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These students' inventions are featured in the illustrations.

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Books that inspire making...

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Best Practices for Documentation & Portfolio Creation

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Best Practices for Documentation & Portfolio Creation

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I recently was asked to give a webinar that would guide participants through selecting the right products for their makerspace, where I unveiled my "Worlds of Making 'MAKER' Framework." I was really excited about this opportunity, as it gave me the chance to address one of the questions I am most frequently asked.

In my work with schools across the country, I have shied away from telling people what they should buy in their makerspace, although many want to know from me what they should buy. I strongly believe in following a process for how you and go about selecting the right products for your makerspace.

My definition of what a makerspace is drives every decision I make for my makerspace, and that includes selecting the right products for my makerspace. Many people associate the Maker Movement with 'stuff' like 3D printers, but in my opinion, this isn't what pushes children outside of their comfort zone, it is that opportunity for open-ended exploration that is key. When creating a makerspace, many school districts just go out and buy things that other districts buy, really in essence, just replicating another school districts makerspace.

But here's the reality: no two school makerspaces should be exactly alike because no two school communities are exactly alike.

Creating Your Mission Statement and Maker Theme

Every makerspace needs to have their own unique vision, and that vision should be written down the form of a mission statement. That statement will help you convey to others what your makerspace is trying to achieve and to help people better understand your space, but it will also help you be able to better select products that are appropriate and meaningful to your particular makerspace.

In addition to a mission statement, I cannot stress enough the importance of properly planning your makerspace.

This is this process that I have written and spoken about at length, and one that is going to help you uncover a space that is unique and meaningful and relevant to your school community. This process will help you uncover themes for your makerspaces and this will give you a much more critical lens when selecting products for your makerspace.

A Five-Step Framework for Selecting the Right Products

Once you have your themes in place, and if you do have a budget or access to materials, resources, and supplies, how do you decide what to select for your makerspace? Here is the "Worlds of Making 'MAKER' Framework for Choosing the Right Products for Your Makerspace":

This is the framework I use to decide what I want to put in my makerspace, and it is the one that I have used for years. It has never let me down.

Here is the framework further broken down:

In my opinion, next-generation makerspaces are mobile. So, the first section of my framework is about Mobility.

Does the product support free-range learning, and liberate learners from the limitations of a physical makerspace-therefore increasing equity and access? Just as students no longer need to be tied to a computer lab, mobile technologies can liberate learners from the limitations of a physical makerspace. Hence, you should build an environment that include resources that that encourage tinkering, play, and open-ended exploration for everyone. Equity and access are at the heart of ensuring that all students have the opportunities available to them that school makerspaces present.

The next section of my framework echoes a piece of my definition of a makerspace-the importance of Open-Ended Exploration.

Many maker kits are limiting in that students have no options, other than following step-by-step directions to make something. Our students have opportunities to follow directions and make things constantly, but what differentiates your makerspace experience from those is the existence of opportunities for students to take control of their own learning. So. when choosing products for your makerspace, you need to ask yourself: Is the product limited to step-by-step directions, or does it maximize inquiry by allowing the opportunity for open-ended exploration?

My makerspace planning process begins, first and foremost, with having Knowledge of Student Needs, Wants & Interests. So often I get asked the question of "What should I buy that will get my students excited?" or "How do I know what items to buy that my students will be interested in?" My response is always, just ask your students1 Take the time to understand your learners, to hear their voice and to connect your space and the products to the needs, wants and interests of your students.

The next step in the framework for selecting the right products for your makerspace is Empowerment & Engagement.

In my makerspace, I have what are called fixed stations and flexible stations:

The fixed stations are products, materials and activities that are out in my space at all times.

The flexible stations are activities, resources, materials and supplies that rotate in and out of the space.

Oftentimes, flexible stations need extra adult support, guidance, or modeling. However, the materials, resources and supplies at the fixed stations-the stations that are out in the space at all times-have a low-barrier of entry. This means that the products are easy enough for the students to get started with independently (maybe with the help of signage or prompts or modeling), but they meet students where they are. This insures that our makerspaces are inclusive and help to build learner independence.

And then, there's the question to Relevance. My Makerspace Planning Process allows you to connect your makerspace to your school community, as well as the wider world. When looking for products for my makerspace, I want to be sure that they have relevant connections to my school community, and the wider world. This is what is going to ensure that what the students learn, transcends just your makerspace.

Selecting the right products for your makerspace is critical. In addition to my framework, I started a Padlet, in which members of my PLN contributed their thoughts on selecting products for a makerspace. I encourage you to read their thoughts, and contribute your own for us to all learn and grow from.

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What Should I Buy For My New Makerspace? A Five-Step Framework For Making the Right Purchases - EdSurge News

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I recently was asked to give a webinar that would guide participants through selecting the right products for their makerspace, where I unveiled my "Worlds of Making 'MAKER' Framework." I was really excited about this opportunity, as it gave me the chance to address one of the questions I am most frequently asked.

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These challenges are great for online learning, virtual teaching of STEM & Makerspaces.

Share your creations @WhyMaker and #designchallengedaily on social media.

The WhyMaker Store has tons of resources to help you teach STEM & Maker Ed effectively.

Check it out the best resources ever!

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These challenges are great for online learning, virtual teaching of STEM & Makerspaces. Share your creations @WhyMaker and #designchallengedaily on social media. The WhyMaker Store has tons of resources to help you teach STEM & Maker Ed effectively. Check it out the best resources ever!

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Students respond to real audiences. Writing for a few editing partners and the teacher just isn't enough. Connecting students with authentic readers helps inspire their best creative work.

Stockman recommends checking out Write About, National Novel Writing Month, Wattpad, and Figment online, as well as looking into local newspapers and writing contests (like these eleven great writing contests to share with your students).

For an easy start, download this free activity for writing a letter to the editor of The New York Times. It can make a great enrichment project for your strongest writers, or an engaging whole class activity.
#4 Let students share process as well as results
This great idea caught me by surprise. Perhaps you too will wonder how you could have missed this in your teaching. Stockman recommends giving writers a chance to talk about what they are learning about the process of writing. "Make time for writers to share the strategies they are learning in addition to the pieces they produce" (76). If one student has figured out how to make good transitions between parts of her plot, another has found a way to mix and match descriptive writing elements from three mentor texts, and another just had an "aha" moment about how to write a killer conclusion, why not let them teach others?

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to incorporate some flipped learning into a curriculum, and this strategy struck me as a great opportunity to let students create shareable videos. If you are spending your class time writing in your makerspace, consider letting students create the homework - videos to watch at home explaining the strategies they are using for success.
Finally, don't get hung up on how maker spaces connect to standards.
One of my favorite phrases in the book is Stockman's final mantra, "pursue standards, not standardization" (81). She pushes hard for deep reflection about what you hope to achieve as a teacher, what your own standards are, how you want to help your students, and how you can keep the standards that you set separate from conformity and standardization.

In a helpful section called " What YOU can do tomorrow" at the end of the final chapter of the book, Stockman shares this prompt, which feels useful in the face of standards-based pressures whether or not you want to jump entirely on board the writing makerspace train.

"Define your purpose. Craft a credo, a manifesto, or a purpose statement that defines your stance. Why do you teach? What kind of learner are you hoping to shape? How do you hope to influence your community, your school system, and the colleagues you support? Why do you matter? In what ways will you help your students matter? Why are high standards important to you? Why should learners pursue them?" (83).

Stockman, of course, is considering this topic because a classroom given entirely over to a writing maker space may not immediately appear to be accomplishing the daily tasks of the common core. Deep learning is clearly taking place in her maker space, but not in neat order.

However, my guess is that most readers of the book, like me, will quickly identify some wonderful takeaways from the book but choose not to revolutionize their classroom entirely into a maker space. A maker corner? Absolutely! A maker unit? Yee-haw! A maker festival? Love that idea!

Read the book for yourself if you want to dive deeper into Stockman's theory and techniques. Or begin by testing out these four applications and see if you want to dig deeper.
Curriculum Spotlight
Looking for an easy way to add a bit of making to your curriculum right now? Check out my literary food truck project. You'll be reveling in the combination of great food and stellar literary analysis in no time.

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Writing Makerspaces: 4 Ways to Apply the Maker Movement to your Classroom

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Angela Stockman's book, Make Writing: 5 Teaching Strategies That Turn Writer's Workshop Into a Maker Space , is absolutely unique. In more than ten years in education, I have never read or heard of this idea before. Stockman proposes we let students "make" their ideas before they write th

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Recently, I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with criticism. I was told (not to my face) by a visitor to our school that our library makerspace is not a "real makerspace". This same person stated that our woodshop is a "real makerspace" because it has power tools. She suggested that I "do some research" on what makerspaces actually are.

Feeling personally insulted aside, what bothers me most about this statement is the concept that some makerspaces are more valid than others and that a makerspace is solely defined by the tools it contains. I do agree that our woodshop is a makerspace, even though we don't call it that. Our woodshop is awesome, and I'm so glad that we have a space where students can learn how to use saws, drills and other tools to build awesome projects as part of their curriculum. Yes, that is a makerspace.

But is my space any less of a makerspace simply because it doesn't have power tools? Because it doesn't have a 3D printer? Because my students build with LEGOs, K'nex and cardboard?

Defining Makerspaces

All of this got me thinking about how we define "makerspace". So I did what librarians do best: I researched. I gathered together my books on makerspaces, I searched our databases for articles, and I crowdsourced the amazing hive mind of Twitter.

For the record, here's my own definition of a school Makerspace:

A makerspace is a place where students can gather to create, invent, tinker, explore and discover using a variety of tools and materials.

A makerspace can be anything from a repurposed bookcart filled with arts and crafts supplies to a table in a corner set out with LEGOs to a full blown fab lab with 3D printers, laser cutters, and handtools. No two school makerspaces are exactly alike, nor should they be. Makerspaces are as unique as the school cultures they represent. There is no such thing as one form of making being more valid or better than the other. Makers are artists, crafters, knitters, seamstresses, builders, programmers, engineers, hackers, painters, woodworkers, tinkerers, inventors, bakers, graphic designers and more.

A #makerspace is a place where kids gather to create, invent, tinker, explore & discover. Click To Tweet

What the Research Says About Makerspaces

Here's where my research led me:

I like this definition from Samatha Roslund's book Makerspaces. I see three important elements to this definition: Place... people... make things. While different possible foci are mentioned, this definition does not limit a Makerspace to a particular set of tools. It's about a place, about a community. Another similar quote comes from the Educause Learning Initiative article, 7 Things You Should Know About Makerspaces:

"A makerspace is a physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build."

Makerspaces are not about the tools; they're about enabling making.

More on Makerspaces

"... [A] space where kids have the opportunity to make - a place where some tools, materials, and enough expertise can get them started. These places, called makerspaces, share some aspects of the shop class, home economics class, the art studio and science labs. In effect, a makerspace is a physical mash-up of different places that allows makers and projects to integrate these different kinds of skills." Dale Dougherty, The Maker Mindset, in Design, Make, Play

"Even if you don't have access to expensive... hardware, every classroom can become a makerspace where kids and teachers learn together through direct experience with an assortment of high and low tech materials." ~ Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez in Invent to Learn

"A Makerspace is a metaphor for a unique learning environment that encourages tinkering, play and open-ended exploration for all" ~Laura Fleming, author of Worlds of Making

Making, Creativity, and Design

"What do you do in a makerspace? The simple answer is you make things. Things that you are curious about. Things that spring from your imagination... that inspire you and things that you admire. The informal, playful atmosphere allows learning to unfold, rather than conform to a rigid agenda. Making, rather than consuming is the focus. It is craft, engineering, technology and wonder-driven." Thinkers and Tinkerers

"The most important quality of a makerspace is that it encourages creativity. This can be done with a space full of hand tools, materials, and finished projects. The culture in a space should support the idea that anything is possible." 3 Key Qualities for a School Makerspace

"Makerspaces provide hands-on, creative ways to encourage students to design, experiment, build and invent as they deeply engage in science, engineering and tinkering." Jennifer Cooper, Designing a School Makerspace (Edutopia)

"Makerspaces are collaborative learning environments where people come together to share materials and learn new skills... [they] are not necessarily born out of a specific set of materials or spaces, but rather a mindset of community partnership, collaboration, and creation." Library as incubator project

(Emphasis in quotes is mine)

The video above is really long by internet standards. But you should at least watch the first few minutes, where students share what their makerspace means to them.

Read up more on Makerspaces

(Note: post contains affiliate links. Actions taken may result in commissions for Renovated Learning)

Diana Rendina, MLIS, is the media specialist at Tampa Preparatory School, an independent 6-12 in Tampa, FL. Previously, she was the media specialist at Stewart Middle Magnet School for seven years, where she founded their library makerspace. She is the creator of the blog RenovatedLearning.com. She was a monthly contributor to AASL Knowledge Quest from 2015-2018. Diana is the winner of the 2016 ISTE Outstanding Young Educator Award, the 2015 ISTE Librarians Network Secondary Award, the 2015 AASL Frances Henne Award & the 2015 SLJ Build Something Bold Award. She is an international speaker on the Maker Movement and has presented at conferences including AASL, FETC & ISTE. Diana co-authored Challenge-Based Learning in the School Library Makerspace with Colleen and Aaron Graves and is also the author Reimagining Library Spaces: Transform Your Space on Any Budget.

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Defining Makerspaces: What the Research Says

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Recently, I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with criticism. I was told (not to my face) by a visitor to our school that our library makerspace is not a "real makerspace". This same person stated that our woodshop is a "real makerspace" because it has power tools.

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What does assessment look like in a Makerspace?

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What does assessment look like in a Makerspace?

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Makerspaces provide new affordances for learners and creative types to explore new and exciting branches of learning, creating and exploring from 3-D printing, e-textiles to computer-assisted-design. This leads me to wonder about the role or best stance for educators in this environment. According to Barniskis (2014),

"...many teachers are used to teaching a large group of children to work on one project at a time. However, in a makerspace environment, each student may be working with different tools and processes. The teacher needs to be comfortable with a considerable quantity of chaos in such an environment, as well as skilled with all of the tools and able to switch gears quickly." (p. 6)

In particular, it is the "switching gears" where educators assess learner proficiencies to inform next steps that is the subject of this paper. First, we'll examine makerspaces pedagogies and consider the teacher's/facilitator/coaches role, then explore and analyze the use of "traditional" assessment strategies in makerspaces, and finally, suggest three assessment strategies that seem well matched within a makerspace. Overall, we will consider the role of assessment in makerspaces and how does it need to be modified or adapted in this setting to help our makers?
Makerspace Pedagogies
In makerspaces, the role of learner has evolved from a passive recipient of information to the learner as an active creator and/or maker. The new affordances like 3-D printers, programmable robots, e-textiles, among many others provide a new and increasingly complex canvas for digital designers to build and make. With externals like MakeyMakey, Lego WeDo or Mindstorms, a makerspace can also be an environment that encourages makers and creators to computer program using languages from with "low floor" like block-based Scratch, or text-based Arduino or beyond. Yet, even with these tools that encourage creativity and design where students and makers might pursue their own projects, the role of the coach/educator/facilitator is crucial. They can encourage students to not only learn new skills but also feel comfortable and confident to create, make and perhaps even innovate. Striking a balance between teaching established and traditional elements and principles of design and also encouraging them to innovate can be tricky. The role, stance and practices of the educator are critical so that makerspaces can become a unique place for creativity and design and not simply another room where a specific a set of instructions are "delivered", then copied and then assessed. Perhaps in critically examining our assessment and evaluation practices we can find approaches and practices that best support our makers and creators in makerspaces.
Current Assessment strategies
Being evaluated is a key and yet sometimes challenging experience for most students (and perhaps everyone) historically and today. Yet educators acting as mentors can have a vital role in helping others develop their ideas and improve the design and functionality of prototypes. The role of mentors or coaches requires a modified approach than a traditional - teach then evaluate model. A review of makerspace literature and research seems to indicate that traditional evaluation and assessment methods continue to be considered as indicators of progress. For example, in some studies, the focus of assessment has been less on creativity and more on specific measureable outcomes determined beforehand by the teachers and curriculum designers. While determining key concepts and core fluencies is critical, perhaps a more flexible learner-centered approach would seem to be a better strategy than one based on immoveable standards. This is especially important in spaces that encourage creativity, innovation, design and perhaps arts. In regard to e-textiles, Peppler (2013) emphasizes art first "... that the e-textile designer is less concerned with coding efficiency-having as few lines of code as possible-than with achieving a particular artistic effect" (p. 38). Assessment remains a critical strategy to help mentor our makers and creators to extend their learning through their Zone of Proximal Development. (McLeod, S. A. 2012 para. 1). Yet in some studies, the justification for makerspaces seems to fall back on numbers to quantify students' outcomes and progress.

"When we analyzed their final Scratch programs using Brennan and Resnick's computational thinking framework [2], we found that 100% of the projects used sequential statements, loops, conditional statements, event handling, and 85.7% (or 6/7) of the projects used operators." (Davis, 2013, p. 440).

Here is another example "...when the multimeter was used, boys had the equipment in their hands 75% of the time on average to only 25% for girls." (Buchholz et al., 2012, p. 283).

These quotations seem to focus on specific quantitative measurements (i.e. use of specific computer science skills and use of a specific tool by gender.) Both these measurements are important as ONE form of analysis yet neither evaluation indicates a focus on creativity or innovation. Furthermore, they may actually be only a small step from a mark-based assessment with such narrow focus. For example, a student might earn an "A" mark for simply including a certain amount of loops in their project. Perhaps a model where students and teachers negotiate shared objectives would encourage more creativity. Kohn (2011) seems to reject any traditional form of teacher determined grades in educational spaces saying instead "...students can be invited to participate in that process either as a negotiation (such that the teacher has the final say)..." (p. 6). No doubt, the promotion of computational thinking and gender equality are critically important indicators for success, but perhaps assessment in makerspaces should be specifically focused on creativity, innovation and digital citizenship (helping others) above other specific technical requirements. In other words, a successful project might not include all the computational requirements nor be in the hands of a specific gender and still produce a creative and innovative prototype. Perhaps then assessment strategies should focus away from marks as indicators and instead look towards more qualitative methods that demonstrate a maker's thinking and detailed progress. In addition, it is unclear whether a grade reflects the "potential" of an idea or a "snapshot" of the project at that time. Subsequently, this type of mark-based assessment in quantifiable terms obscures rather reveals student progress, creativity and potential.
Three Methods of Assessments
Perhaps makers and educators might instead work collaboratively to critically evaluate designs based on principles like Design Thinking that encourage both process and final product through a variety of activities and practices. Based on research into makerspaces and practices, three types of assessment tools seem to be good fits for makerspaces: design journals, reflections and badging.
Design Journals
A design journal can be either physical or digital and is a place to notes and instructions about a particular prototype or program. With prompting, students can not only write about the process but also be prompted to engage in new forms of thinking and processes like design thinking. Design thinking is an excellent process to solve challenges and promotes a similar mindset to makerspaces with its emphasis on creativity, design and iteration. One excellent example of a design journal is found in the project page of in the web-based Scratch 2.0 site. Scratch is an excellent tool for block-based coding and has both Papert's "low floor (easy to get started) and high ceiling (can be used for increasingly complex projects). (Resnick, 2009, p.63). In addition to a page to create block-based commands is a project page which could be a design journal. Each project page ( Figure One below) has three sections for writing: instructions, notes and credits and a comments stream. The first area provides a place for instructions critical for those wanting to run the Scratch program. This area explores the use of each sprite, backgrounds and other commands.

Example of a Design Journal Figure One

The Notes and Credits section provides a place for the programmer to comment upon the design of the program including sources for resources used, a brief summary of their thinking, current progress and next possible steps. These possible next steps might be influenced by the comments section (which can be toggled on or off) by fellow programmers and Scratch users to provide feedback for the original programmers. Comments have the potential to be a shared and logged conversation about programming and specifically Scratch. In its highest level, it is collectivism where programmers and designer collect their best ideas on programming and designs in the Scratch forums. In Scratch, an ultimate form of flattery is the re-mix where programmers make a copy and tinker with a new iteration of the program which also includes a vital and transparent record of the original creator. This "built-in" design journal provides excellent opportunities for assessment as educators can observe not only the program but the programmer's dialogue with themselves and others. Educators could even join in the collective conversation embedded directly in the project with comments, suggestions and encouragement of their own. According to Nichols (2015), "as students document their thinking they are supported by community partners who act as mentors to promote their thinking and give them the real-world exposure and experience they need to overcome challenges" (para. 5). Nichols calls them "thought-books" and they could serve as a hybrid design journal and place for reflective writing. It is important to note that design journals could be in many different forms from traditional physical books to more sophisticated online creations like the OneNote Class Notebooks. ( See Figure Two below for an example from one of my classes).

OneNote Class Notebooks provide a sophisticated tool for designers and educators as the digital format would allow the curation of a notebook that could include embedded physical sketches, notes, photos, animations, documents, videos, links to 3-D designs (i.e. Tinkercad) and even involve audio and video conversation as either a shared private conversation or even public if shared online. Perhaps the OneNote ClassNotebook moves the Design Journal up the ladder up in the SAMR model on technology integration from the substitution ring towards the augmentation or modification stages. (Puentedura, 2014, p. 2). Not to suggest that this amount of complex technology tools are always necessary and may even "get in the way" through diverting focus. After the potentially and rightfully "messy" of a design journal, the next assessment tool for educators allows for more focus on thoughts and words.
Reflective writing
For more depth into the thinking of learners in makerspaces, reflective writing could be another assessment tool for educators to explore the metacognition of makers and creators. Using tools like physical notebooks or even digital forms like blogs, makers and creators share their goals, process and experiences from their perspectives. If this reflective writing is shared, then educators and mentors can potentially have insight into the "black box" that is a learner's thinking. Access to this form of writing allows mentors and educators to help learners "level up" and reach the next stage for their progress or even when to "move on" to something new in the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). In short, makers and learners need to focus on the process being as important (or perhaps more) than a "final" product. Reflective thinking and writing should take place at various points (say beginning, during and end) as creation and making is occurring so that educators can see the process of student thinking and suggest next steps or extend thinking further when needed. Educators and mentors can leverage reflective writing of makers and creators to provide feedback in the form of constructive dialogue. They can also use this tool to plan next sessions and provide learning materials and guidance for the specific needs of makers and learners. Indications of progress and identifying next steps are part of the final assessment strategy using badging.

The awarding and distribution of badging can be one way to facilitate the conversation between makers and mentors through the awarding, earning and sharing of micro-credentials. "Digital badging recognizes learning and growth wherever it happens and helps people connect their accomplishments across institution types." (Fontichiaro, 2015, What is digital badging? para 2) Digital or physical badging has the potential to recognize and indicate learning outside of traditional classes and in unique environments like makerspaces. These tools are new to education but have been successfully used in organizations like Scouts or even objective-based video games. In other words, some students would have prior experience with badging in both physical and digital badges forms. However, bringing this assessment into the new and evolving "anywhere classroom" including a makerspace offers new opportunities for learners and educators to record their progress.

Badging could be an excellent indicator of the wide variety of skills, abilities and progress made by learners in a makerspace. However, there are a few criticisms that should be examined before utilizing badging for our makers. Some like Seliskar have cited badges as a motivating tool, yet I think that using badges only to motivate could have the opposite effect. (2014, para. 1) They might serve as a motivator in the short term but might be better served as a digital indicator of learner progress as issued by educators, mentors and specialists. The idea of a "badge economy" is a much more powerful concept with a longer timeframe as they provide a record of subject or skill mastery. In a "badge economy" student earns a backpack of badges with each carrying everything needed (i.e. metadata) to understand the badge (who gave it, what is it for etc.) Sunny Lee, a product manager from Mozilla suggests that "(t)he digital backpack enables the learner to be able to curate and manage the image that they want to represent to the rest of the world...the idea is that we're kind of laying down the plumbing for this badge economy to flourish. Now, we need some badges circulating around the economy to jumpstart it." (Ash, 2012, p.28) Makerspaces would seem ripe for the creation of many badges (i.e. mBot programmer) that learners could add to their backpack. (See Figure Three below for example badges.)

In this assessment model, students acquire key knowledge from a curated list by educators, curriculum designers or specialists in order to earn teacher-created badges. Teacher created badges are essential as they could serve as indicators for makers/creators or programmers to "level-up" their skills. For example, educators could indicate and celebrate students' initial progress on a particular tool (i.e. Level One) but create a scale to encourage them to explore the tool and their own creativity in more detail (i.e. Level Two...) According to Grier, "... the best approach to scaling digital badging is not to focus on students, but on their teachers." (2015, para 3). Teachers can provide the expertise to encourage next steps and extend thinking.

Perhaps an even more student-centered approach is a co-creation model between learners and educators to create a unique learning pathway for makers. This co-creating model has the potential for students to demonstrate core competencies but leaves room for creativity and innovation so critical to leveraging the potential of makerspaces. Like "stepping stones', learners navigate their progress throughout a specific area of focus with badges as indicators and then earners decide to keep private or share (with interested parties) along the way. Teachers might help students create a "...portfolio that reflects the skills and knowledge they have developed, as well as evidence..." (Grier, 2015, para. 11).

These badges could then be shared online at the discretion of the badge earners. Ash states that "...the badge earner must be responsible for managing his or her own badges." (2012, p. 28). Putting the sharing permissions in the hands of the learner is critical as no doubt in their mind or the minds of others (institutions, employers, even peers etc.) some badges will have more weight than others. This is certainly a valid criticism but the metadata in each badge will indicate the date, issuer and skills learned and demonstrated for clarity. This metadata is a clear indicator of learner's progress with sharing permissions at the discretion of the learner. The transferrable and sharing potential for badges through sites like credly.com or badgelist.com and housed on wikis, blogs or websites provides new opportunities for learners to share their progress, learning and success. This not only allows learners to find success but also to create a strong digital footprint potentially leading to future learning and collaboration opportunities in global settings. The Mozilla Open Badges might provide this global setting as place for learners to collect badges earned and issuers to add badges in a learner's digital "backpack". (See Figure Four below) However, the appealing nature of the issuing of these micro-credentials is that earners can decide to showcase and share the progress and achievement through the web to interested parties (i.e. recruitment for makers) in global market place of the internet.

Figure Four - Sample from digital backpack or eportfolio
More on Collaborative Assessment
Collaboration beyond student- teacher relationship also offers opportunities for makerspaces. The successful collaboration of educators, curriculum designers, researchers and specialists will aid learning environments and makerspaces that emphasize design and making through varied perspectives on student progress and perspectives. "If teaching artists partner with the shop teachers, home education teachers, and computer science educators in schools, a multifaceted makerspace can emerge." (Barniskis, 2014, p. 7) Makerspaces can be a good gathering point for conversations between learners with many different types of specialists and experts on next steps and sharing of progress.

Design journals, reflective writing or badging need not be public but can be the basis for crucial conversations concerning next steps between makers and peers or makers and mentors. Educators might plan out time for makers to have these conversations which will only help the makers in their learning but also provide evidence for educators on the progress of students. Even the conversation could be used for assessment, which might be recorded through a page in a design journal, written reflection or even a badge. Making a "pitch" and hearing feedback from peers or experts are an important element in the design thinking toolkit for educators and makers.

Finally, conversations with other parents, guardians and other important figures in a student's life can have an impact on learning and assessment as educators gain a wider perspective of student progress. Creating connections between home and school through open communication between educators, parents and students can be important to help educators create authentic experiences for students to learn and make progress.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Based on research into makerspaces and practices, three types of assessment tools seem to be a good fits for makerspaces: design journals, reflections and badging. Design journal and reflective writing are two strategies that emphasis metacognition and encourage learners to self-evaluate their progress in makerspaces. Learners can then choose what to keep private, or share with peers in a co-learning or collaborative structure and finally, engage with experts globally. Use of reflections at different stages of projects with a variety of audiences can also be critical to encourage increasing authentic feedback, assessment and evaluation for makers. Reflective writing and design journals are powerful tools for design thinking strategies. Badging is another pedagogical strategy that might serve to clearly indicate the desired outcomes (i.e. design, computer science as well as an implied gender balance) and yet encourage students to explore a breadth (and depth) of maker tools in an open-ended way. In addition, these forms of assessment are easily incorporated into design club routines and workflow. (see Figure Five below) If makerspaces offer new pedagogy and opportunities for students, then challenging and critically evaluating our assessment practices is vital if we are to encourage student success and innovation.

Figure Five Workflow model

In terms of assessment, I do not mean to suggest that creativity and innovation should be the only focus in a makerspace as no doubt equitable access, student enthusiasm, gender equality, computational thinking, curriculum expectations, digital citizenship are vital. In fact, the powerful affordances in makerspaces may even allow makers to make progress regardless of the stance of educators. However, switching between a teacher-centered to student-centered stance and using assessment practices like design journals, reflections and badging allow for mentors and educators to better explore the "black box" that is the mind of the makers. These tools could provide the necessary support for makers to grow and flourish. According to Fessakis et al. (2013) "... the teacher's role during the proposed learning activities (computational) was critical. She encouraged and supported the children to overcome their difficulties, controlled the various coordination issues that came up (e.g. the next player's turn) and handled the cases where the children seemed not to be able to deal successfully with." (p.86). Overall, makerspaces offer learners to opportunities create a unique pathway with new and exciting experiences for learners and mentors who can support, assess and even co- learn.
References
Ash, K. (2012, June 13). Colleges Use 'Digital Badges' to Replace Traditional Grading. Digital Directions, 05(03), 26. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/06/13/03badges.h05.html?tkn=SPOFHItvuFGEOUO0jyGFYbA5FMSXhWNiR5R8&print=1c

Barniskis, Shannon, Crawford (2014). Makerspaces and Teaching Artists, Teaching Artist Journal, 12:1, 6-14, DOI: 10.1080/15411796.2014.844621 retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com.uproxy.library.dc-uoit.ca/doi/pdf/10.1080/15411796.2014.844621

Culutta, Richard. (2011). Zone of Proximal Development. retrieved from < http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/development/zone-of-proximal-development.html>.

Davis, R., Kafai, Y., Vasudevan, V., & Lee, E. (2013). The education arcade: Crafting, remixing, and playing with controllers for Scratch games. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 439-442. New York: ACM. doi: 10.1145/2485760.2485846

Fessakis, G., Gouli, E., & Mavroudi, E. (2013). Problem Solving by 5-6 Year Old Kindergarten Children in a Computer Programming Environment: A Case Study. Computers & Education, 63​, pp. 87 - 97.

Fontichiaro, Kristin, and Angela Elkordy. (2015 26 Mar). Chart Students' Growth with Digital Badges ISTE. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?article=Chart%2Bstudents%2Bgrowth%2Bwith%2Bdigital%2Bbadges&articleid=320&category=In-the-classroom>.

Gerstein, Jackie, (2013, March 16 th) I Don't Get Digital Badges. Retrieved from https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/i-dont-get-digital-badges/

Grier, Terry. (2015, 31 Oct.). So You Want to Drive Instruction With Digital Badges? Start With the Teachers. EdSurge News. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-10-31-so-you-want-to-drive-instruction-with-digital-badges-start-with-the-teachers.

Horvath, Joan and Cameron, Rich, (2015, May 5th). The New Shop Class: Getting Started with 3D Printing, Arduino, and Wearable Tech, Apress, Technology in Action

Ito, Mizuko, Kris Gutiérrez, Sonia Livingstone, Bill Penuel, Jean Rhodes, Katie Salen, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, S. Craig Watkins. (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.

Kohn, Alfie. (2011) The Case Against Grades. Educational Leadership: November 2011, Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/case-grades

McLeod, S. A. (2012). Zone of Proximal Development. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html

Moura, Karly, (2016, January 17th) Gamifying our STEM Lab Challenges. Retrieved from http://karlymoura.blogspot.ca/2016/01/gamifying-our-stem-lab-challenges.html

Nichols, Garth. (2015 Sept. 10th) Inquiry & Design Lab. The Teachers Guild. https://collaborate.teachersguild.org/challenge/how-might-we-create-rituals-and-routines-that-establish-a-culture-of-innovation-in-our-classrooms-and-schools/ideas/inquiry-design-lab>.

Ostashewski, N., Reid, E., and Reid, D., (2014). Introducing 3D Printing to the classroom using inquiry: A case study describing implementation, challenges and successes. pp 1597-1605 EdMedia Tampere, Finland

Puentedura, Ruben R. (2014, November 12 th) SAMR: First Steps. Retrieved from http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2014/11/13/SAMR_FirstSteps.pdf

Seliskar, Holli Vah. (2014, May 16 th). Using Badges in the Classroom to Motivate Learning." Faculty Focus. Retrieved from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/using-badges-classroom-motivate-learning/.

Siko et al. (2013). Disappearing Future 2. Educational Processes. Retrieved from http://www.wfs.org/futurist/2013-issues-futurist/september-october-2013-vol-47-no-5/top-10-disappearing-futures/disap-0

Turri, Dan et al. (2013). Disappearing Future 2. Educational Processes. September-October-2013 Vol.47-No.5

Resnick et. al. (2009). Scratch: Programming for All. Communications of the ACM November 2009 Vol. 52, No. 11, p. 60 - 67 Retrieved from http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Scratch-CACM-final.pdf

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wiley, David. (2012, June 12th) Iterating towards Openness. Retrieved from http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2397

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What does Assessment look like in Makerspaces?

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Makerspaces provide new affordances for learners and creative types to explore new and exciting branches of learning, creating and exploring from 3-D printing, e-textiles to computer-assisted-design. This leads me to wonder about the role or best stance for educators in this environment. According to Barniskis (2014), "...many teachers are used to teaching a large group...

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The Maker movement is spreading through schools. You'll see many tools becoming part of unique maker ecosystems in schools based upon teacher expertise and student interests. (For more about the Maker movement read How the Maker Movement is Moving into Classrooms.)

Let's look at the most common tools being used in makerspaces.

These devices have a tremendous amount of PR value, so having them can create a "buzz" around the makerspace. Although 3D printers have the issues of being slow, using material that's a bit expensive, and needling to be closely monitored, they have created a groundswell of interest. (If you've heard the term MakerBot, it's just one brand name -- there are many 3D printers with different product names.)

Vinyl Cutters

Recently named the top tool for makerspaces, the traditional vinyl cutter can be purchased for several hundred dollars. Stickers, signs, banners, stencils, silkscreens, and more can be created with even low-end vinyl cutters. The fast print time means that more students can be engaged in printing and sharing with them.

Laser Cutters

Using Inkscape and some new lower-end laser cutters can get expensive, particularly if you need to provide the extra ventilation required for a laser cutter. However, these tools are popular in makerspaces to make acrylic enclosures for robotics, nice signs, and permanent words etched in whiteboard material.

The Return of the Woodshop

An interesting comment from those installing 3D printers in schools is that young people today don't know how things are put together. Some schools are having students construct with foam board first, and others are encouraging them to build with wood. A real-world perspective of how things will fit together is required in order to design and make in 3D. (See Edutopia's post about how woodshops are making a comeback.)

The Return of Home Ec

Some makerspaces having sewing machines and other craft materials, such as the ever-popular duct tape (including the new patterned stuff.) The skillset that was once taught in home ec classes intertwines with other more technical skills as students design and create robots from the circuitry to the embellishment. Indeed, the cachophony of voices to " bring back home ec " are rising, and some elements are being included in makerspaces.

Marketed as an "invention kit for everyone," this cool tool was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. You can turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the Internet. Want to create a banana piano or to play Pac-Man using a paper drawing? Yes, you can do that. At ISTE (in the video above), we made a human MaKey MaKey piano as Josh Ajima (@designmaketeach) helped us connect. All you need is something that can conduct just a small amount of electricity. Beach balls, lemons, and even plants, grandmas, and coins have become part of MaKey MaKey inventions.

Like the MaKey MaKey, this system from @birdbraintech is one that can be created with a minimal amount of programming. I played with the Hummingbird at ISTE, and within a few moments, with the help of my friends Lee Kolbert and Lisa Thumann, we had a mobile "Istebot" whose eye color changed by how close we were to the distance sensor. (In the following video, note the ISTE servo motor on top of the robot's head.)

Arduino sells motherboards that can be programmed in so many ways. While they may require a bit more making than some of the pre-assembled kits, students who know how to program and more advanced makers are using these boards to create anything. DIY magazines from Instructables to Popular Mechanics are sharing projects with these easy-to-program boards.

Raspberry Pi

My nephew bought a Raspberry Pi and used online instructions to make his own Mini-Minecraft server. The Raspberry Pi is a mini-computer, and the hard drive is an SD card. A massive community has emerged around this easy to use mini-computer that costs under $100.

Lego Mindstorms and NXT Challenges

Legos have always fascinated kids. While some have tried, printing Legos doesn't work well because of the precision needed to attach these pieces. As Stephan Turnipseed, President Emeritus of Lego Education, told me at ISTE, many are using 3D printers to print embellishments for their Legos, and they do a great job of teaching kids how things fit together.

But the challenges, particularly the NASA challenges, have students constructing, building, and competing. The robust support materials and lesson plans are helpful for educators. You can even use making to teach writing with their Storybuilder kit and app.

Minecraft is a makerspace because there are apps that let you build in this world and then pull the 3D object out and print it. Minecraft EDU is a fantastic way to teach 3D space because it is so engaging. It also teaches computational thinking as students use "recipes" to create things.

And So Much More . . .

Duct tape, cardboard, crafting supplies, and soldering kits are among the many materials and tools being used in makerspaces -- along with lots of plastic bins and labels (see the video above). There is so much more to the Maker movement, but one thing is certain. Educators and librarians who want their schools and libraries to stay relevant and engaging will read, learn, and reinvent themselves. We talk about ways to engage parents and students in learning. Here it is.

Excellent schools around the world are connecting and collaborating as they make. Excellent 21st century schools will incorporate aspects of the maker movement in their design and curriculum.

How are you making? Please share what you're doing in the comments.

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The DIY World of Maker Tools and Their Uses

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The Maker movement is spreading through schools. You'll see many tools becoming part of unique maker ecosystems in schools based upon teacher expertise and student interests. (For more about the Maker movement read How the Maker Movement is Moving into Classrooms.) Let's look at the most common tools being used in makerspaces.

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Just because we are not in class doesn't mean we can't design and create! Join Pittsburgh STEAM Station as we embark on fun challenges using supplies you alr...

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After the Planning: Implementation Tips 

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After the Planning: Implementation Tips 

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STEAM

After the Planning Phase: 7 Tips for Implementing a Makerspace

Districts with multiple makerspaces describe what works.

Once a school district has completed the initial planning phase of their makerspace initiative - as described in a previous THE Journal article - it's time to let teachers and students start tinkering, creating and designing. Here, our expert educators offer seven tips for successful makerspace implementation.

1) Find Teachers to Champion the Movement

Some teachers may be reluctant to venture into the makerspace. Finding at least one teacher in the school who has experience with maker culture, or who is confident in trying it out, can help break the ice for other teachers.

"You can't try these exciting learning initiatives without true champions for your building and your schools," said Justin Aglio, director of innovation at Montour School District in McKees Rocks, Penn.

2) Offer PD for Teachers

Makerspace champions can help their colleagues learn how to operate equipment or integrate tools into a lesson. Winnetka Public Schools in Illinois uses institute days as opportunities for teachers to teach each other. During an institute day in February, two makerspace teachers led sessions about how to use makerspace materials and what classes can do in a makerspace.

Another school in the district held a makerspace open house, with the students as the guides.

"They had students set up in each of the spaces, and the adults rotated through the spaces to learn about different activities that they could do," said Maureen Miller, director of technology in the district. "It was the students teaching the teachers."

3) Allow Teachers to Borrow Equipment for Classroom Use

Some districts support a school-wide maker culture by allowing teachers to check out equipment and materials from the makerspace for use in the classroom. "We call it a lending library, where it's a lending tech library, so people can come in and check out to use in their room and come back and check in," Aglio said.

"If you're trying to incorporate a specific concept or skill into your lesson, the lending library gives you the opportunity to take that item back to your room and make it a part of your whole lesson," said Jennifer Kosarych, a kindergarten teacher in Montour School District.

4) Let Kids Use It during Free Time

Makerspaces can serve as an ideal venue for students to develop the 21st century learning skills of communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking. "It's all about play. You want the kids playing," Miller said. "And they are playing, but they're actually learning some valuable skills. They're learning to collaborate and communicate and think critically and [learning] that failure is OK."

While students may enjoy using the makerspace as part of the school curriculum, many are enthusiastic about working on their own projects outside of class time. At Winnetka Public Schools, the middle schools open the makerspaces to students before school and at lunch "and kids are taking advantage of that," Miller said. "We have kids that are lined up to get into the school at 7:30, when we don't start until 8:25. Their parents used to be pushing them out of bed at 8:20 in the past, and now they're there every day and anxious to learn and do in the makerspace."

Several student clubs have also evolved out of the makerspace, including a sewing club, a woodworking club and a coding club.

5) Keep it Organized and Secure

With so many people using equipment and materials in the makerspace or taking them to the classroom, it can be easy for things to go missing or get broken. It's important to create a system for organizing items - in clear plastic bins on shelves, for example - and encourage students to maintain that system. "They have to learn the responsibility of cleaning up after themselves, putting those materials back," Kosarych said. "If it's more organized, the better it is for them to use the space."

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After the Planning Phase: 7 Tips for Implementing a Makerspace -- THE Journal

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STEAM Districts with multiple makerspaces describe what works. Once a school district has completed the initial planning phase of their makerspace initiative - as described in a previous THE Journal article - it's time to let teachers and students start tinkering, creating and designing. Here, our expert educators offer seven tips for successful makerspace implementation.

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Creating Authentic Maker Education Rubrics 

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Creating Authentic Maker Education Rubrics 

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Part 1: Process

The process of making in the classroom needs to be incorporated in the final grade. Is each student fully engaged? Do students use their time wisely? Have they come to class prepared with research and materials?
Photo credit: Lisa Yokana
As part of a recent project in my school's senior-level public policy class, students crafted scale models of Lower Manhattan in preparation for a disaster simulation. Research on the infrastructure of their area had to be completed in order for students to have the knowledge to build. To ease social studies teachers' anxiety over this part of the grading, I encouraged them to take photographs and videos of the students in action. This gave them a record of individual student engagement over several days' time, which they could refer back to when finalizing grades for the project.
Photo credit: Lisa Yokana
Part 2: Understanding

Students must demonstrate an understanding of materials and tools. Do your students grasp the nature and properties of different materials? Can they manipulate them and use them appropriately? A student who is using metal and repeatedly bends it until it breaks doesn't show a basic understanding of its nature. Spend a few days in a maker classroom and you will understand that cleaning up, as well as safety, is also important. Do students treat the materials, tools, and space respectfully? Are they considerate of others' process and creations? Creating a "safe" space in the maker classroom, both literally and figuratively, will allow your students to experiment with unusual ideas and build their creative confidence, while negativity or unsafe practices will inhibit them.

Habits of Mind

As part of the process grade, you will need to assess your students' habits of mind. What happens when a student is faced with a problem? Does he or she demonstrate persistence or grit in the face of a setback? Making students conscious of their reactions to adversity, as well as how they navigate their way through it, is important to building resilience. Older students can regularly photograph their projects, which will help them keep track of their struggles and make self-reflection easier, as well as capturing the different stages for their portfolios. Even young students can answer questions like:

What was difficult?

What did you do when you didn't know what to do?

What would you do differently next time?

Making students aware of their choices and actions in these situations empowers them and will help them the next time they struggle. Let them know that you are going to assess their willingness to take risks. Their first idea should not be their final and only one. Expect them to test their ideas and reiterate. An innovator's mindset can be learned through thinking routines, and students can become confident and comfortable in that awkward place of not knowing the "right" answer.

The Story of Understanding

The rubric must capture and assess the understanding gained through the process of making. Begin by asking yourself what material and knowledge you want students to understand through the project.

Their projects are artifacts which capture their learning and must be broken apart and analyzed in the same way as a "real" artifact. Ask students to tell the story of their understanding: Did the physical act of putting things together help them make sense of the complex relationships between the parts and pieces of knowledge? Did they have an "aha moment"? Often, I ask students to write a reflection or give a formal presentation of their project in which they justify their choices of materials and format to ensure that they were purposeful. Why did they use a certain material? Why did they choose a certain format, such as a three-dimensional object rather than a two-dimensional one, to convey their ideas? Younger students will likely be less inhibited about verbally sharing these thoughts with the class.

Part 3: Product

Finally, there is the product itself. Craftsmanship and aesthetics should be considered:

Does the construction detract from the project?

Has the student successfully manipulated the materials?

Does the viewer notice badly-crafted details or is the implementation seamless?

For students whose making skills are still emerging, the written reflection allows them to articulate their intent, while the craftsmanship grade encourages them to pay attention to both manipulation and mastery of materials. In a successful maker project, such as our disaster preparedness unit at Scarsdale High School, students create an artifact which demonstrates their understanding of complex concepts. By crafting a rubric that includes process, understanding, and product, teachers can successfully capture and assess students' learning through making.

In the comments below, please share your experiences in assessing maker projects.

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Creating an Authentic Maker Education Rubric

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The process of making in the classroom needs to be incorporated in the final grade. Is each student fully engaged? Do students use their time wisely? Have they come to class prepared with research and materials?

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You've read about the maker movement. You've seen the posts with 3D printers, laser cutters, and three-axis mills in shiny new labs. And you want your students to start making, too. But you've got one big problem: you don't have a full lab -- or even a 3D printer -- because, like many educators, you don't have the biggest budget. Maybe you have no budget at all.

But what if you could get started making tomorrow and didn't need all the fancy tools to join this movement? Making starts with a mindset, and simple materials are all that you need to get started. There are resources all around you, materials hidden in plain sight, tools just waiting to be used for a creative purpose. And with a little dose of ingenuity, you'll have your students making in no time.

One perfect way start making on the cheap is through upcycling, the intentional transformation of hard-to-recycle materials into new products, thus saving them from the landfill. This type of real-world project not only teaches making skills but also helps you integrate making into your subject area. Study material science, explore industrial design, or dig into environmental education. As an added bonus, a project like this ignites your students' entrepreneurial spirit.

Here's the five-step strategy that I've used to get my students making products out of hard-to-recycle materials. These steps could be done in one class period each, but if you want more time for ideas and iteration, feel free to expand the timeline as you go. Expect a beautiful mess, a bit of chaos, and a lot of fun as your students start to save the landfills -- by design.

1. Gather Tools and Materials

You can gather your own materials or, as I prefer, have your students source their own. I find that bike tubes, fabric scraps, sewing supplies, scissors, craft punches, glue, staples, and cardboard are easiest to work with, but feel free to use other materials. For example, old fire hoses from the local fire station, flat tubes from the bike shop, old wetsuits, bottle caps, and corks are all very workable materials. Have your students use these material property sheets or this EPA site on common waste materials as a background research project while they are collecting supplies. If you want to go even deeper into the waste bin, check out by Edward Humes to see the journey of our trash.

2. The Design Cycle: Brainstorm, Iterate, Refine

Now you need to get some ideas on the table as to what your students could make. Design thinking is a great way to start, and Stanford University's d.school has a bunch of great resources. If you have time, I like to use their Gift-Giving Project with an upcycling focus. If your time is limited, use some of these brainstorming ideas:

Check out this Brainstorming at the d.school video.

I've created a set of printable Create Cards. Each student lays down a card from three different areas -- materials, location, and action -- and then students brainstorm products based on that combination.

Refine the idea. Once they have some ideas, I like to use the 635 Method to help refine each idea.

3. Prototype, Iterate, Evaluate

Here's the messy fun step where your students get to make one of their best ideas. It won't (and shouldn't) be pretty at first. Help them take risks, cut it too short, try again, get advice, and have no fear of "doing it wrong," because there's no wrong when we prototype. If they're still at a loss, direct them to some upcycling sites like Uncommon Goods, Green Guru, or Alchemy for inspiration. This can be done over multiple class periods or just one, depending how far you want to take the iterative process.

4. Fail, Iterate, Make Some More

No one wants to fail, but "fail" isn't a bad word. It's a good word representing a necessary part of the process. Building a mindset is one of best things to focus on, so help your student feel comfortable with failures that lead to success. Like all maker activities, upcycling isn't about pretty end results. It's about the process. Help students fail fast, learn from it, iterate, and try it again. Have them ask friends for help and give them thoughts when needed. Even better, tell them that you don't know either (gasp!), but that you can both try learning together. Overall, have fun and be creative. And make sure to leave at least ten minutes for cleanup at the end of each class!

5. Pitch, Pick, Produce

This final step can be skipped if you run out of time, but it's a great way to celebrate student efforts and even take a product to market. The gist is showing and telling their product idea with a short elevator pitch presentation. The best product (such as my students' bike tube wallet) can then be selected and manufactured for sale in your school or community. To take it even farther, have your students start to think like a startup and evaluate their idea using a Business Model Canvas (PDF) -- an alternative to a business plan.

If you still have time and want to go even deeper download a free upcycling curriculum with a bunch more ideas for getting your students making through upcycling.

Please share your own upcycling experiences in the comments section below.

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You've read about the maker movement. You've seen the posts with 3D printers, laser cutters, and three-axis mills in shiny new labs. And you want your students to start making, too. But you've got one big problem: you don't have a full lab -- or even a 3D printer -- because, like many educators, you don't have the biggest budget.

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My work with schools across the Nation on planning and creating makerspaces has proven to me that while anyone can create a makerspace, there are distinct differences between makerspaces and makerspaces. GREAT makerspaces are unique to your school community, vibrant for now, and sustainable into the future.

Recently on Instagram, I had a series of 7 posts in which I highlighted what I feel are the 7 attributes of a GREAT makerspace. These attributes are meant to serve as a guide for school districts and educators as they plan makerspaces for their school communities. They are as follows:

Whether you already have a makerspace or are just starting out, ensure that your makerspace is GREAT! Be sure to check out my NEW book, The Kickstart Guide to Making GREAT Makerspaces, for more!

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Making GREAT Makerspaces: The 7 Attributes of a GREAT Makerspace - Worlds of Learning

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My work with schools across the Nation on planning and creating makerspaces has proven to me that while anyone can create a makerspace, there are distinct differences between makerspaces and makerspaces. GREAT makerspaces are unique to your school community, vibrant for now, and sustainable into the future.

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Peters said she always tries to elevate the idea of "book-based craft" by finding a way to make each project less cookie-cutter. Projects are meant to be in the hands of the reader, not a facilitator, so they differ from the typical prompts children might find at the end of books. Her goal is "to make a visible connection between the value of hands-on learning and the value of introducing literacy at a young age and how those two can support each other."

She's mostly using children's books, but Peters wants the instructions to work for people of any age. To make sure pre-teens are not put off by using children's books, Peters was careful with her language. For instance, instead of printing "go ask your parents," instructions state, "find these materials."

In the past couple of months, Peters has completed 15 of these book-based maker projects and has received positive feedback from parents and patrons. As she has taken the idea around to teacher conferences, including the annual Maker Ed Convening, she was surprised to find that many teachers had never heard of such a project.
MAKING IT AFFORDABLE
Libraries with a limited budget can feel left behind because the maker movement usually centers on newer technologies, but librarians have been doing this work all along, said Cindy Wall, a librarian at Southington Library in Connecticut, where maker projects start with reading.

For instance, for preschool-age students, a program called "You've Got Mail" ties into the book "Please Write Back," about an alligator who writes to his grandmother. Kids receive postcards to decorate, and mail out. Wall's husband, a postal worker, visits to answer questions and collect the postcards.

In another program, elementary school students make abstract art that they then compare to machine-made art. The students start by reading a book about abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky. The library uses a machine called the "water color bot" to make abstract art, and then the children compare their art to what the machine produces.

The common denominator in any of these programs is a book or reading assignment -- the base from which the project builds.

Wall and her colleague, Lynn Pawloski, compiled their series of programs into a book called "Maker Literacy: A New Approach to Literacy Programming for Libraries."

Even if libraries can't afford high-tech toys, "You can still create maker programming with whatever you have," said Wall.

Echoing what Wall has found, Peters said teachers and librarians do these projects in some form all the time, but they can also use a maker activity as an opportunity to enhance comprehension and build literacy skills. It's empowering to pull something deeper from a seemingly simple book, she added.

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How Libraries Can Turn Stories Into Maker Projects

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Peters said she always tries to elevate the idea of "book-based craft" by finding a way to make each project less cookie-cutter. Projects are meant to be in the hands of the reader, not a facilitator, so they differ from the typical prompts children might find at the end of books.

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An ASCD Article

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Vol. 72

No. 4

Abstract

From Wind Tubes to Circuits

A Growing Movement

From Fabrication to Invention

How to Bring Tinkering to School

Making Future Scientists

The maker movement shows that creativity, playfulness and ingenuity can fuel STEM learning.

Abstract

From Wind Tubes to Circuits

A Growing Movement

From Fabrication to Invention

How to Bring Tinkering to School

Making Future Scientists

Gas-powered Roman chariots, singing greeting cards, play dough circuit boards, and homemade voltage detectors are just a few of the science projects you might see when you apply a maker approach to STEM education.

The maker movement celebrates creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship through the design and construction of physical objects. Maker activities may come across as playful, even slightly wacky, explosions of inventiveness. But in education contexts like schools, museums, libraries, and after-school programs, research shows that if the invitation to creativity is accompanied by intentional structure and guidance, maker activities can be channeled to support deep student learning (Blikstein, 2013; Vossoughi, Escudé, Kong, &amp; Hooper, 2013).

At the Tinkering Studio in the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco, we've been developing maker activities for almost two decades. During this time, we've observed how tinkering can support children's development of productive science learning identities. By this we mean that young people become interested in science, feel capable of doing science, and want to do science (Krishnamurthi, Bevan, Rinehart, &amp; Coulon, 2013).

Productive science learning identities are crucial for students choosing to pursue science academically, professionally, and through lifelong engagement. STEM-rich maker activities are powerful places for this identity work because they can accommodate a wide variety of interests and experiences, they blend intellectual and socioemotional engagement, and they provide opportunities for young people to develop, pursue, persist with, and accomplish original ideas and solutions in which they can take pride and ownership.

From Wind Tubes to Circuits

Wind tubes are an example of a maker activity that can serve as a motivating, engrossing introduction to scientific understandings. 1 The wind tubes activity consists of two to three fans facing upward, each set to a different speed (low, medium, or high). A clear acrylic tube is placed over each fan, with an 8-inch gap at the bottom so that objects can be inserted into the tube and lifted up by the breeze. Children work with an array of low-cost materials-berry baskets, cardboard toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners, straws, masking tape, pieces of cardboard, feathers, tissue paper, string, Wiffle balls, and so on-to construct objects that will float or fly.

The first object children make typically shoots up and out of the wind tube too quickly, or perhaps sinks down and doesn't fly, or bobbles erratically in the tube. They return to the worktable to refine the design, perhaps to add more stability, to streamline, to add weight or remove weight. They test and retest their designs.

Through this process, learners engage in making predictions, designing, testing, revising, and retesting. They grapple with the scientific phenomena of symmetry, balance, weight, and turbulence. When teachers use wind tubes in the classroom, they might provide a period of initial experimentation and then ask students to record their predictions, data, and evidence-based assessments of the relationship of design to flight. As students share their data, they are likely to observe that more than one design element produces similar results. Can they further explore these similarities to elucidate key scientific principles from their firsthand experiences? With students now personally invested in the phenomena, the activity opens the door for further studies of motion and stability, forces and interactions.

Making might look like fun and play, but as Edith Ackermann from MIT says, play is a child's most serious work (Duffalo, 2010). Indeed, both Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget have argued that play is a central developmental process for learning.

An example of channeling playfulness into curricular learning comes from the Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland, California, where high school students have access to a making space, located inside their science classroom, to build and test their developing scientific ideas and understandings. As a part of the 9th grade physics class, led by Ed Crandall, students are asked to develop investigations that may often require designing and engineering various apparatus that they can use to test their hypotheses or assumptions. One student, a swimmer, explored whether it was possible to build a gill that swimmers could use to extract oxygen from water. Another student, a passionate graffiti artist, designed and experimented with different spray paint can nozzles.

A third group of students wondered why raindrops, falling from such dizzying heights, don't kill people when they fall on their heads. They decided to build an apparatus that would enable them to simulate and measure rainfall. Their goal was to use a counteracting flow of air to suspend a drop of water; when the water drop stopped falling, they could measure the air velocity to determine the rate at which the "rain" was falling. The process of developing the questions; identifying the parameters and variables; and designing, constructing, and fine-tuning a wind tunnel to accomplish their goal ultimately deepened the students' commitment to the process of understanding how friction, gravity, and velocity interact to save us from the force of falling raindrops.

As these examples show, maker activities not only help students develop deep, firsthand learning about scientific concepts, but also engage them in the practices of science and engineering (National Research Council, 2012)-developing questions, defining problems, testing solutions, responding to feedback, and generating explanations or solutions.

A Growing Movement

Making as an instructional practice has deep roots. John Dewey, Jean Piaget, John Friedrich Froebel, and Maria Montessori all promoted making as central to the process of learning. Seymour Papert (1993) argued that the process of physically constructing an object is an effective way for students to both develop and demonstrate understanding. The current maker movement extends and updates this history by integrating digital tools and technologies (such as small, low-cost microprocessors or 3-D design software) into activities that support young people's design and construction goals.

Across the United States, schools, science museums, children's museums, and libraries are designing and building maker programs. School districts in Abemarle County, Virginia; Scarsdale, New York; Lakewood City, Ohio; and Monticello, New Jersey, have created dedicated makerspaces. Brightworks, a school in San Francisco, has organized its entire curriculum around making and invention. Poughkeepsie Day School in New York's Hudson Valley has two different dedicated makerspaces for its preK-12 student body, including a media-rich makerspace attached to the library and a blended physical-digital makerspace that can accommodate paint, sawdust, glue, and other more messy processes and materials.

Although the research on making as an educational practice is relatively new, it has begun to document the ways in which maker activities support the development of students' productive science learning identities, collaboration, and innovation (Blikstein, 2013; Kafai, Peppler, &amp; Chapman, 2009). Some scholars argue that making-if it's implemented with an equity lens that pays attention to the intellectual, emotional, and cultural resources children bring to the activity-has an especially powerful potential for engaging young people who have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields (Vossoughi, Escudé, Kong, &amp; Hooper, 2013).

At the Exploratorium, we've developed a framework (see " What Learning in Tinkering Looks Like ,") to evaluate the effectiveness of our maker activities; this framework can apply to the classroom as well (Bevan, Gutwill, Petrich, &amp; Wilkinson, in press). Its dimensions of learning, which include student engagement, initiative and intentionality, social scaffolding, and developing understanding, are features of student activity and behaviors that we can look for, observe, and support to sustain student engagement in the scientific practices inherent in the tinkering processes (Petrich, Wilkinson, &amp; Bevan, 2013).

From Fabrication to Invention

Some researchers caution that there's a risk of presenting maker lessons as step-by-step, recipe-like fabrication activities (Resnick &amp; Rosenbaum, 2013). For example, Blikstein (2013) recounts how his students' introduction to using laser cutters and vector drawing software, which he envisioned as a starting point for creative invention, was such a hit that students became obsessed with repeating the same laser cutting activity each week. They had learned how to produce professional-looking acrylic key chains, and they were content to stop at that point and move into mass production. This phenomenon threatened to shift the classroom from a locus of invention to a facility for fabrication.

To counter such "temptations of trivialization" (Blikstein, 2013, p. 8), it may be important to keep in mind that a powerful aspect of maker activities is what some call "tinkering" (Resnick &amp; Rosenbaum, 2013; Wilkinson &amp; Petrich, 2014). Tinkering, we believe, differs from mere fabrication because it centers on creative, improvisational problem-solving. In tinkering, the purpose of the project may shift as the learner gains new insights and improvises new solutions. Because the end point is unknown and emergent, tinkering closely parallels the exploratory and creative practices of science and engineering.

Classrooms may need to alternate between fabrication and tinkering; fabrication activities can be useful to familiarize learners with tools or properties of materials and help them develop skills that can later serve more complex and creative tinkering endeavors. Fabrication can provide quick and early moments of success that can be important foundations for deeper learning. It's important to move beyond this phase, but the road from fabrication to invention is not a one-way street: As activities become more complex and students encounter new tools and tasks, they may need to return to more fabrication-oriented projects to become fluent with new techniques. An initial grounding in recipe-based activities can serve as the gateway to creative experimentation later.

For example in a tinkering class on circuitry, students begin exploring the basic concepts of circuits by connecting batteries, bulbs, motors, and buzzers using wires and clips. These "circuit blocks" become the foundations for finding out what works and what doesn't. Adding switches and other inputs or outputs both allows students to develop a general understanding about how to wire a circuit and helps them understand that there are relationships between the types of circuits they build and the brightness of bulbs, speed of motors, or volume of buzzer tones.

With these foundational experiences behind them, students are ready to move on to a series of circuit-related activities that each draw on the initial experience, but add new complexities and often aesthetic opportunities for play, exploration, and personal expression. 2 For example, students may build "scribbling machines"-small objects that use markers as legs to move, leaving colorful trails that map their movements. Students pursue their own ideas for designing and customizing their machines, relying on the basic circuitry skills they developed earlier to power the offset motor that makes the scribbling machine move. Because their basic understanding of circuits has been established, when students' first designs don't behave as they planned, they are able to explore other variables, such as the construction of the body, the length of the legs, or the type of offset weight attached to the motors.

How to Bring Tinkering to School

Research and experience suggest a number of guidelines for bringing maker activities to schools. In a literature review prepared for the National Research Council, we identified the following elements that research suggests are important to developing tinkering as a context for learning (Vossoughi &amp; Bevan, 2014):

Create environments for making. Dedicated makerspaces can promote a new level of commitment to making; projects can be left out overnight, and specialized tools can be sectioned off. But dedicated spaces aren't always possible: Many programs have instead transformed classrooms and other settings to support the development of a maker community. Ways to transform a classroom or lunchroom into a temporary makerspace can include placing examples of prior maker work around the room for inspiration, developing a maker language that stresses such ideas as iterations or drafts, designing and replicating experiments, and organizing work spaces so that students can organically begin to collaborate if and when it makes sense (Sheridan et al., in press).

Interleave fabrication and tinkering. Maker activities support student engagement in scientific and engineering practices through open-ended, creative making. When students are introduced to new ideas or processes, however, they may need simple and easily achievable opportunities to master key ideas, relationships, or tools (Blikstein, 2013). For example, in introducing the wind tubes activity, you might have students start with just one material, such as cardboard cut or folded into different shapes, to observe how key dimensions like size, weight, or shape affect flight.

Provide multiple pathways. Select maker activities that are open-ended and don't have one right answer. 3 Invite students to write about or discuss the most challenging parts of their process and how these challenges led to the students' creations. The breakthroughs associated with the bigger challenges-for example, when a student persists through repeated frustrations to finally figure out the right gear ratio to propel a small motorized solar vehicle-are usually the parts of the process that students are most proud of (Petrich, Wilkinson, &amp; Bevan, 2013).

What Learning in Tinkering Looks Like

Tinkering Is Serious Play-table

Learning Dimension

Learning Indicator During tinkering activities, learners ...

Engagement

"spend time in activities display motivation or investment in activities"

Initiative and Intentionality

"set their own goals seek and respond to feedback persist to achieve goals take intellectual risks or show intellectual courage"

Social Scaffolding

"request or offer help to solve problems inspire or are inspired by new ideas or approaches make physical connections to the work of others"

Development of Understanding

"express a realization through affect or utterance offer explanation(s) for a strategy, tool, or outcome apply knowledge strive to understand"

Show that making is a common practice. Draw explicit connections between maker activities or tools and students' lives and interests. You can do this through class discussions about students' experiences with similar products, tools, or processes. Ask questions like, What kinds of objects in your house depend on electricity? What kinds of building activities have you seen or done at home? Who do you know whose job involves building or designing things? This process of relating the new to the familiar positions students as knowledgeable and experienced makers and opens the process to students who may not already think of themselves as makers or scientists (Vossoughi et al., 2013)

Don't equate making with tools alone. Although high-powered tools can be seductive, remember that making is a creative, person-led process. Making can include students lying on pillows on the floor crocheting, or sitting at tables with cardboard and glue. A room filled with tools but missing makers and their work is like an empty computer lab. Ensure that students will have the guidance and inspiration of an attentive maker by assigning a staff person to lead activities. Provide opportunities for students to share their knowledge of tools or processes they are passionate about.

Making Future Scientists

As we mentioned, tinkering activities can help produce students who are interested in science, feel capable of doing science, and want to do science. Some young people will channel these positive science learning identities into future studies and professions. Others will channel them into lifelong engagement with different aspects of nature (environmental stewardship, kitchen chemistry, and so on). Still others will stay tuned in to scientific developments in the news or in their local communities, or perhaps encourage their own children to pursue science careers.

Makerspaces, maker activities, and makers themselves already exist in many communities across the United States. Schools can partner with local museums, libraries, and community makerspaces to develop maker programs. You might want to test out a maker program in an after-school or family night context first. Once you and your colleagues see the active, joyful engagement that young people express in such programs, we can almost guarantee that you will want to seek out ways to integrate making and tinkering into regular school practices and classrooms.

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Vol. 72 No. 4 Abstract From Wind Tubes to Circuits A Growing Movement From Fabrication to Invention How to Bring Tinkering to School Making Future Scientists The maker movement shows that creativity, playfulness and ingenuity can fuel STEM learning.

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Because STEM engineering projects are by design so open-ended, they can be difficult to grade. Here are some things to keep in mind when you are assessing STEM engineering projects in your classroom:
1. You don't need to grade everything!
It's true. The learning still happens even if it's not recorded. I know this doesn't help you when your principal says you have to have x number of grades in the grade book by report cards. But in case you need to let yourself off the hook, remember that you don't have to grade everything!
2. Along the same lines, you don't have to grade everything in the traditional way.
STEM is not traditional paper and pencil learning, and it doesn't have to be graded that way. You don't have to have students fill out elaborate sheets with each STEM project. Don't be afraid to think creatively. You could:

-Have students snap pictures to submit to you electronically.

-Have students record all STEM assignments in a journal, and then you grade the journal holistically.

-Have students sketch their STEM projects and record what they learned.

-Just let them create and monitor and talk with them as they work.
Yeah, but how do I grade it?
I would assign a check plus, check, or check minus. I did this a lot with many activities in my classroom. How does that translate to a grade in the grade book? A check plus is 100, a check is 85, and a check minus is 70, assuming they participated and tried. That way, no one who tries, fails, and you're not stuck with a new stack of papers to bring home.
3. Rubrics
With STEM projects, I wanted students to take risks and not be afraid to try a new way, even if it might not work. Because of this, I never wanted to grade students for having a completed, successful project. Making mistakes is part of the learning process, and I don't want students to expect a perfect outcome of themselves. No scientist would do that. I usually used rubrics for projects such as engineering challenges, and when I create my rubrics, I think not only of the products, but of the behaviors that I want students to exhibit.

For STEM challenges, things like teamwork, participation, creative thinking, and reflection are every bit as important parts of the learning as the outcome of the project. That led me to create this rubric, which I include in my STEM Megabundle sets. You can grab it here free.

STEM Rubric
4. Learning Scales a la Marzano
You could also use learning scales to help both you and your students assess their learning. Here is a simple Engineering Learning Scale I created. Download it free here! There are several versions including depending on how much spare ink you feel like using.
STEM Scales
I hope these have helped you feel more comfortable about grading STEM projects. I love questions and comments! Do you have any tried-and-true ways of assessing STEM engineering projects? Do tell!
For more STEM posts, click here!
Happy STEM-ing!

Sarah

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How to Grade STEM Projects - More Than a Worksheet

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Because STEM engineering projects are by design so open-ended, they can be difficult to grade. Here are some things to keep in mind when you are assessing STEM engineering projects in your classroom: 1. You don't need to grade everything! It's true. The learning still happens even if it's not recorded.

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As part of my research for updating my Makerspace for The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, I went straight to a source that I knew had done a large amount of the work for me already: The Robot Test Kitchen. At RTK, a group of librarians have evaluated a wide variety of technology tools that are typically incorporated into library Makerspaces as part of an iLead project. I highly recommend looking through the side and reading each individual post. However, for my purposes I wanted to create a quick comparison chart to help guide conversation and my own decision making. I used in the information from RTK and put it into a quick reference spreadsheet.
See the entire comparison chart with click through links here
I then got a hold of Heather Booth and asked her to rank the technology choices based on the following criteria: small budget, unlimited budget, small groups, big groups, teen ease of use and fun, and librarian skill. For example, I asked her what technology she would recommend for me, a librarian who didn't have a high comfort level with coding, programming, etc. She then sent the question out to her colleagues at RTK and here are their thoughts.
Heather Booth:
MaKey MaKey - it's fun, expandable, reusable, and encourages creativity

Giant set of LittleBits - unlimited combinations, great support, encourages creativity

Sphero - because you need a handheld device for each, smaller is better. Pair up & work together.

This is hard... the nature of it all is that small groups just seem to work better. Maybe if I had to pick, it would be MaKey MaKey because I can imagine a whole room full of kids each paired up and working on creating cool stuff.

I think the Sphero wins hands down here, with a big set of Cubelets a close second, but as I've said before the allure of Sphero would last longer than Cubelets with teens.

6. Librarians with low tech skills

MaKey Makey or Sphero.

7. Librarians with decent tech skills or willing to experiment more

Arduino/Raspberry Pi. Then I'd ask them to write about what they did for a guest post on RTK so I could learn from them 😉
Michelle Kitty:
I would think little bits, if you have enough of them, would be good for big groups. The projects are endless.

Have you or are you using any of these technologies? Share your thoughts in the comments. Using a different type of tech not discussed here? Let us know what it is and what you think of it in the comments. I'm interesting in hearing what other people think.
Here's some additional information about Raspberry Pis Here's some additional information about Little Bits in SLJ

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Evaluating Potential Technology for a Makerspace: Cubelets, Little Bits, MaKey MaKey, Raspberry Pi, Sphero

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As part of my research for updating my Makerspace for The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, I went straight to a source that I knew had done a large amount of the work for me already: The Robot Test Kitchen.

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Learning Dimensions of Making & Tinkering

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Learning Dimensions of Making & Tinkering

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I've traveled a lot in the last year, talking to educators all over the US and Canada. The one thing that people always ask me for is a makerspace supply list. There are plenty of lists out there, so I thought I'd put a twist on it. Here are makerspaces must-haves from A-Z.

A aluminum foil, acrylic paint, art supplies

B beads, brass fasteners, buttons, balloons, beans, battery packs

C cardboard, card stock, cotton balls, crayons, clothes pins

D duct Tape, dowel rods, drafting tables, Dot and Dash robots

E Elmer's Glue, Energizer batteries, egg cartons

F felt, foam core, feathers, fabric, food coloring, First Aid Kit

G greeting cards, glue sticks, goggles, green screen

H hangers, hammers, hot glue guns,

I index cards, iPads, Instructables

J jars, jewelry-making supplies

K K'Nex, Kleenex boxes, keyboards, keys

L Legos, LED lights, lab coats, label maker, leaves

M markers, magnets, modeling clay, Makedo tools, Makey-Makey

N nails, needles, notebooks, newspaper

O oil pastels, Ozobots,

P pipe cleaners, playing cards, pencils, popsicle sticks, Play-Doh, pliers

Q Q-tips, quilting squares, quarts (containers)

R rulers, rubber bands, ribbon, recyclable materials

S sandpaper, screws, scissors, Snap Circuits, Strawbees

T toothpicks, twine, tape, three-hole punch

U unifix cubes, uncooked pasta

V Virtual reality headsets, Vex Robots, vinegar

W wrench, wallpaper, wax paper, wool, wood, weaving supplies, Washi tape

Z ZipLoc bags, zip ties

OK, so maybe they're not all must-haves, but some of those letters were tough! What items would you add to the list?

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I've traveled a lot in the last year, talking to educators all over the US and Canada. The one thing that people always ask me for is a makerspace supply list. There are plenty of lists out there, so I thought I'd put a twist on it. Here are makerspaces must-haves from A-Z.

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Podcast with Vicki Davis: Inventionland: A Transformational Design Course

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Podcast with Vicki Davis: Inventionland: A Transformational Design Course

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Curriculum Specialist Mandy Figlioli is excited about her school's adoption of the Inventionland design and prototyping course. Mandy talks about how the course is structured, gives a story of how students are being transformed, and shares how they are re-working the course based on what they learned the first year. If you're teaching design or making, you can learn from this show.

Book Creator for Chrome. Previously on the 10-Minute Teacher, guests have mentioned Book Creator as one of their top apps for the iPad. Well, now we can all use Book Creator in our classrooms using the Chrome web browser. Make books, send the link to parents and even include audio and video.

As a teacher, you can get started with a library of 40 books as part of their free version - go to coolcatteacher.com/bookcreator to get started now. This is great news! Now we can all use Book Creator in our classrooms, on any device, using the Chrome web browser.

Listen Now
Below is an enhanced transcript, modified for your reading pleasure. All comments in the shaded green box are my own. For guests and hyperlinks to resources, scroll down.
***

Inventionland: A Transformational Invention Course

Shownotes: www.coolcatteacher.com/e163
Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Vicki: Happy Wonderful Classroom Wednesday!

Our guest today, Mandi Figlioli @mrsfigmakes, is from western Pennsylvania. What first attracted me to her is a very interesting Inventionland Innovation Course.

So, Mandi, first of all tell us about this Invention Land Innovation Course. We also want to mention that we're going to do a giveaway of the book [The World's First Inventionland], a picture book. So do check the Shownotes for that.

Today's giveaway link: answer a poll question or share the show to enter.

Mandi: I would love to share, Vicki. It has been a tremendous experience for our district.

We had the opportunity to tour Inventionland. It is a think tank in Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh. It is a place where they create inventions all day. If you're familiar with the show Shark Tank, that is what Inventionland is doing.

What they've been working on over the last seven or eight years was a way to teach students how to be innovative - and how to go through that design process to create an invention of your own.

So I had the opportunity to tour the facility. When you go there, I highly recommend that you check out their website. It's a Willy Wonka meets Disney World type of environment. A very, very cool workspace. It would be awesome to work there.

When I went there I was really intrigued and inspired by the work that they were doing. An opportunity came up for me to apply for an Innovation Grant. We received outside funding to purchase this course.

The Inventionland Course Overview

Last year was our first year of implementation with the course. We used it as a STEAM elective, a semester elective course. So our students in grades 9-12 who had signed up for the course had the opportunity.

The course begins with, "What are some problems that you're having in your life? What are things you're experiencing that you wish you could come up with a solution for?"

The students began by researching, "Are there products that exist to solve this problem? If so, who are my competitors?"

And then they go through that process of brainstorming and ideating. They come up with a concept model. We are fortunate to have 3D printers and a laser engraver, but even if you had cardboard and glue guns, you'd be able to complete this course.

Our students began coming up with these really unique inventions and moving from concept model to prototype. Then they have the opportunity to go out to Invention Land and pitch their ideas to the CEO and a team of their employees who they call "Creationeers."

A Story of a Life Changed by Invention

That happened in the first semester, and we had a student who won from our district. They also put on their first annual regional inventors contest. So, our student got to go up against twelve other students with his invention.

I am happy to report that he won.

Vicki: (laughs) Ohhhhh! Now, what exactly did he invent? Tell us!

Mandi: He invented the "blazer eraser." His problem was inspired by watching his teachers endlessly try to get the dry erase boards clean. He saw them struggling with the spray, with the paper towels. He just didn't feel that we had a good way of doing it. So he invented the blazer eraser, which mounts to the board. It keeps refillable wipes that already have the Expo solution in them.

I will say that after he won that first contest for our school, he was not even in the course the second semester. He was going back into the classrooms during his study hall, during his lunch, constantly trying to improve that prototype.

Vicki: Wow.

Mandi: When we went back for the regional contest, I think that Mr. Davison, the CEO, recognized the resilience and the grit of our student. He really just took his model to a much farther place than it had been when he went out there the first time - to the point where he 3D printed the container for the wipes, laser engraved the Expo logo onto it, had a great packaging design. That's actually a part of the course, actually, to design the packaging.

So it was a really unique experience.

Vicki: Wow. I want one! (laughs)

Mandi: Yeah! Well, and that's what he'd say. The course had only gone one year in full implementation. Last year they had, I believe 12-13 schools. Now they're over 30 schools.

Vicki: Wow.

Mandi: He's interested in trying to pitch the product to Expo, and Mr. Davison told the student that won that he'd be willing to help him with that process. So it's going to be interesting to see if we have some students that become legitimate inventors.

I saw some great ideas coming out of other schools as well. Just to have the students in that experience - I mean they treated them like rock stars when they went out there and showcased their inventions. It was truly an amazing experience.

The kind of change inventing and design provokes

Have you ever seen, Vicki, by any chance, " Most Likely to Succeed, " the documentary?

Vicki: Tell me about it.

Mandi: It's a documentary that was released last year. I'm not even certain who produced it. But it was being shown in private settings, so community settings. I was fortunate enough to be able to see it at a conference. It's about a millionaire who invested money into a charter school called High Tech High out in California.

Vicki: Oh yeah. OK.

Mandi: It really shows that idea of innovation being a frontrunner in the mindset of a district. The experience that the students went through n that documentary was really what I would describe that our student went through in that process of going through the Innovation Course. You know - it changed him as a person.

Vicki: (agrees)

Mandi: He was someone who was very quiet, very timid. He wasn't certain if he was going to go to college. He has grown in leaps and bounds, not only in his confidence, in his perseverance, but also in those soft skills. Those things that we need kids to have for employability. And seeing him organize himself, manage himself through the project, was really, really impressive. I was just so impressed with the way it changed him as a learner.

Vicki: Yeah. Inventing changes kids. I mean I see it every year in my classroom. They literally become different people, and it's almost like it grows them up, you know?

Mandi: Absolutely. That would be definitely the way I would describe our student. What I loved about the course was that it was personalized, right out of the gate.

Student inquiry-based learning can help students buy into what they're doing

We know as teachers that differentiation is hard. You have a lot of students in your class. You want to get to know them, know their interest, know their passions.

Right out of the gate they're faced with, "What problem do you have?" So getting buy-in for the course was not difficult to do at all.

We take them on a field trip at the beginning of the semester to Inventionland and tour the facility. You can just see the wheels turning the minute that they walk in the door. It's very cool. You go into the CEO's office, and the bookshelf goes into the wall. Then you walk into this fantastic workspace. I highly recommend it.

And the person who wins the book will see - the picture book is actually of the facility - very, very unique.

Vicki: Wow.

Mandi: I would love to have a classroom. Mr. Davison, the CEO - his office has a treehouse (see picture above) that is dry erase boards from ceiling to floor. I would love to have that kind of work environment for my students and my teachers. Ideally, something that inspires you every single day.

What will you do differently next time?

Vicki: Is there anything you wish you had done differently that first year, or that you are doing differently this year with the second time you're doing this course?

Mandi: Yeah, absolutely, Vicki. When we started, we knew going into the year that we had a new teacher. We had hired a new Tech Ed teacher - fantastic, motivated new teacher. We really focused on just trying the program for the first year and learning from it. Even in the second semester, we started making adjustments. I think the course has to be tailored to your school's needs and to what your school has access to as far as technology goes.

Having access to new tools like laser engravers and 3D printers, a lot of time was spent teaching students how to fluently use those tools so that when they got to the part where their moving... A lot of the concept models just use cardboard and glue guns. But a lot of students went past that and wanted to use the technology.

So going into year two, we're trying to develop ways to allow the students to learn how to use those technologies ahead of going into the course. And maybe it's going to look like a preliminary course where they learn those tools so that when they go into the course they have a wide array of tools available to them to create their invention.

So that's something that we're definitely looking at for next year because it's difficult in one-semester course to go through that innovative process and go through the design cycle and also want the students to gain competency with those high tech tools.

Vicki: Oh, that's such great advice. And that's even what we're seeing with our at-building projects that I'm doing. "Can we teach them how to build an app and then creatively invent their own app?"

I mean it's just kind of you have to get the tools and then move ahead.

So, teachers, we have a remarkable idea. Now there is a giveaway for the Inventionland book, and I want it, too. I would enter it myself but I won't let myself get the book. But I certainly will be going on Amazon and grabbing one.

So check the Shownotes so that you can see all this cool stuff that we'll be sharing.

And thank you, Mandi, for sharing such a remarkable course!

Mandi: Thank you, Vicki, for reaching out. It is such a pleasure to talk with you.

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

Mandi Figlioli, Curriculum Specialist & Assistant to the Superintendent of the Burgettstown Area School District, is inspired by the resurgence of constructivism and advocates for hands-on, minds-on learning. She aspires to engage both teachers and students in personalized learning experiences and empower them to creatively use diverse tools & technology.

Blog: https://www.burgettstown.k12.pa.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=4180

Twitter: @mrsfigmakes

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a "sponsored podcast episode." The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.) This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

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Inventionland: A Transformational Design Course

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Curriculum Specialist Mandy Figlioli is excited about her school's adoption of the Inventionland design and prototyping course. Mandy talks about how the course is structured, gives a story of how students are being transformed, and shares how they are re-working the course based on what they learned the first year.

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When we set up our libraries and classrooms, we create procedures to help keep things running smoothly. In the same way, we need to create makerspace procedures that help our students understand how to utilize and participate in our spaces. It can be tricky to figure out the perfect procedures. Here's some advice on setting up procedures for your space:

Incorporate Student Voice

Makerspaces are about the students. You want to make sure that the procedures you create are student-focused. Meet with a group of your students and brainstorm procedures together. By giving your students voice in the process, they're more likely to actually follow the makerspace procedures.

Find the Best Solution for YOUR Space

Every makerspace is different. You can't just copy and paste the procedures from another school's makerspace and expect them to work perfectly for you. Find what solutions are most successful for YOUR space and YOUR students.

Make It Easy to Be Independent

Try to create procedures that give students as much independence as possible. If they need you to assist them all the time (i.e., unlocking technology, approving items for storage, etc) that takes away from your time working with students on projects and adds frustration.

Teach and Enforce Procedures Early and Often

Create your procedures as early in the year as possible and enforce them right away. The longer you wait to get procedures in place, the more likely students are to create bad habits that will be difficult to break.

Some Procedures to Include:

Safety - Do students need googles, hair tied back, gloves or other items?

Accessing supplies - How do students get to supplies, and what are they allowed to use?

Storing supplies - Where do students put supplies when done?

Sharing supplies - What happens if another student has something that someone wants to use?

Damage - What happens if something breaks?

Clean-up - How and when do students clean up their spaces?

Project storage - Where can students store in-progress projects?

More Resources: What are some of the procedures that you have in place in your makerspace?

Categories: Blog Topics, Makerspaces/Learning Commons, STEM/STEAM

Tags: makerspace, school libraries, technology

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How to Create Makerspace Procedures That Work | Knowledge Quest

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When we set up our libraries and classrooms, we create procedures to help keep things running smoothly. In the same way, we need to create makerspace procedures that help our students understand how to utilize and participate in our spaces. It can be tricky to figure out the perfect procedures.

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What's the Maker Movement and Why Should I Care?

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What's the Maker Movement and Why Should I Care?

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Choose an object or system and ask:

What are its various pieces or components?

What are the purposes for each of these parts?

What are its complexities?

How is it complicated in its parts and purposes, the relationship between the two, or in other ways?

Parts, Purposes, and Complexities

What Kind of Thinking Does This Routine Encourage?

This thinking routine helps students slow down and make careful, detailed observations by

encouraging them to look beyond the obvious features of an object or system. This

thinking routine helps stimulate curiosity, raises questions, and surfaces areas for further

When and How Can This Routine Be Used?

This thinking routine can be used to explore any object or system. This routine can be used

on its own, or in combination with another routine. Here are some ideas and

considerations for putting this thinking routine into practice:

The routine provides an opportunity to make students' thinking visible through creating lists, maps, and drawings of the parts, purposes, complexities of various objects and systems. You may introduce the three elements of this routine all at once, or you may want to introduce the three elements of the routine one at a time.

If an object students are working with is present and/or physically visible, students might not need a lot of background knowledge. However, if students are working with a system-like democracy-it may be helpful for students to have background knowledge or to give them an opportunity to reflect on their experiences interacting with that particular system.

To take this routine to the next level, after students have considered the parts, purposes, and complexities of an object as it is, you may consider having students take apart the objects they are working with-and then continue to identify the parts, purposes, and complexities they notice using different colored markers.

You may consider swapping out the word "complexities" for more accessible terms, such as puzzles or questions.

Already use this Thinking Routine?

We want to hear about it. Post examples of your work on Twitter using the hashtag #PZThinkingRoutines and be sure to tag @ProjectZeroHGSE.

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Choose an object or system and ask: What are its various pieces or components? What are the purposes for each of these parts? What are its complexities? How is it complicated in its parts and purposes, the relationship between the two, or in other ways?

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Washington
Few trends in K-12 ed tech are as hot-or as under-researched-as "Maker" education.

The term generally refers to using a wide variety of hands-on activities (such as building, computer programming, and sewing) to support academic learning and the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community.

Typically, "Making" involves attempting to solve a particular problem, creating a physical or digital artifact, and sharing that product with a larger audience. Often, such work is guided by the notion that process is more important than results.

The Maker Movement has its roots outside of school, in institutions such as science museums and in the informal activities that everyday people have taken part in for generations. It began exploding about a decade ago, thanks in large part to the enthusiastic audience of Make magazine and the popularity of public events such as Maker Faires (the most well-known of which was hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House in 2014.) The rise of cheap digital tools, including microcontroller platforms such as Arduino and rapid-prototyping tools such as 3-D printers, has in recent years lent the movement a decidedly techie flavor.

Efforts to bring Making and "Maker spaces" into K-12 schools are still "nascent," said Erica Halverson, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading researcher into Maker education.

But that's changing fast.

"I've seen a range of models, from putting a Maker space into the school, to importing Maker practices into classrooms, to working with an external Maker space to build connections between what happens in the classroom and in spaces outside of school," Halverson said in an interview.

While exciting, that trend has begat a number of questions and tensions, many of which are just now beginning to be explored by researchers.

Among the most significant:

Bringing "Making" into K-12 schools has prompted a much sharper focus on diversity and equity, which many observers view as much needed in a movement that has tended to focus on the interests and experiences of middle-class White males.

Many proponents fear that the Maker Movement (often characterized by unstructured, voluntary opportunities for creativity and exploration) will be diluted or fundamentally changed inside schools (with their bell schedules, demands for equal participation, and test-based accountability regimes.)

Some fear the corporatization of Maker education, particularly as schools and policymakers have embraced the movement as a way to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and workforce preparation.

There is growing interest in whether Maker education can help boost student learning outcomes, including test scores.

But at the same time, the rise of Maker education is also prompting some educators to ask, "What counts as learning?"

For those interested in reading more, following is a (non-comprehensive) roundup of nine recent books, essays, and research studies exploring Maker education in K-12. The list is drawn in part from work presented this past weekend at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, held here.

1. The Maker Movement in Education (Erica R. Halverson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kimberly M. Sheridan, George Mason University, in the Harvard Educational Review, Winter 2014.)

This oft-cited essay offers a context for analyzing and understanding the Maker Movement, focusing on the distinctions between Making (activities), Maker spaces (communities of practice, usually centered around a physical space), and Makers (a personal identity.)

In addition to offering a concise history of the Maker Movement, its roots, and concerns and questions that have arisen around it, Halverson and Sheridan discuss the tensions associated with bringing Making into schools.

"Bringing the Maker Movement into the education conversation has the potential to transform how we understand 'what counts' as learning, as a learner, and as learning environment," they write.

At the same time, however, "perhaps the greatest challenge to embracing the Maker Movement in K-12 schools...is the need to standardize [and] define 'what works' for learning."

2. The Promise of the Maker Movement for Education (Lee Martin, University of California-Davis, in the Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research, 2015.)

Three elements of the movement are key to turning 'Making' into a good learning experience, Martin writes: Affordable digital tools that can provide young people with new ways to interact with physical materials; a community infrastructure (in the form of meetings, events, and online social networking) that cultivates the sharing of ideas and examples; and a "Maker mindset" that encourages students to "believe they can learn to do anything."

When Maker education is happening right, Martin contends, it can help students develop not just content-area expertise, but also interest in learning and an identity as a learner. As yet, though, "empirical evidence specifically about making is limited," Martin acknowledges.

3. Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom (Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager, 2013)

The seminal handbook for teachers and educators who want to bring Maker Education into their schools and classrooms. See this 2014 Q&A I did with the authors.

4. Making Through the Lens of Culture and Power: Toward Transformative Visions for Educational Equity (Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University and Paula Hooper and Meg Escudé, Exploratorium, forthcoming in the Summer 2016 issue of the Harvard Educational Review.)

This essay critiques prevalent notions of Maker education as too focused on white middle-class males and their interests.

As a result of that focus, the authors contend, the "histories, needs, assets, and experiences of working-class students and students of color" are too often ignored and devalued in Maker education, and efforts around equity are often focused on bringing such students into unfamiliar or unwelcoming spaces, rather than changing the spaces themselves.

What can be done?

First, the authors say, those involved in Maker education need to be willing to tackle educational injustices, such as ensuring that Making is not limited to well-resourced schools. Second, the notion of what constitutes legitimate Maker activities needs to be broadened to include community-based practices from multiple cultures (think more sewing and crafting, in addition to computer science and robotics.) And third, Maker education needs to include a heavy focus on effective pedagogy, including a willingness to avoid fetishizing "self-directed learning" and instead focus on ensuring that teachers in Maker spaces know how to support all students.

5. Resourceful and Inclusive: Towards Design Principles for Makerspaces (Kimberly M. Sheridan, Abigail W. Konopasky, Asia Williams, Grace J.J. Wingo, George Mason University, paper presented at AERA 2016.)

Key to making an effective Maker Space that works for all students, the authors write, is encouraging "resourcefulness," or the ability of participants to draw not just on their own internal skills and experiences, but the assets of other people and their surrounding communities.

Through case studies at two very different Maker Spaces (one a community-based site in a low-income neighborhood in Detroit, the other a digital game-design program run in partnership with their university), the authors identify three design strategies they believe can make this possible:

Asset mapping and building of communities of practice, to identify potential resources.

Building "studio environments" that mix demonstration lectures, individual work time, and critiques and exhibitions; allow youth to shift among different roles; and are welcoming to both novices and experts.

Creating "figured worlds" that are separate from school and home and allow youth to develop new identities.

When it's all working, the authors write, "each member [of the Maker space] is looking for opportunities to solve their own and others' needs and wants," while adults are focused on creating new possibilities for youth inside the space and new connections and opportunities for youth out in the world.

6. Making Publics: The Iterative Design of High School Makerspaces (Amy Stornaiuolo and Phil Nichols, University of Pennsylvania, paper presented at AERA 2016.)

A relative handful of new or redesigned high schools around the country are organizing themselves around the Maker approach, including the pseudonymous Collaborative Design School that served as the case study for this paper.

Attempting to integrate "Making" practices and philosophies into K-12 schools in struggling urban districts can lead to big challenges, the authors found.

One of the biggest: Trying to convince low-income students of color (too often labeled as failures) and district administrators (too often obsessed with labeling schools as failures) that failure can in fact be a valuable way to learn.

The case-study school's "emphasis on trial and error, experimentation, and productive failure sat in uneasy alignment to the school's competency-based curriculum and assessment practices," the authors wrote. "Many of the students expressed trepidation or anxiety about how their participation in the [Maker space] 'counted,' and some expressed reluctance to change material they had worked hard to complete."

To counteract this dynamic, the school (and researchers, who worked as participant-observers) attempted to engage the students with multiple audiences, through presentations, conferences, research projects, and the like.

They found that it can work-"for some students, in some ways, at some times."

"In other words," the authors wrote, "'Making' should not be understood as an inherently liberatory or transformative set of practices, and 'Maker spaces' should not be positioned as panaceas that can be inserted into classrooms as an autonomous fix for 'failing' schools and 'at-risk' students."

7. Electronic Textiles as Disruptive Designs: Supporting and Challenging Maker Activities in Schools (Yasmin B. Kafai and Kristin A. Searle, University of Pennsylvania and Deborah A. Fields, Utah State University, in the Harvard Educational Review, 2014.)

E-textiles "challenge current Making conventions" as well as popular conceptions about computer-science-related teaching and learning, the authors write, because they incorporate "soft" materials and practices, such as sewing, that are often associated with femininity.

Through observing a series of making workshops for high school students, they conclude that working with e-textiles can have a number of benefits, including making the basics of how technology works more transparent to students; valuing aesthetics as a way of supporting student engagement and learning; and challenging students' preconceived notions about who gets to work with computers.

8. Sewing Electronics in Science Class: Improving Student Interest in Science (Jiangyue Gu, Colby Tofel-Grehl, Deborah A. Fields, Chongning Sun, Cathy Maahs-Fladung, Utah State University. Paper presented at AERA 2016).

The researchers behind this study employed a quasi-experimental design in which 8 th graders in a rural middle school were assigned to one of two science-class units on circuitry. Both of the units were taught by the same teacher, but one was taught using traditional methods and materials, and the other was taught using e-textiles.

The researchers found that academic performance between the groups was the same, but the students who took part in the e-textiles unit (which involved sewing and hands-on Making activities focused around projects the students got to choose themselves) showed increased interest in science and reported receiving increased encouragement to pursue science from their friends, families, and teachers.

Those changed attitudes can be particularly important in helping middle schoolers from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM pursue related academic programs, the authors believe.

"Because students could embody their personal interests in their e-textile projects, they might have been more interested in sharing their projects with family and friends, providing a context for potential change in the ways those viewers perceived and identified them with science in positive ways," they wrote.

9. "Spill Your Ideas With No Judgment": Exploring How a 'Judgment-Free' Youth Community Makerspace Supports African-American Girls' Engagement and Identity Work as Community Makers and Engineers" (Edna Tan and Faith Brown Freeman, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Paper presented at AERA 2016).

Researchers have tended to focus on why many African-American girls don't identify as scientists and often end up excluded from higher-level science courses, identifying factors ranging from disparaging assumptions and stereotypes held by their teachers to low expectations from their guidance counselors.

What's needed now, Tan and Brown Freeman contend, are solutions. And the starting point for that is "judgment-free" spaces that "intentionally, mindfully, and consistently seek to position African-American girls...as capable youth Makers."

The authors argue that happens through the following strategies:

Maker-related opportunities with no imposed selection criteria (such as minimum grades or an application.)

Physical spaces where the girls have experienced a prior sense of belonging.

Freedom to choose their own projects and partners.

Access to power tools, laptops, computing devices, and digital hardware.

Opportunities for "distributed expertise," in which the girls are allowed and encouraged to take on multiple roles and help each other.

Photo: Abdullah Haseeb, 4, works with "circuit blocks" in the MakeShop at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum.--Jeff Swensen for Education Week-File Follow @BenjaminBHerold Follow @EdWeekEdTech for the latest news on ed-tech policies, practices, and trends.

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The Maker Movement in K-12 Education: A Guide to Emerging Research

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Washington Few trends in K-12 ed tech are as hot-or as under-researched-as "Maker" education. The term generally refers to using a wide variety of hands-on activities (such as building, computer programming, and sewing) to support academic learning and the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community.

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Do you ever wonder what's inside your toys? You'll make some exciting and surprising discoveries about their inner parts when you don some safety goggles and get started dissecting your old stuffed animal, remote controlled car, or singing Santa. Use screwdrivers, seam rippers, scissors, and saws to remove your toy's insides. Check out the mechanisms, circuit boards, computer chips, lights, and wires you find inside.

What are the qualities we value in this activity?

Using Tools

This activity requires the use of many tools, so there are plenty of opportunities to practice! To deconstruct your toy, you'll want clamps, screwdrivers, wire cutters, scissors, and saws. If you'd like to make a new toy, you'll find it especially helpful to use wire strippers and solder to create new electrical connections, and sewing needles and thread if you need to stitch anything back up.

New Uses for Everyday Objects

Toys are everywhere, and almost all of them are pre-made. Taking apart a toy will show you that the parts inside of it can be just as exciting as the toy itself. You'll soon discover that there are objects lying around everywhere that can lead to hours of exploration.

Science and Art Connections

This activity really forces you to think scientifically while creating a unique piece of art. You'll figure out how circuits work, explore the physics of mechanisms, and experiment with many different technologies inside of your toy. You'll be engrossed in creating and expressing yourself through art as you stumble upon these scientific discoveries.

Playful and Inventive

What could be more playful that playing with toys in a new way? You'll be able to figure out how your toy works, and gain the knowledge and skills necessary to make your old toy into your own unique invention.

Once you've fully dissected your toy, you can use the toy's parts, your tools, and your imagination to create a new original plaything. Cause some mechanical mischief as you strip wires and solder them to new places to make a car's headlights moo and a cow light up. Design an unique stuffed animal by sewing your teddy bear back together inside out, or attaching part of another animal to it.

We are passionate about sharing our work and developing a community of people interested in these activities, practices, and ideas. The guides below are free to download and use to help you get started with tinkering, whether it's at home, or in your school or educational institution.

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Do you ever wonder what's inside your toys? You'll make some exciting and surprising discoveries about their inner parts when you don some safety goggles and get started dissecting your old stuffed animal, remote controlled car, or singing Santa. Use screwdrivers, seam rippers, scissors, and saws to remove your toy's insides.

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Project Based Learning & Student Achievement | Project Based Learning | BIE

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What is it? This is a short research brief written in 2018 by the Buck Institute summarizing the evidence of the impact of Project Based Learning on student learning in core content areas. Useful for teachers, principals, district leaders, coaches, researchers, and grant writers.