invite | School Maker Faire - Calgary and Area

School Maker Faire - Calgary and Area

We are proud to announce the first Calgary & Area School Maker Faire: an opportunity for your student makers to display a project they have designed and created. The School Maker Faire will take place on May 10th, 2017 from 5:30 – 8:30 at Telus Spark.  

The School Maker Faire is a gathering of K-12 tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, and students. All of these makers come to School Maker Faire to show what they have made, or are making, and share what they have learned. It’s a chance for students to show others an area they are really interested in. It can be anything from art to robots, from exploding volcanoes to doll dresses. If you can make it with your hands and it’s something original, then it fits in School Maker Faire.

We invite you to come and get more information at the Makerspace at Teachers Convention, located in the atrium just outside the exhibits at the Telus Convention Centre. You can pick up a 'golden ticket’ that you can give to one special student who you think would be perfect for the School Maker Faire. 

More information can also be found at http://school.makerfairecalgary.com. 

design thinking summer institute - MidSun School

Using Minecraft to Demonstrate Learning
Kaushik Tailor

Students at MidSun school had the opportunity to incorporate MineCraft in a meaningful interdisciplinary activity.  Our school Design program had purchased MineCraft Edu early last year, and the summer institute gave me the opportunity to mobilize the tasks in the company of my other colleagues.

In the project, students were provided a scenario where our school had won a 15 million dollar grant, and were asked to Design and create a museum that would fit in the back of the school.  The design constraints were the time they had to complete the task, having to create communication structures between the team members, the cost constraint, and the fact that the artifacts had to accurately connect in with their current learning.

The students were excited  to be working with the Minecraft Museum module in my class. It was clear that this made teaching and learning come alive for them.  To explain, were creating 3D functional hydraulic lifts from their learnings in Science Class, walking through 3D Water cycles, illustrating the isolationist policy of Japan from the Social Studies unit, and having fun demonstrating comma splices. Here are examples of some artifacts:

I believe this project sparked discussions in my school and in our school community of practices. Teachers in my school as well as other schools in our community of practice were impressed that students could be engaged with MineCraft and still yield high quality artifacts. What I found really impressive was this was a great hook for both high and low students. It was impressive  to see students that were typically disengaged from traditional classes to be looking at online textbooks to identify and research potential museum artifacts. Many  were accelerating their learning by researching through digital texts to create artifcats.  Students were also coaching one another on the validity/accuracy of the artifacts, and supporting one another. One student in particular had indicated that he had the wrong idea of what a certain concept was (Aquaducts), and he believes his understanding would not have been corrected had it not been for this project.

I believe it was clear that that both my students and I were actively involved in the design cycle. The students had a variety of design and logistical constraints that they had to attend to. As this was a new experience for both the students and the teacher, we had to collaboratively reflect on our work and make necessary adjustments as needed.

Students were sampled and asked to comment on the experience of the task. Students reported that the MineCraft project allowed them to synthesize the learning from the learning in the other classes in a “fun new way” that allowed them to demonstrate learning in a “more manageable medium”.  Other students also noted that by being able to create “things from other subjects” helped them connect understand by being able to “tie together” and “compare” what they “actually learned’.  One student reported that the MineCraft museum helped the student see artifacts from his other subjects  “in a 3D or virtual way”  and helped him see concepts that he “may not have seen”.  I believe this was a good representation of the experiences from the other subjects.  Ultimately, it was clear that students could still have fun working with MineCraft and still have a meaning interdisciplinary opportunity.

Students had to engage in considerations for the Design Studies Occupational Area and had to articulate the CTF outcomes as they collaborative designed, created, and adjusted their museum to meet the needs of the task.

Creativity Tip: Represent Ideas Visually

by Erin Quinn

We have a cohort of teachers who meet regularly to learn and work on enhancing student creativity through a professional learning series called Making Makers.

We met in February to work on ideating solutions for a problem of practice the teachers self-identified through the process of design thinking. First, the teachers suggested potential solutions for each others' problems of practice using post it notes.

This session, we experimented with the technique of representing ideas visually. Though we used this strategy to work through a professional problem of practice, the same technique could easily be adapted to use with students.

First, we healed wounded drawers through a quick activity from our friends at Telus Spark called "So You Think You Can't Draw." The next part also comes from an activity I participated in at Telus Spark.

First, teachers selected one post it from the suggestions for solutions to their own problem of practice. Then, they used the drawing techniques from "So You Think You Can't Draw" to represent the solution visually.

Here is my own drawing for an interactive exhibit to teach how balls of different sizes can transport objects.

Next, a piece of velum paper was taped on top, and the whole drawing was passed to another participant. They were then instructed to add details through visuals and labelling.

This person added complexity to the design through different sized objects.

Another piece of velum was taped on top, and a third participant added one more layer of detail.

This person added an element of competition through a race.

This process is designed to engage in plussing another person's design to offer possibilities for refinement and improvement. Randy Nelson, former Dean of Pixar University explains the concept of plussing in the linked video. Here is a transcript of the first section of the video:

Randy Nelson: One of the things that we do at Pixar and I know some things about Pixar ... is we use improv as a mechanism of helping with collaboration. And in that, two core principles of improv have always guided us. The first is, accept every offer. So if an improv, improviser says to you, "Gee it's funny. It's raining a lot in here today." You don't go "Raining in here?" You say, "Well that's why they gave us umbrellas." It's an offer. You don't know where it's gonna go. But the guarantee you have, is that if you don't accept that offer, it goes nowhere. So you've got a sure thing on one hand, dead end, or you've got a possibility on the other. And the other principle is make your partner look good. What a great thing. So you know on a team, that anything anybody says to you, you're gonna get a chance to plus that. You're gonna get a chance to have that beyond the table. And they're gonna try and make you look good, not make you look bad. At Pixar, what we mean by plussing is this. You take a piece of work. You take something that you're working on collaboratively. And when it's given to you, you don't judge it. You don't go, "Ooh this is pretty good. Here's what I'm going to do to make it better." Or, "This isn’t so good, here is how I'm gonna fix it." You say, "Here's where I'm starting. What can I do with this? How do I plus this? How do I accept the offer and make my partner look good?"

Expressing ideas visually also helps a person refine and simplify their ideas.