Maker Education is such a valuable role. These stories will bring you the latest information and tales of maker educators who area spreading the maker mindset. Help others learn how to make things or how to think like a maker at makerspaces, schools, universities, and local communities. The importance of maker education can not be understated. We appreciate our educators.
Recently I’ve been helping a friend’s 11-year-old daughter get started in electronics. The use of a solderless breadboard was counterintuitive to her until I presented her with one of these clear-cased versions, available through Solarbotics. As she puts it, “you can see where the metal is.”
Ken Robinson speaks on the importance of creativity and how closely it depends on our freedom to make mistakes. Hmmm … to put it more accurately – Sir Ken Robinson explains how our modern education system represses creative thought by discouraging mistakes. If you’ve ever stared paralyzed at a blank canvas/page/protoboard/ etc, you likely understand […]
Cigar boxes are great containers for loads of things. I had a bunch on hand after going to the local wine shops and asking for donated cigar boxes. Inspired by the Rock and Roll Speakers project in Fashioning Technology, it seemed like a good idea to have my students build their own music player embedded in a cigar box. This is a major project, taking several weeks, though it probably could be done by an individual in an afternoon without introducing many of the concepts we’ve worked on.
This awesome little chemical machine is from Mr. Kent’s chemistry page. Ice is laid in a Pyrex dish over a layer of calcium carbide. As the ice melts, the liquid water reacts with the carbide to produce acetylene gas, which of course is highly flammable. A match starts it off, and then it burns continuously on its own. My first thought was that the system could rapidly spiral out of control–more heat melts more water makes more gas makes even more heat. But it’s limited by the amount of oxygen that can get down into the pan, I think. My second thought was that maybe a bit of sodium metal down there with the carbide could make the process self-igniting…. (For God’s sake, no one try that.)
Gillian Higgins teaches horse owners about what’s “under the hood.” To do so, she very carefully paints detailed anatomical art onto the pelt of her white horses “Freddie Fox” and “Henry.”
What Bildr is attempting to do is very admirable. It makes good sense. It will be glorious, if it happens. Something similar has been talked about in tech DIY circles for years. The idea is to create a visual Web-based library of componentized instruction sets, “building blocks,” for doing various hardware and software constructions. Put […]
Last week, at the annual MassTEC conference an interesting collection of science and technology teachers gathered to share experiences and information. Here are some highlights:
Johanna Bunn of the Boston Museum of Science introduced the Engineering the Future curriculum, with interactive demonstrations of hands-on projects introducing students to structures, fluids and electricity.
The forum on the Massachusetts state science and technology curriculum frameworks introduced a series of strand maps that show how the concepts and possible activities in the various STEM subjects interrelate. Their hope is that existing and new courses could be designed so that they step students through learning ideas within courses and how the courses could build upon each other. Right now the maps are static PDFs, but their goal is to have them be more interactive in the way they connect projects and concepts.
