:: The 4th Era ::

6 years after creating our first makerspace, it only makes sense to publish a post that focuses on 6 steps for creating a makerspace.

Via John Evans

As you might know, I believe all transformative practices must be based in the standards. These standards must include both content and process standards (4C’s). Too often, I see wonderful activities that engages students… but also see important standards that could have been incorporated not present in the activity.

The idea behind the Makers Movement includes allowing students to imagine, envision, create, innovate, play, formatively learn, experiment, collaborate, share, and most of all dream of possibilities. The idea of making is not a new concept. In fact, the art of making is at the root and mixed into to the very fabric of our culture. I believe that the amazing innovation we have seen in this country is due to a Maker mentality. We have long been a culture set on dreaming up possibilities, and then taking the action to make it happen. The initial growth of technology has somewhat taken some of our creativity and produced consumption based thinking. We are now past the initial way of thinking, and the Makers movement allows people to finally use the technology to create and make. As we reflect on this… how are you using the Makerspace idea to engage students in content standards while facilitating and assessing process skills?

As you set, up or evaluate, the Maker movement in your school or district I ask you to think about how you are bringing this movement to the entire school and curriculum. I call it creating a Maker Culture. After-all the concept behind making is not a space… but instead a way of thinking.

For this reason, I think it is important to discuss one of the thinking processes often involved in making. It is the idea of computational thinking. This type of thinking is important not just in high stake testing, but also success in that world after school. Perhaps you have come across the idea of computational thinking in education.  The best way to describe computational thinking is to look at the way a computer thinks… or at least runs a program. This is actually the most important concept a student learns through coding and developing computer programs. We must keep in mind that it is not the coding that is important… but the thinking process. After all… one can use a computer, but not actually use computational thinking skills.

Via John Evans, Elke Höfler

Thanks to Benjamin Riley, this morning I learned about the results of a big new growth mindset study that was released yesterday, Where and For Whom Can a Brief, Scalable Mindset Intervention Improve Adolescents’ Educational Trajectories? (happily, not behind a paywall).

It’s written by a zillion of the biggest names in Social Emotional Learning Research (David Yeager, Paul Hanselman, David Paunesku, Christopher Hulleman, Carol Dweck, Chandra Muller, Robert Crosnoe, Gregory Walton, Elizabeth Tipton, Angela Duckworth).

Using a representative sample of U.S. schools and their students, they found that students doing two twenty-five minute online lessons about a growth mindset resulted in a small but important academic gain (measured by GPA’s), with larger improvements found among students who had a track record of experiencing academic and socio/economic challenges.

Via John Evans, Cheryl Turner, Jim Lerman