iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

"Last week I listened to 14 educators from Ontario who were brave enough to stand in front of 100+ and give a five minute Ignite Talk. I am truly inspired by the passion that radiates from these fine folks. Members of the audience travelled from afar, some even came after work just to listen before returning home to teach the next day.

While each speaker deserves their own blog post recognition, I haven’t stopped thinking about Jen Giffen’s talk. It was evident Jen was prepared and confident. She commanded the room like I imagined she would there and in her classroom. Jen spoke of previous experiences with a particular student, and in many ways I could relate. Jen and this student had been working diligently on an assignment for days for a particular class but when the deadline approached, the student did not submit his work. Furious, Mrs. G tracked him down and in her words “went up one side and down the other” in front of his peers. I imagined him sitting in another class, head down, perhaps hiding behind a hood. I imagined this student wishing time away only to be able to escape the fear, anxiety and ridicule he was attempting to avoid. What could possibly have happened to make him avoid handing in what he had been passionately working on with the support of Mrs. Giffen?"

Inspired to turn useful tips, tricks, and ideas into infographics, #NYCSchoolsTech specialist, Joe Santiago created his first infographic. The focus is on how teachers who want to update their practice can use technology when doing formative assessments.

As maker education infiltrates more formal educational settings, there’s been and will continue to be efforts to include assessment as part of its implementation. It is important, though, to keep in mind the characteristics of maker education and the role assessment has within it.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded an early-concept grant for exploratory research to the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT .

MIT will partner with Maker Ed, a national nonprofit, to develop and evaluate practices of embedded assessment in maker-centered learning. The two-year grant, Beyond Rubrics: Moving Towards Embedded Assessment in Maker Education, will support design-based research in middle school science and engineering classrooms.

I have a confession to make: I am terrible at handing back papers. That sounds silly, right? I mean, you literally just hand the paper to the kid whose name is at the top.

But teachers everywhere know how disheartening that small act can be. (It can’t be just me, right?)

There are the eye rolls and the whispering to each other of “What did you get?” and “She gave me a ___.” Next thing you know, the paper you spent so long reading and marking has been shoved into the abyss of the backpack or tossed carelessly in the recycle bin.