In PEI we are working towards bringing ‘maker sensibility’ to our classrooms and trying to come up with a functional approach to getting this done. I’m hoping to help support the pockets of creative projects that currently happening in our system with maker/tech and pedagogy supports that can allow teachers to feel as comfortable as possible putting student lead creativity at the centre of their classrooms.
I’m working towards a model I’m calling STELAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Language Arts, and Math). It takes STEAM sensibility and embeds it deeply into the language arts classroom.
What do the words really mean?
The acronym STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math) means different things to different people. The usage of the acronym STEM (without the arts) is fairly recent, its really only come into fashion in the last 10 or 15 years. It’s a response, partially, to the concern that some people have that we need more science-type people being trained in our schools. There is a great deal of debate around whether this is true. I am comfortable, however, claiming that the kind of critical thinking that can come from exploring STEM style projects can be useful to students. Let’s take that as a shared premise and move forward.
The addition to the A (Arts) in STEAM is a recognition that there’s more to being a successful STEM person than just the STEM. You need creativity and the ability to communicate. I think of it as a way of mapping the STEM concern to the Maker movement. When you combine the research skills that come from STEM with the creativity that comes with art, you end up with the potential for a rich classroom experience that creates some connective tissue between our curricular silos. That’s when this gets really exciting.
Maker movement in education
There is a great article in edutopia about the maker movement.
In a day when everyone thinks, “There’s an app for that,” many educators believe that we’re missing the point of technology if we think its best use is programming kids to memorize math facts. Students don’t want to use apps — they want to make them.
The maker movement is committed to putting students at the centre of their learning. That learning ‘may’ involve the use of technology, or it may be building things out of cardboard, but it brings a hands on, student lead flavour to how we explore our curriculum.
Maker carts
Here in PEI we are taking a maker cart approach. Imagine a cart that you can roll into you classroom with everything from cardboard screws to 15 Microbits on it. That number ’15’ is relevant because we’re looking to populate the carts so that kids can work in pairs. The carts will also have an age appropriate collection of other things that can help you make things, both tech and craft. This gives us a bit more flexibility in terms of scheduling, and it is WAY easier to get one cart down the hallway, then to get 24 kids down a hallway :). You can also imagine the contents of a maker space divided into four or six carts that could be used at the same time by different teachers.
Here’s one from Custom Educational Furnishings
STELAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Language Arts and Math)
So what are going do with this stuff? In a real classroom? Excellent question, thank you for asking. I want to work it into language arts. I mean, not only language arts necessarily, but its the real focus of my interest. i want kids to create an elephant out of cardboard, and build a robotic interface inside of it that lights up its eyes, or makes it roar when you get too close or… whatever. But i want them to use it as a communication object.
Why?
I have zero interest in measuring creativity
I have no interest in measuring how creative a kid is. I’m happy to encourage creativity all day. Reward particularly interesting bursts of it. Take pictures of it and post it online. But i have no interest in giving your cardboard elephant a 92 and your cardboard treehouse a 78. None. If we think of the maker process as a pedagogy… then i don’t have to. It’s the WAY that we go about learning something, not the something that needs to be learned.
More time for being creative
If I’m in a language arts classroom, working on a personal reflection about my elephant, or doing procedural writing about how to build it, or explaining to someone else what the elephant’s backstory is and turning it into a story – i have TIME. I have time to work on my creative process. I have time to get comfortable with the coding I’m using to make its eyes flash red. I have time to allow my project to iteratively improve. Too often these kinds of creative projects are rewards before Christmas break, or march break or after a long stretch of hard work. I want to provide the possibility to have it integrated into the work we’re doing. Weeks not hours.
Because it totally makes sense in language arts
But the journey of maker into language arts isn’t just a matter of finding time in the day. It makes sense because of narrative. So much of the creative is about coming up with a narrative for what you’re doing. Whether that’s just the name of the thing that has evolved out of your creative process or a whole story about it. The communication. The writing. The collaboration. The reflection. These are key skills that are needed for citizenship. Team that up with some coding and some maker skills and you’ve got a killer combination.
How does it work?
This is still emerging, I figure it will continue to evolve as we get more and more people involved in thinking about it. At the current time, we’re thinking about putting a clear guidelines for achievable tech projects (make the lights blink, launch an elastic band) in with the maker carts. We’re also working towards having trainers in the classroom (and the staff room) to help teachers work through things their first time or two. They would be flexible projects that you can build around. This figures that once teachers get their minds around it with projects that are maybe a tad more scripted than a traditional JUST MAKE classroom, they’ll be able to take it from there. We’re also talking about graduated carts that help kids develop (say, in grade 1) the skills they’re going to need (maybe by grade 5) for doing the programming, wiring and building up required for these projects.
The key, though, is to design these projects so that it isn’t just the geeky teachers that get involved. We want LOTS of teachers to think “hey, i can get started with this”. That diversity will bring more art, cooler LA projects and more practicality to the maker process.
I’m super excited.
A cardboard elephant with light-up eyes and roars because we can!
Great work Dave. Thanks for sharing this.
This is exciting work Dave. If you haven’t found this already you may find the immersive PD the Innovative Learning Centre at UBC-O has been doing with over 4000 educators and all of the related resources helpful. It’s been so rewarding to work with then in support of this work. https://innovativelearningcentre.ca/