in the room could see what was happening in the makerspace moment to moment.

When the project started, I gave a quick tour of the makerspace and pointed out the major areas in which they could work: "Here's some wood and plastic, there's some hand tools, the 3D printer is over here, and some power tools we can use if you ask."

I then let them decide for themselves how to proceed. The start of that first workday was... awkward. But it didn't stay that way.

A few students wanted to 3D-print something. I shouted out that we were training on how to prep a 3D model, and a handful of other students wanted to join, so we all got a quick starter training on how to find something to print. Most kids ignored us-and that was fine. Later some other students wanted to use the 3D printer, but now I could direct them to the earlier students who were trained on the tool.

This happened in other areas as well. Some students started working with the wood. When their peers saw them on the screen digging around in the woodpile, a few more decided to go check it out with them.

These choices were evaluated on the best day of the project. During prototype testing, right in the middle of the project, students got real, usable feedback on their designs: We poured some contaminated water through their systems and used a nitrate sensor to measure the water contamination. I calibrated and ran the sensor, and it gave them an honest evaluation of their progress.

I was amazed when a design I didn't like was among the most effective, and I was heartbroken when one group's creative design actually made the water worse-a great learning moment as they worked out how they had gone wrong.

In every case, the sensor hadn't even left the test water before the students were comparing results and trying to figure out why each design had performed the way it had. Their discussions were exactly what the NGSS expects of Kansas students. Each group then had the opportunity to continue working on their projects, confident that their choices mattered.

Never forget that the tools and materials in a makerspace are means to an end: students exploring their own creativity. Providing more tools gives the students options, but no single tool is more important than the students' ownership over their ideas and processes. What matters is that they have room to tinker, to fail (and recover), to innovate, and to surprise.

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In freshman biology, lab work and design thinking come together through maker education.