Capture the Learning: Crafting the Maker Mindset

Innovation Mindset = Growth + Maker + Team Experiences - Getting Smart by Tom Vander Ark - 21st century skills, academic mindest, deeper learning, education, Innovation, leadership What do young people need to know and be able to do be successful? Sure reading, writing, and problem solving are important to just about every family wage job. Content knowledge gives you something to work with, but what else is important for success in life? It turns out there are a bunch of factors that schools seldom talk about, teach, or provide feedback on that are at least as important as academic skills. What research says. Two traits predict success in life: grit and self-control; that was the conclusion Penn professor Angela Lee Duckworth reached eight years ago. A 2012 CCSR lit review said that grades do a better job than tests at measuring life success habits including study skills, attendance, work habits, time management, metacognitive strategies and social and academic problem solving that allow students to successfully mange new environments and meet new demands. Beyond growth. The KEEN frame is a great framework but it could use a dose of maker. Team. I statements.

The Maker Mindset: Albemarle County Public Schools & Maker Corps By Chad Ratliff and Pam Moran, District Administrators, Albemarle County Public Schools (Charlottesville, VA) A few weeks ago, some of our young people reminded us that “making” is a mindset that can occur any time, any place. During a snow day, a group of kids were co-opted by a local teenage video “maker” into creating and publishing a fabulous YouTube video, “Call Me Maybe, Josh Davis.” It represented the inherent passion and joy that surfaces when young makers get together and intersect talents, skills, and interests in a collaborative venture. We also see inventive potential when our elementary school students children construct their own cardboard arcade games for their school carnival, use chairs, tables, and unifix cube bridges to test bending movement and design engineering solutions to meet challenges pitched to them. Making is a natural learning state for humans. Making offers integrated learning opportunities–the best of learning in any century.

Developing a Maker Mindset | Creativity Lab – Making in School Fun fact: here at the Creativity Lab, Making isn’t just about making things. Making is also about learning to see the world with new eyes, and developing deeper knowledge and understanding of the world around us. One of the ways we incorporate this idea is through using Agency by Design’s thinking routines. Educators can easily integrate these routines into any subject — even those not typically associated with making, like the Humanities. The first routine, called Parts, Purposes, and Complexities, (PPC) is a great one to start with, and is applicable to physical objects as well as abstract ideas and constructs. Last week, the 11th grade pre-Calculus class used this thinking routine to explore a retractable pen. As they familiarized themselves with the parts of the pen, they began to create theories about what each part does (the purposes), and recorded how these parts might interact with one another and questions they may have had about them (the complexities). About Cissy Monroe

The Maker Mindset » Stir-fried Science Written by Dr Kiruthika Ramanathan, Senior Manager, Education Services & Outreach at Science Centre Singapore. A key event of the Singapore Science Festival, Maker Faire Singapore, aims to inculcate the Maker mindset – a growth mindset that encourages people to believe that they can learn to do anything. As the founder of Maker Faire, Dale Dougherty, puts it, Makers reject the idea that you are defined by what you buy. Makers focus instead on what they can make and what they can learn to do. Makers are thus motivated by internal goals, and not external rewards. This is a very empowering thought, especially in today’s world where consumerism is rampant. The Maker mindset has a very important role to play in the transformation of education. This process of setting personalized authentic learning environments becomes almost effortless with the Maker movement.

Educators as Lead Learners I have discussed educators as model learners before: The educator’s role has or should change in this age of information abundance or Education 2.0-3.0. The educator’s role has always been to model and demonstrate effective learning, but somewhere along the line, the major role of the educator became that of content and knowledge disseminator. Now that in this information age content is freely and abundantly available, it is more important than ever to assist learners in the process of how to learn. (Educator as Model Learner) The goal of this post is to encourage educators not only to adopt the mindset of the educator as a lead learner but also to model, demonstrate, and teach his/her learners the process of learning how to learn new “things”. To effectively do so, though, the educator needs to understand and be able to articulate and demonstrate the process of learning, him or herself. How do I gather information about what it is that I want to learn? Like this: Like Loading...

Educator as Lead Learner: Learning LittleBits I have discussed educators as model learners before: The educator’s role has or should change in this age of information abundance or Education 2.0-3.0. The educator’s role has always been to model and demonstrate effective learning, but somewhere along the line, the major role of the educator became that of content and knowledge disseminator. Now that in this information age content is freely and abundantly available, it is more important than ever to assist learners in the process of how to learn. (Educator as Model Learner) I advocate for the educator, as leader learner, to demonstrate the process of learning: To effectively do so, though, the educator needs to understand and be able to articulate and demonstrate the process of learning, him or herself. To learn and model this process, I recommend that educators pick something new to learn and practice doing the following: I am teaching at a maker education camp this summer and want to integrate LittleBits into my curriculum. Iterations

Learning About Young Makers I am a huge proponent of using hands-on, interactive learning activities to explore ill-defined problems as a way of teaching for all age groups. Given the spontaneity and uncertainty of these types of active learning environments, I believe educators should observe, reflect on, and analyze how learners interact with the materials, the content, the educator, and the other learners. This practice is in line with the teacher as ethnographer. In my role as a teacher as ethnographer, I made some initial observations during my first two weeks of teaching maker education for elementary age students. With half the kids under 7, I learned a bunch about young makers. Young makers are more capable than what people typically believe.Young makers need to be given more time, resources, strategies to learn how to solve more ambiguous and ill-defined problems (i.e., ones that don’t have THE correct answer). Young makers are more capable than what people (adults) typically believe. Conclusion Like this:

How the Maker Movement Is Transforming Education How the Maker Movement is Transforming Education By Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary S. Stager The Maker Movement, a technological and creative learning revolution underway around the globe, has exciting and vast implications for the world of education. New tools and technology, such as 3D printing, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computing, e-textiles, “smart” materials, and programming languages are being invented at an unprecedented pace. Fortunately for teachers, the Maker Movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. One might try to marginalize robotics or 3D fabrication as having nothing to do with “real” science and dismiss such activities as play or as just super-charged hobbies. Three big game-changers of the Maker Movement should be on every school’s radar: Computer-Controlled Fabrication Devices Over the past few years, devices that fabricate three-dimensional objects have become an affordable reality.

The Educator as a Maker Educator: the eBook I compiled all of my blog posts about Maker Education into an ebook that I published via Amazon Kindle. The price is $3.99. It can be accessed at The pieces include theoretical ideas, informal research-observations, ideas related to the educator as a maker educator, the maker education process, suggestions for implementation, and reflecting on the making process. The Table of Contents: IntroductionThe Perfect Storm for Maker EducationIs It Project-Based Learning, Maker Education or Just Projects? Like this: Like Loading...

Connecting Makerspaces to Authentic Learning I love the idea of making, inventing and tinkering. Just watch kids who are immersed in the activities and you can see the engagement. But is the learning authentic and relevant? I presented three sessions at the Free Maker Movement event at One Work Place on Wednesday, September 30, 2015 with some amazing educators who presented hands-on activities. The event will took place at our Oakland Center for Active Learning . I decided I needed to spend some time researching where the Maker Movement was happening and find examples of authentic learning. I read Jackie Gerstein‘s post: MAKE STEAM: Giving Maker Education Some Context where she wrote “recent discussions with other educators and administrators made me realize that the idea of maker education is often vague and seems unrealistic in terms of regular classroom instruction.” @jackiegerstein I reached out to Shannon McClintock Miller, @shannonmiller, who is a Teacher Librarian at Van Meter Elementary in Iowa.