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Why Educators Love Maker Faire 2013

Teachers love Maker Faire because they see how much it means to engage their students as makers. For Teacher Appreciation Week, we want to salute educators who bring the Maker movement to kids in schools and in after-school programs. We believe making has the power to transform education and develop the potential of every child to create and innovate. Getting making into schools can be difficult so we’re particularly happy to applaud the efforts of pioneering educators who are leading the way. It’s important that these pioneers realize that they’re not alone.

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Maker Faire Education Day and Educators’ Meetup

Maker Faire Education Day and Educators’ Meetup

We have two terrific education events happening the Thursday before Maker Faire, May 17th.

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FTCquel: Mark Edelman (video)

Mark Edelman from NorCalFTC shows the competition area for a yearly teen program in robotics. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, student teams used their engineering and technology skills to pit their creations against one another in the final tech challenge.

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LasercutChristmas classroom project in development

LasercutChristmas classroom project in development

The original idea came from the work of several of my students in the Fashioning Tech class. Sam and Brooke were cutting images that they found online, and saw that the heavy black lines made image contours, which cut as a continuous line. What they saw as a horrible mistake, I thought looked really neat, and suggested they carefully glue the image outline to a backing sheet. They were hand cutting the background sheet, but it looks much more polished if they use the laser to cut the outline shape on the laser

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Junkbot student videos

As a summation assignment for the CD scrounging, battery pack and junkbot project, students made videos showing their junkbot. In the videos, which were made on whatever equipment they had available to them, they were to show the ‘bot, explain what they did to make it and explain a bit about how it works. Part of the project was a writing assignment had them write about their Junkbot and tell about what they learned in the project. Not all of the students put the videos online, instead emailing them in. Having the videos online definitely creates a better, more lasting record.

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Vanishing car revealed

Vanishing car revealed

Photo via the Telegraph UK Sara Wilson likes to make things seem to go away. One of her recent works, an apparently invisible car, is featured at the Telegraph UK: Her work, created as part of her drawing and image making course at the university, creates the illusion that the car is see through. She […]

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iPhone/iTouch as classroom tool

iPhone/iTouch as classroom tool

Joyce is a teacher and librarian. She recently got an iPhone, and has fallen in love. Consider the portability of texts, the potential for blogging or taking notes and pictures in the field, the use of GPS for science and geography, the possibilities for organizing learning, the options for the music classroom, the opportunities to […]

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