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Final Thoughts

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Final Thoughts WHY Do I Want to Include Maker Centered Learning in my Practice? Practicing maker centered learning has given me a new direction in my teaching. It’s not so much that it’s changed my philosophy, it’s more that it has given me a clearer path. I’ve spent my career trying to find ways to empower children to know and utilize their strengths. I have worked to provide opportunities for children whose strengths weren’t being met in the regular classroom. This has meant planning and teaching enrichment classes that supplement classroom instruction as well as opportunities that replace classroom instruction. It has meant designing after school programs like drama club and Odyssey of the Mind so that all interested students can participate. Maker centered learning allows students to take more control of their learning. It fosters 21st Century skills that moves the primary focus away from a list of defined content competencies and towards four defined areas which are critical...
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Open Make WK 8: Trouble with Trefoils

Tubular Trefoils In looking for cardboard craft ideas online I discovered "Math Monday" on the Make Magazine website. I was looking for a reasonably challenging activity that I could do with my students. The tubular trefoil grabbed my attention because in the past students have been fascinated by Möbius strips and the trefoil has the same inside out design. The task involves plenty of math concepts, from the geometric shapes involved to the measurement, fractional thinking, problem solving and attending to precision. For example, you need to draw lines every 1 and 19/32 on the strips. Our rulers are marked in 16ths , so I determined that my marks needed to be between 1 and 9/16 and 1 and 1 and 10/16, The same procedure  needed to be applied to measuring a 17/32 line. I needed to determine the best cardboard to use. I wanted something stiff but flexible so I went with oak tag (handy because we have large sheets at school.) I tried cutting strips with a rotary cutter, a box c...
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Reflection, Exploration of Designing for Vinyl, CNC, LaserCut WK 7

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Another first for me this week! I have no previous experience with vinyl/laser cutters. I decided to use Gravit.io to make my design.Our computers at school don't have Adobe Illustrator, at least not yet! After working this week's projects we're considering loading them on a few computers in our Makerspace. I found the Gravit.io website simple and kid friendly, considering my lack of knowledge, but also saw that it had lots of more sophisticated applications to be explored. Faith, Jeremy (our IT specialist) and I met up with Lucie at Generator in Burlington on Tuesday afternoon to cut our designs (and think about what we might want to have at school.) I hadn't seen the Generator's new home and loved the openness of the new facility. Lucy introduced us to Brook, who was making paper cut outs of hyperbolic paraboloids. I am drawn to this application as an approachable, artistic, mathematical project for students. Next Lucie took a look at the designs Fai...
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Motors! WK 6

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Faith and I met bright and early on Monday morning (Maker Mondays!) and completed Experiments 8 and 9 fairly quickly. Maybe we can blame our Monday brains for a couple of missteps. With Experiment 8, we forgot to put spinner on the motor at first. We also had a moment of confusion when a book diagram from another Arduino kit was different from online diagram. We followed the online version to success. Experiment 8: Using a Servo Motor https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwDIPYofjRLbaXVBbXFfMXlMRUlmaTA3Ul82MEVPTTdQV0Jr/view?usp=sharing Then, with Experiment 9, it took us a while to find the H-Bridge until we realized it had a cover that was disguising it. Experiment 9: Driving a Motor with an H-Bridge https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwDIPYofjRLbWFU5c3gyTWdTWTZaRDJQSUdSMGhtVS03M2VV/view?usp=sharing Experiment 10: Controlling a Motor with Inputs Talk about attention to detail! Lots of connections on this one, and I wonder how anyone with large hands could wire this.  We...
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More Arduinos WK 5

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Week 5  Reflection Prompt: Last week was my first direct experience with the arduino. I was first introduced to arduinos at a library conference, and then later in Lucie's Create Make Learn class. That said, I feel like my arduino brain fog is lifting and, while I really don't fully understand  WHY it works, I am slowly gaining confidence in HOW it works. I'm really glad we continued our arduino investigation this week while the software use was still fresh in my memory. Experiment 3: Driving an RGB LED We found that if we hold the resister wires down the colors rotated better. Experiment 4: Driving Multiple LEDs We had a problem uploading to the redboard. We discovered that we had the LED in backwards. The flat sided short leg goes into the negative position. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwDIPYofjRLbNTgxamd1eWdTNU1FNmg0NW1TdUptVjZ2M0lF/view?usp=sharing Experiment 5: Reading a Button Press We found the button hard to put in place because the s...
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Circuits, "It as the best of times, it was the worst of times....." WK 4

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This week's virtual tasks started smoothly as I enjoyed the videos, especially Jay Silver's Ted Talk, "Hack a Banana." I love the idea of going out into the woods and just making something. What a fun way to explore the design process TMI with children. "Amelia's Squishy Circuit" Ted Talk gave me a new perspective on the value of the tinkering in regards to handicaps. This is an enlightening video for parents, teachers and kids. I liked the simplicity of presentations in https://www.tinkercad.com/learn/ and feel that this could be used whole group or by children independently. The website could be open for use in the classroom or maker space as needed and/or students could simply bookmark it on their chromebooks or ipads. I started my physical exploration of circuits with Makey Makey. I have introduced it to students before but (as often seems to happen) they took it to a much more advanced level than I did. I wanted to try connecting a pencil t...
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Toy Story WK 3

My toy hacking experience was a little daunting, humbling and ultimately exciting! Faith and I screamed out loud when we got our toys connected. We decided to have the sound from her toy play on my toy and we solicited help from students. Although I have participated in a toy hacking workshop before, I primarily hacked the appearance of the toy rather than the electronics. I decided to document my progress with this imovie: https://youtu.be/YhIdl-MZ2Ko . When I brought my toys into school the noises coming out of my bag immediately attracted a student who was there early. She came into my room and replaced any dead batteries for me. Later in the day Faith and I sat down and deconstructed our toys. We rewatched videos and looked up what the coloring of wires mean, and then we went and grabbed a 5th grader we knew we could depend on to help us. We figured out (somewhat) what we were looking at and came up with our goal. We were able to isolate the speakers and the wires that complete...
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