classroom

Why Educators Love Maker Faire 2013

By Michelle "Binka" Hlubinka

Michelle "Binka" Hlubinka

Michelle, or Binka, makes . While at Maker Media, she oversaw publications, outreach, and programming for kids, families, and schools. Before joining Maker Media in 2007, she worked at the Exploratorium, in Mitchel Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, and as a curriculum designer for various publishers and educational researchers. When she’s not supporting future makers, including her two young sons, Binka does some making of her own, most often as a visual artist.

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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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Ear Bud Holder as Student Project

Ear Bud Holder as Student Project

By Chris Connors

Chris Connors

Making things is the best way to learn about our world.

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Yesterday I carved out a bit of end of summer classroom experimentation time. One of the projects I wanted to develop was a student designed ear bud holder. They’ve crossed my radar a bit over the years, but I’ve never really needed one. I used to keep my headphones plugged into my mp3 player, and would put it on a shelf in the house, or in the elbow box in my car. Recently, though, my mp3 player and GPS unit were stolified out of my car. So now my phone seems to have become the ultimate gizmo again. It works pretty well with the music app, and Google Maps has a navigation feature that wasn’t there when I looked before. It would actually be perfect if it had an FM radio for local terrestrial audio. The problem now is, where to keep the tangle of headphone wires.

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Junkbot student videos

By Chris Connors

Chris Connors

Making things is the best way to learn about our world.

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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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Drawing techniques for making

Drawing techniques for making

By Chris Connors

Chris Connors

Making things is the best way to learn about our world.

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In engineering, fabricating, and all-around making, it is very useful to know basic drawing styles. This will help you get your ideas out of your head and onto that napkin, or into your notebook so that you can bring them into the world. Architects, planners, designers, engineers, and others use drawing to help communicate their […]

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Maker courses

Maker courses

By Chris Connors

Chris Connors

Making things is the best way to learn about our world.

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4

Creating a Maker Course In the next month or so I will have a semester change, and with it an opportunity to restructure the sequence of three courses. Robotics, Building and Repairing Computers and Web Design are three classes that I have taught before, and am looking to streamline the content of the courses. The […]

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