Fellow
One of the things I like about letting students decide what they need to make for their projects is how much learning takes place between the moment they say "I want to make a model of the Taj Mahal to show how the architecture reflects the way Shah Jahan wanted to memorialize his wife" and the finished project. For me, as a teacher, that is when a great deal of learning takes place.
Fellow
The FabLearn Fellows have been talking a lot about decentering the history and definition of making, makers and maker education.
I ran across this video on "Technological Disobedience" in Cuba that sparked my imagination.
The description says:
Fellow
Okay, we're not really "making code." But, we are working to add in a coding aspect to our Invention Convention exhibition. This exhibition currently allows families to make and tinker with common objects in order to solve challenges as well as learn and apply techniques in a more focused setting in our Inventors' Workshop and Maker Annex spaces.
Fellow
A brief state of affairs
In schools, “maker” education has been typically known for many years as hands-on project based learning (PBL). While “maker” education continues to deepen its roots in small pockets of the nation’s private education, the introduction and implementation of “making” into California public education still has a long road to go. Efforts are underway to provide access to “making” opportunities to more and more students.
Fellow
I really liked this article "Why I am not a Maker" by Debbie Chachra from our own Olin College outside Boston, which is doing the most difficult and amazing work of transforming engineering education.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-i-am-not-a-mak...
I added some comments to the article that I paraphrase here:
Institution
Hi Fellows,
A friend of a friend is traveling in Rwanda and posted this on her blog:
Our next stop was to the WE-ACT clinic with Mardge Cohen, an American HIV-AIDS physician, who spends part of her year in Rwanda working at the clinic with about 3500 patients. What is unique about the clinic is the psychosocial program that treats the whole person, not just the physical. With a staff of about 40, they do blood tests, distribute medicine and provide counseling services as well as groups.
Fellow
In part 2 of this blog we discussed the accuracy and payoff of using alternative assessments in a MakerEd context. In this blog we will get down to business looking at how to use self-assessment in real world project context. Nina Rodriguez, the coordinator of the Innovation and Design Lab at Downtown College Prep (San Jose), will be joining this conversation to talk about examples of self-assessment used in her classrooms.
Institution
I'm just loving the variety of posts here! Reading the last few weeks, it really made me think about the role of the teacher/leader in creative, hands-on classrooms and educational spaces. In these posts, we can see that teachers are planners, observers, catalysts, researchers, yearners, gurus, thinkers, and yes - makers! It's such a colorful palette of roles when compared to the perception of the teacher as a content delivery system and classroom manager.
Fellow
This article has colaboration of Pietro Domingues.
In this section we will see how to reproduce workpieces using many materials.
Some materials we can use at room temperature, such as Plaster of Paris and resin. Other
materials must be melted at higher temperatures, such as Tin and Paraffin wax.
Fellow
This article has colaboration of Pietro Domingues.
Silicone molds are excellent, because they can be used to make complex geometry objects
with a low cost.
In this section, we will see how to make a silicone mold.
