iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

A flexible, seven-unit program based on the real-world writing found in newspapers, from editorials and reviews to personal narratives and informational essays.

Teaching Computer Science at school just got easier as Microsoft is making a 30-hour curriculum, targeted at students in the age range 11 to 16, available as a free download.

Ignite My Future in School provides middle school educators with standards-aligned, transdisciplinary resources designed to effectively engage classrooms with the foundations of computational thinking across core subject areas.

Rather than the maker experiences being an after school program, an add on activity, or an activity that is implemented when students have done their regular lessons work, it should be part of the regular, day-to-day curriculum. As noted in USC Rossier Online, “In order for your school and students to be fully invested in maker education, it has to be integrated into your curriculum, not squeezed in” (https://rossieronline.usc.edu/maker-education/sync-with-curriculum/).  Ayah Bdeir, who invented and runs littleBits, had this to say about integrating maker education into the curriculum:

It’s time for maker ed to move into the mainstream. Making should not be relegated to the times spent outside of class, e.g. lunch or after school. Nor should it only flourish in private schools, which don’t have to teach to standards. We need to work to show how making is a rigorous process that leads to valuable new technologies, products and experiences. Specifically, we need to tie maker projects to standards-based curriculum and show clearly the kinds of knowledge, skills and practices students learn as part of making (https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-09-24-building-connections-between-maker-ed-and-standards)

Albemarle County Public School District is very intentional in their implementation of maker projects:

Maker projects can be created to support just about any subject area, from science to history to language arts. Maker education can be a tool for teaching the curriculum that you already have, At a glance, maker projects may appear disconnected from the curriculum. What may look like an arts and crafts activity, or just a bunch of kids playing with Legos, is actually a way to teach about ancient Rome or how to write a persuasive essay. (https://www.edutopia.org/practice/maker-education-reaching-all-learners)

What if I told you that there was a simple way to work programming into your English class? That coding and social studies could go hand-in-hand? It’s true—programming lessons aren’t just for math and science classes.

The tools below teach students about loops, conditional statements, variables, arrays, and other core coding concepts. And students can teach themselves through these coding games and programming projects, which makes it a little easier to incorporate coding into an already packed curriculum.

The most vital group within the 3D printing education equation that gets frequently overlooked are the teachers. The people that are directly tasked with preparing students for the modern workplace. There are fantastic educational pioneers out on the frontline, excited by 3D printing themselves, and transmitting this passion into their classrooms. Moreover, increasing numbers of schools are buying into 3D technology for the classroom and the potential for facilitating learning activities across the newly developed 3D printing classes and curriculum.

But for teachers, there has to be a purpose behind the potential. Where do they go to find that purpose, particularly if they are not familiar with the 3D printing ecosystem themselves?

Ed tech company Learning.com is partnering with Codesters, a platform for K–12 computer science instruction, to develop EasyCode Pillars, an online interactive curriculum that incorporates coding challenges and game design into the classroom to cultivate students’ coding skills. This digital literacy resource is designed to offer students a dynamic, hands-on coding experience, while providing teachers with an easy instructional solution for use in the computer lab or in the classroom.

These new and revised lessons, based on our original K–12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum, take on timely topics for school communities, support teachers with improved classroom tools, and prepare students to take ownership of their digital lives.

"Each of our Curriculum Connectors is organized by the seven computational thinking strategies (collecting data, analyzing data, finding patterns, decomposing problems, abstraction, building models and developing algorithms)."

As makerspaces start to pop up in schools across the country, some educators, particularly those teaching non-STEM subjects, may be wondering what exactly they're supposed to do with them. Policymakers and administrators, meanwhile, want to make sure the spaces and resources are well utilized and are providing as much educational bang for the buck as possible. Luckily, integrating makerspaces throughout the curriculum is fairly easy with the right frame of mind.

Thinking about starting a coding class? Not sure if you know enough about computer science to host your own coding class? The folks at Pythonroom have created a fantastic online platform for teachers who want to bring coding into the classroom but… don’t know how to code. Hiring a computer science teacher or training teachers on computer science might be a challenge for your school. Pythonroom was designed for teachers with no prior coding experience and it’s easy to get started.

LEGO® Education supports teachers by providing a system that enables Maker learning with age and curriculum-relevant materials that facilitate engaging lessons and, therefore, effective learning. This hands-on, minds-on approach creates active, confident and lifelong learners by enabling a positive mindset and encouraging a self-directed motivation to learn.