From admissions to jobs post-graduation, showcasing maker skills provides an edge in the competition—and now, there are apps for that. From colleges’ and universities’ decisions to allow student “maker” portfolios in admissions, to companies eager to hire talent that can demonstrate creative, problem-solving skill, the maker movement is gaining traction in education…and in the app store.
The “maker movement”— the push to have individuals construct functional products that are recreated and assembled using unused, discarded or broken electronic, plastic, silicon or virtually any raw material and/or product from a computer-related device—has considerable traction in the K-12 arena, and is gaining momentum in higher education (e.g. MIT’s maker admissions) as demonstrable skills are becoming critical in a world grown tired of SAT scores and all-too-common bachelor degrees. Even the White House held a Maker Faire in 2015.
Glowforge has launched a new desktop laser. It's easier to use, more flexible, and more affordable than traditional 3D printers and CNC laser cutter/engravers. Learn more at www.glowforge.com.
The Maker Movement has helped spur renewed interest in hands-on learning and the value of spaces where children can explore their own ideas, be creative, and tinker. Some schools have made makerspaces and FabLabs a priority, building making activities into the curriculum and encouraging kids through afterschool activities. In large part, this new excitement has come from a predominantly white, male sensibility and conversations about equity and tinkering tend to focus on questions of access to makerspaces and to tools.
Makerspaces are much less common in low-income schools where the academic focus remains on raising test scores, often through drill and practice. However, many communities of color have long traditions of using their hands for work and play that get left out of the discussion around making. Existing inequities play out when adults engage with kids around tinkering or making. And, while makerspaces are a unique kind of learning space, many of the techniques thoughtful educators are using to improve their interactions with students could be used in other venues.
-The "makerspace" isn't really a "space" at all. It's more of a culture and a mindset. In reality, what we call the "makerspace" is really just convenient access to the storage of everything. - The makerspace doesn't have to be an extension activity or an add-on. There are so many ways that you can incorporate making into the curriculum. Advice: take the most boring topic you can think of and incorporate making. - Begin with "suggested" activities to get the creative juices flowing, but don't limit their creativity to just those activities. - If assigning a grade, try to focus on the process and the planning rather than the final product. It's important to stress that mistakes will happen and you only truly fail if you give up. Sometimes the greatest inventions occurred on accident.
A team at Cornell University has developed a new 3D printing system that allows users to create rough prototypes of their models in real time as they are designing them. Reader Huaishu Peng, who last year was part of the Disney Research team that created a fabric lamination printer, wrote in to tell us about this new project that his team will be presenting at this years CHI conference.
“When people make, they get back to the basics of who they are as humans,” she says. “Making puts the learner at the center of the work—and when that happens with our kids, the content makes sense to them.”
As Maker Education evolves in K-12, researchers are exploring related equity issues, design principles for Maker spaces, and the impact of this approach on student learning.
This is the goal of Loughborough University, which has teamed up with the Yeh Group, a global textile and garment manufacturer, to embark on work in 3D textile printing that could fundamentally change how clothes and footwear are made.
The 18-month project – dubbed 3D Fashion – will see Dr Guy Bingham, senior lecturer in Product and Industrial Design, produce wearable, full size, Additive Manufacturing (AM) textile garments and footwear with design input from a major fashion house.
According to the University, advances in AM textiles have made it possible to produce 3D print ready-to-wear, net-shaped garments directly from raw material in a single manufacturing operation that doesn’t require garment finishing.
Small size, great power! Microduino and mCookie bring powerful, small, stackable electronic hardware to makers, designers, engineers, students and curious tinkerers of all ages. Build open-source projects or create innovative new ones.
All Microduino and mCookie boards are Arduino-compatible. Experienced makers can write their own programs in the Arduino IDE and transmit their code to the hardware via USB, while novices can take advantage of open-source Scratch programming to drag and drop pre-written code.
Microduino dramatically decreases the size and cost of design prototyping, improves usability and flexibility of Arduino-compatible boards, and enhances the user experience for any age with different skill level.
Microduino and mCookie modules, sensors and accessories are typically applied in idea realization, prototype development, low-volume production and etc.
ClickWe are volunteer educators that are passionate about our students having the opportunity to create with a global audience. Our hope is to start a global flame to build innovative students who solve problems, push boundaries, and MAKE! Explore the maker in you and share your inner genius with the world. here to edit the content
The first modern library makerspace appeared about five years ago in the Fayetteville Free Library in upstate New York. Lauren Smedley, a graduate student in Library and Information Science at nearby Syracuse University, proposed the idea of bringing a 3D printer to the library. Library Director Sue Considine liked the idea and with the entire library team, built on it and created what would be the first makerspace. That was just the beginning. Today, Fayetteville’s 2,500-square-foot Fab Lab (stands for fabrication lab, and is a common name for makerspaces) has expanded to include a Creation Lab for teens and pre-teens, and a Little Makers space for the tiniest makers.
Attention Makers: This is your opportunity to show the world the work that has been keeping you up at night.
So if you are tirelessly tinkering with a tech project that solves complex problems and has applications in the real world, and can use an extra $500, we want to hear from you.
For makers 18+
How to Enter
Fill out the entry form for your chance to win. Site users will vote on their favorite submissions. Top vote-getters in each category will be sent to our expert panel of judges who will select one finalist from each category. The grand prize winner will be selected by an IEEE member.
Contest Categories: - Accessibility - Education - Entertainment - Health and Safety - Sustainability - Transportation
Designed to help students build research and critical thinking skills, the platform and curriculum tool offers peer-reviewed articles selected for the scope and sequence of introductory college courses, providing students a path to materials that are relevant and citable. Other features include:
-The ability to browse images and video, including the ability to search within streaming video; - The option for librarians to customize collections with faculty works, outside links and more to provide support for key courses; - The ability to link e-books and journal's within a library's Gale holdings; - The option to share almost all content via a persistent URL, to make it accessible through a learning management system or syllabus; - Responsive design; and - Integration with Google Apps for Education.
White House competition is giving schools the chance to design and realize the perfect makerspace A new Department of Education-sponsored challenge is letting high school students design the makerspace of their dreams — with $200,000 going to as many as 10 winning schools to help turn their plans into reality.
The competition, called the Career Technical Education (CTE) Makeover Challenge, was recently announced by Acting Education Secretary John B. King Jr, as he called for the re-authorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which provides more than $1.1 billion for career and technical education programs in grades 7-12 and in post-secondary institutions.
Kevin Brookhouser is a teacher at York School, located in sunny Monterey, California. In 2011, he had a crazy idea.
What would happen, he wondered, if students were given the same creative freedoms as employees at Google?
For years the tech giant cut its employees a deal: Spend 80% of time on your daily tasks, and 20% on a project of your choosing.
World-changing services such as Gmail, Google Maps, and Adsense all came from Googlers enjoying 20% time.
Brookhouser wanted the same for his students. Instead of showing up to school and cracking open old textbooks, kids could guide their own learning and spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want — a concept Brookhouser has since rebranded as 20Time.
In the five years since he came up with his idea, York School has become one of the most innovative schools in America, and 20Time is the hero that sparked its success.
The design thinking and 3D print process provide a fun, hands-on learning experience that develops critical innovation and problem-solving skills for students from 6 to 96 – or even 106 years of age. Natural creativity leads to entrepreneurial inspirations. Put simply, 3D printing frees students creativity and bring their imagination to life – in real time – using design thinking and 3D printing. It allows visual problem-solving. And students can bring objects out of the computer screen and into their hands, then refine their designs while they gain a better understanding of the creation process.
America is in the midst of a "Do It Yourself" (DIY) renaissance. Spurred on by networks like HGTV and DIY, as well as websites like Pinterest, people of all stripes are getting in on the action.
One of the hotbeds of this maker movement? Schools.
From elementary to high school, college and beyond, schools are finding new ways to use 21st-century technology to bring back shop class with a vengeance (and possibly, revolutionizing the educational experience for a new generation of students). With improved access to groundbreaking technologies like 3D printers and laser cutters, young inventors, tinkerers, builders and budding entrepreneurs can prototype and build whatever they can dream up.
In the first episode of Future Now, we'll take you behind the scenes to some of the schools on the cutting edge of, well ... cutting edges. Meet the kids using these makerspaces to invent their own futures, one 3D printed prototype at a time.
Asking, “so how will we get there?” There being any metaphorical place at the end of every build process, NASA proclaims, “Together.” NASA’s Centennial Challenges seeks solutions from students to professional innovators alike “to problems of interest to NASA and the nation.” They recently rewarded $50K to teams of the MAV Prize Competition and prizes over the years have reached as high as $2M.
The program seeks innovations from diverse and non-traditional sources. Competitors are not supported by government funding and awards are only made to successful teams when the challenges are met. In keeping with the spirit of the Wright Brothers and other American innovators, the Centennial Challenge prizes are offered to independent inventors including small businesses, student groups and individuals.
What are great tools for a makerspace? What materials should I get? Show this list of awesome stuff to your students and makerspace steering committee and see what your makers are interested in before making purchases. (Read more about starting a school makerspace from scratch) Curious about how to get funding? Read my makerspace buy-in post here (coming in May 2016).
*What if I can’t get it all? Decide how you want to run your space. Do you wanna have workshops or challenges? A challenge lasts a lot longer, so you could buy 10 sets of Makey Makeys and run a challenge for a few months. Or get 10 Spheros and do a different Sphero challenge each month. Just keep stretching your ideas and see where your imagination can take you, but don’t get bogged down ordering a lot of stuff you do not know how to use. Buy a set of something and see where it takes you! Also, don’t wait until you know how to use it before using it with students! Learn ALONGSIDE your makers!
In a makerspace, planning out the “stuff” you need definitely feels daunting. In many discussions about school makerspaces, many will assert that the equipment/materials in the space don’t matter and that the atmosphere and mindsets in the space are what truly determine learning success.
While I agree with the latter, I don’t agree with the former. The equipment/materials DO matter, as does the physical space itself (see Sapna Cheryan’s research). Organized materials and the right tools for the job will allow students to develop that critical thinking, tinkering, prototyping mindset and perseverance that are the true desired outcomes of a school makerspace. Hopefully these ideas can help you launch to those ends more easily!
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
