Educator Expo 2015

The Maker Ambassadors were thrilled to share what they love with their teachers at Community Middle School. They facilitated a design challenge from Stanford University's d.school and encouraged teachers to tinker around with the littleBits by completing a circuit and creating something that lights up, moves, or makes a noise. 

For a folder of resources from the Educator Expo, click here. 

One Wild Ride!

It's 2:50, and we're waiting for Dr. Mc, way over by the main lobby.  We're hauling huge containers of Bits, and waiting, nervous, for the meeting to begin.
Teachers slowly trickle into the commons, while we wait for Dr. Mc.  Oliver is practically jumping across the hallway with nervousness, and as for myself, I am screaming at random people, mostly because they made me lose my place in my book.
"OK, who has the stickers?" I ask.  We look at each other sheepishly.
"So nobody brought them?" I say.
Apparently not.  But I have no time left to worry about it, as Dr. Mc is here, finally here.  We file into the commons, carrying little bits and not-so-little backpacks.  
We set up on the stage thingy, where we put out signs, spaghetti, marshmallows, string, tape, and other odds and ends.  The teachers look at the jumble of kids and seemingly random objects with curiosity. 
This is a teacher's faculty meeting, but this time we get to be the teachers, the showers, the presenters.  Here come our first present-ees.  The gym teachers, and some others that I don't know.
We divide them up into groups, and then explain what all this chaos is about.  Their challenge: Build a free-standing structure out of 20 spaghetti sticks, one marshmallow, and a yard each of tape and string.  In 10 minutes.  And made better and taller than the other team's.
We introduce the activity while obsessing over broken hunks of pasta.  We give the teams their spaghetti, set the timer, and watch them get to work.
The first group sets to work, sticking stuff to other stuff, while the other argues about engineering and design.
They were fighting like a bunch of kids.
Dr. Mc, with a smile, reminds them that it was a collaboration exercise, and not building the Taj Mahal out of stale food products.
Meanwhile, the first group inquires about the meaning of "free-standing" as it was used in our instructions.
We explain that it just means that you can't use any part of your body to prop it up.  The group smiles and one member suddenly jumped up onto our table.  I had flashbacks of our PRISM room.  Then the teacher started taping spaghetti to the ceiling. 
While they did that, I devised a time-saving innovation called M-Pacs, short for Material Packages.  They were compact versions of all the materials you would need for your towers.  I called for more string, just as I heard the unmistakable snap  of spaghetti breaking.
Forty-five minutes and one stale, extremely manhandled marshmallow later, it was time to pack up.  While other PRISMers did the easy jobs of untaping signs and putting empty boxes into empty bags, I crawled around underneath our stand, shoveling up the tiny pieces of noodle.  Oh, what fun.