Created by Shannon Lutz
December 11, 2017
The maker culture has become a way to express creative and communal drive. This excitement hast led to an expansion of makerspaces around the world, including classrooms. The maker movement is revolutionizing education through a set of activities that are designed with a variety of learning goals in mind. These activities are organized by nine key ideas: make, share, give, learn, tool up, play, participate, support, and change. Through the maker movement anyone can create, innovate, and make while learning content and processes. It engages the intersection of technology, design, art, and engineering while affirming school-based approaches to teaching and learning.
Communities of makers practice in a physical place set up for students to use as a core part of their practice such as a classroom. Students co-participate in a range of activities in a space where they can freely create, innovate and share. Everyone is a maker and the movement engages people in the creative production of artifacts in their daily lives and find physical and digital forums to share processes and products with others (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014).
The maker movement focuses on problem-solving and digital and physical fabrication and the makerspaces provide the ability to help students learn through play, experimentation, and by constructing knowledge through the act of making something shareable. Makerspaces in the classroom celebrates the process of design and making and helps students overcome challenges. When we create the makerspace environment, learners will start to believe they can solve a problem and learn to trust themselves as problem solvers.
Check out this infographic on the maker movement and how it is revolutionizing learning. Wit this movement, we move from passive receivers of knowledge to real-world makers. It puts creative ideas into action as innovation and creates problem-solving skills that can be used in all aspects of life. This change will bring a new edge to learning.
As we continue to develop into flexible repurposers of technologies, we are taught to begin with curriculum standards and then build our objectives and content for the lesson. I have learned that practice and failure provides us with the understanding that the end result of the lesson is important prior to planning it. The Understanding by Design (UbD) process allows us to understand what mastery looks like so we can begin to design the learning experience for the student (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
“The Framework for the 21st Century Learning was developed with input from teachers, education experts, and business leaders to define and illustrate the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in work” (Framework for 21st Century Learning, 2017). This week’s assignment encouraged me to really use my critical thinking skills to develop an activity or lesson that would allow my adult learners to succeed in the workplace.
For one of my assignments, I had asked my husband to team up with me as I began to play around with the Scratch Program. In my blog, Playtime Encourages Creativity, I explain more about how playtime helped sparked my own creativity (Lutz, 2017). My choice to go into the playtime without a plan proved to provide me with an end result that allowed us to become makers. After two hours of some advanced playtime, process by elimination, and failed scripts, I was able to identify the core understanding of my lesson plan. At this time, I was able to create an activity that would develop an adult learner’s professional skills while introducing them to new technologies such as Scratch and Makey Makey. Through the use of these tools, each learner should walk away with a maker mindset accomplished by using critical thinking skills in a team environment.
Throughout a week long workshop, the class will be introduced to a one and half day activity where participants will work in teams to read online tutorials, practice and play using Makey Makey kits and the Scratch program to create an interactive story, card, or project. In addition, controllers will be created by using conductive and nonconductive items at their tables. This section of the lesson will allow them to use creativity to create maker prototypes, use critical thinking skills to brainstorm the project, create a script, and design a controller that will animate the final project. Working through the activity in a team environment is essential because it mimics the professional work environment and provides a real world experience. The learner should walk away with the maker mindset and have the ability to use the two technologies for their own team building events.
Take a look at my lesson plan for the team building activity/lesson included in a week long professional development workshop. I welcome your feedback. I am new to creating lesson plans and would love any suggestions you can provide me.
REFERENCES:
Cowen, A. (2016). Storyboarding Tutorial. Retrieved Nov 15, 2017, from alexandercowen.com: https://www.alexandercowan.com/storyboarding-tutorial/
Framework for 21st Century Learning. (2017). Retrieved from P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning: http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework
Getting Started with Scratch. (n.d.). Retrieved Nov 19, 2017, from Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/187529058/#editor
Halverson, E.R. & Sheridan, K. (2014). The maker movement in education. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4), 495-465.
Makey Makey Classic How To. (n.d.). Retrieved Nov 19, 2017 , from makeymakey.com: https://makeymakey.com/how-to/classic/
Makey Makey Educator’s Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved Nov 19, 2017, from makeymakey.com: https://makeymakey.com/lessons/lesson-plans.pdf
Martinez, S., & Stager, G. (2014, Jul 21). The Maker Movement: A Learning Revolution. Retrieved from ISTE: https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=106
Moate, M. (2017, Oct 28). How to make a Pumpkin Piano! (using a Makey Makey). Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHB5MXjslME
Why Are You Creating Makey Makey? (2017). Retrieved from makeymakey.com: https://makeymakey.com/
Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall. pg 13-33
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