Tuesday night my
EC&I 831 class had the pleasure of hearing
Sylvia Martinez speak. Sylvia is the co-author of
Invent To Learn. I am currently about half-way through the book, so I was thrilled to get the opportunity to hear Sylvia speak.
Sylvia is a proponent of the "
Maker Movement", which is focused on allowing students to construct knowledge through experiences. Many of her ideas are based on the teachings of
Seymour Papert, who stated, "The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge". Sylvia's view is that kids are not going to be engineers - they already ARE engineers. She suggests that teachers should provide students with experiences, because learning occurs when students are able to connect existing knowledge to a new experience.
When developing a learning opportunity, she suggests the following variables as described by
Gary Stager:
- A good prompt, motivating challenge, or thoughtful question
- Appropriate materials
- Sufficient time
- Supportive culture, including a range of expertise
During her presentation, Sylvia described three game changers of the Maker Movement:
- Fabrication (Includes CAD and 3D Printers)
- Physical Computing ( Includes Raspberry Pi and Arduino)
- Programming (Includes Turtleart)
While reading her book, one quote relating to fabrication really struck a chord. Sylvia states "There is every reason to believe that fabrication technology will change the world even more than the information technology revolution has." During her presentation,
Alec Couros referred to this as "disruptive technology". Many in class, including myself, had not heard this term before. Alec expanded by describing it as "Something that brings about societal changes". I definitely see fabrication technology as something that could bring about such changes to our society.
Like many of the participants, I was very excited with the ideas Sylvia suggested. Her
MaKey MaKey kits got me thinking about ways that I have allowed students the opportunity to
Invent to Learn.
Four years ago I was asked to develop Middle Years workshops to integrate technology and curriculum in the areas of Practical and Applied Arts, Language Arts, Science, and Career Education through the exploration of technology careers and skills for the 21st century. The result was "Ex.C.I.T.E. Camp - Exploring Careers in Technology Education".
Over a period of three years, my colleagues and I provided numerous half-day workshops for hundreds of students. The four workshop modules we developed as part of Ex.C.I.T.E. Camp focused on the areas of robotics, electronic circuits, photography, and webpage design. These workshops proved to be extremely popular with students, and were very rewarding to teach, because students were fully engaged in hands-on learning.
The robotics workshop was designed to give students an introduction to basic robot programming. In small groups, students were asked to build robots using
Lego Mindstorm NXT kits. Once built, students were challenged to add various sensors to their robot to perform various tasks. Through trial-and-error, students learned how to program the sensors to perform different functions. With extended time, teachers could allow students the chance to create more complex programs to upload to the robots. This workshop proved to be especially popular with Grade 7 & 8 students.
The electronic snap circuit session was designed to support the Grade 6 Science curriculum for the electricity unit. Using
Electronic Circuit Kits students were given the chance to create dozens of circuit projects from a list of more than 300 possibilities. Students enjoyed creating working alarms, flying saucers, and AM radios.
A valuable lesson that we learned when planning and implementing the workshops with students was that they needed LOTS of time for experimentation and play. Our first sessions included direct instruction at the beginning of the workshop. We soon realized that students learned the same concepts we were telling them about by actually working and experimenting with the kits, so we ensured that hands-on-learning time was the priority.
Another thing we learned was that the projects described in the kits were good, but students learned a lot more when faced with a challenge they were asked to solve. For example, the kits provide detailed instructions for students to build series and parallel circuits. Instead of simply asking students to build Project #3 and Project #4, we provided students with the following challenges:
- Using two light bulbs, 1 switch, 2 batteries, and 8 wires can you create a circuit to light both bulbs?
- Using two light bulbs, 1 switch, 2 batteries, and 8 wires can you create a circuit where one bulb remains lit when you unscrew the second bulb?
In this way students created a variety of different circuits and experienced first-hand the difference between series and parallel circuits.
Because the Education Technology department is currently focused on directly supporting a number of new initiatives, I get fewer opportunities to be directly involved in Ex.C.I.T.E. Camp workshops. However, teachers are still able to borrow these kits, and the workshops continue to be a popular way for students to learn about circuits and robotics.
Thinking about starting your own version of Ex.C.I.T.E. Camp? Feel free to contact me for more information.
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