Dutch Neck Science Day - April 17

We are off to showcase and inspire once more! Please make sure you return your permission slip no later than Tuesday, April 14. 

You will have 30 minute sessions with students in grades 1-3 about the Maker Ambassador program. Decide within the group who will lead the Makey Makey and littleBit sessions. Go to our Google Doc and add your thoughts for challenges, equipment needs, and lessons. 

Don't forget that you need to be at Dutch Neck by 8am and that you need to be picked up by 2:45pm. We do not have a Maker Ambassador bus! 

Washington- A Reflection

Wow.

What a trip.

What a crazy, awesome, amazing trip.

As most of you blog fans (rock on) know, on March 12-13 a very special group of makers went to Washington DC.  To prepare for the trip, we were all assigned embarrassing and occasionally star wars-related nicknames.

Me (Katherine): KGB, Russian Spy (because of my initials)
Oliver: OZ, Olly, Olive, Olivia, Ollypop, Beyonce (don't ask me where that came from), and Albert (long story)
Sharanya: Shoe, Sharan-yoda
Phanisree: Phuhsomething-something
Sundhar: Shun-dhar, Sun-Darth

But enough about the weird nicknames.
Anyway, looking back from my trip to Washington, I learned a lot of things.  I learned that while forcing us to collaborate, which is the PRISM term for "don't bite anyone's head off because they accidentally poked your rover", might have been annoying in the short term, being able to present how we worked together to do things was really rewarding in the end.

I must admit, it was really nerve-wracking to have to speak in front of tons of principals and politicians.  We actually got to facilitate the whole thing, while Dr. MC stood in the back, adding some little stuff and running the presentation.  Speaking of Dr.  MC, she really taught us that we have a voice and it matters, and there's no way we could have done it without her, but still, WOW was it tough speaking to all those people.  As Oliver put it, "Sundhar, I need to ask you a favor.  If I faint on stage, which I inevitably will, will you please run over and drag my dead body out of the spotlight?"

It was a real honor to meet all the people there, such as Governor Wise, who is the president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, and the former governor of West Virginia.  He was an awesome guy, funny, nice, et cetera.  In fact, when I made someone else's day by accidentally leaving my entire $100 in a taxicab, Digital Learning Day desperately tried to track it down, and when they couldn't, Governor Wise personally presented me a replacement for the money, single-handedly restoring my faith (mostly) in politicians. 

Maker Fridays Are Back!

What do we need?

It’s not easy being G+T.  We ask a lot from our teachers.  However, this post is basically what we want and need in the classroom.

We need challenge and choice.  We should be able to do projects as we choose, and different learning styles in the classroom is vital to having kids’ needs.  We need to be given engaging and interesting projects.  We need to be able to develop 21st century competencies and persistence.  You can’t do that with a worksheet!

Beyond that, teachers should try to counteract the belief that “failure is bad” that seems to be so pervasive in our culture.  In the PRISM room, we all know that failure is a learning opportunity and can lead to success.  However, in some other classes, people are so concerned with not making a mistake that they never test the boundaries of their knowledge.  Teachers need to give us support and teach us that failure is expected and encouraged.  If necessity is the mother of invention, the father is failure and prototyping.

What we DON’T need in our classrooms are endless worksheets and rote memorization.  Teachers should foster curiosity and a love of learning, and these don’t develop when kids don’t care about the work and feel like they have to do it or they’ll get in trouble.

The two best way to build a classroom where every student feels eager to learn is by giving them a voice. We need to know that our voice matters and we should share our views to help improve our learning.  Students can be surprisingly insightful, especially when it comes to their own learning.

The other way is to teach not just reading, riting, and ‘rithmetic, but also the “soft skills”- perseverance, creativity, communication, problem solving and more.  School teaches two things- the “what”- photosynthesis, ancient rome, algebra, and the “how”- life skills like resilience and responsibility- that will stay with us forever.

What do we, the students, need from our teachers?

Being a student in middle school is not easy. However, being a student in a middle school with teachers that teach straight out of the textbook is even worse. We, as students, need teachers that teach us things that are outside of the textbook, things that we will need for the rest of our lives. I'm not saying that we don't need writing or math skills in our lives, but skills like working with a group, not giving up, and being open-minded are also extremely important.

Teachers should challenge us. They should give us, students, difficult tasks that doesn't just require knowing facts and figures, but thinking outside of the box, and coming up with different ways of solving a hard problem, even when it seems impossible. In other words, teachers should have us do activities that teach us persistence, particularly to not give up, no matter what happens. Just because the "traditional approach" doesn't work, kids should try another way to solve a problem instead of giving up. This leads me to my next point, innovation.

We are now in the 21st century. No more obsolete ways of teaching, or outdated ways of solving problems by flipping through a textbook. As 21st century learners, we, the kids, need to be innovative and creative when it comes to learning. Beyond what we learn in textbooks, we need teachers to encourage us to be original, and to not fear failure, for failure leads to success. In the WWP school district, we are now using Chromebooks in nearly all of our classes. It is our textbook, calendar, notebook, and much more. We have said goodbye to the traditional pen and paper ways of learning. We now have the entire internet at our fingertips, letting us explore other ways to overcome challenges. 

One of the 21st century competencies, "collaborative team member", is no longer restrained to a physical meeting. Google hangouts has allowed us to work on group projects from the comforts of our own homes. Google Drive allows us to all work on the same document at the same time, edit each others' work, and post comments on the final products. By using new technologies, we are redefining what it means to be a collaborative team member, Of course, teachers still need to provide us the opportunities to work with a group in order for us to learn this skill.

How should teachers empower students.

We all have complained about a teacher sometime in our lives, but teachers are really necessary. One might think," teachers teach and so do textbooks so why don't we just read textbooks?" and another might reply, "it's to control the students." Quite the contrary actually, teachers are there to let students go free because in my opinion, no one can learn without wanting to learn. Teachers are here to empower students by teaching students how to learn! Because no one is in school forever (unless you are Michael Nicholson of course). In our future lives we are not going to have study guides and textbooks to look at, we are going to have our minds and whatever we can get our hands on so I think teachers should empower students by teaching them how to learn because as Clay P. Bedford said "You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."

Maker Movement- Inspires Creativity

Being a Maker does not mean tinkering away with no goal, there is a lot to it. A lot includes, people screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOO!" because they cannot find baseboards to build their ultimate creation. This is an inspiration. Littlebits and makers fit together each complimenting the struggle to make things work. To be a Maker you need creativity; to use littleBits you need to be able to channel creativity.
We snap together littleBits so that the juice of the battery flows to give intended results. This can be a war or an easy achievement. It all depends on our creations.

"Where does the creativity come in?", you make ask.  Well you have to depend on the resources around you. Say, you have to put together multiple littleBit circuits for you creation. What do you do? The way the regular brain works, "Oh, no! Well, this mess we can't continue. What was I thinking?" the negative thoughts are endless. But the way the maker sees it is, "Okay what do I have, and what do I need? Is there anything here I can use to put this together?" As a result you will find something. No one ever said to be creative you had to use special tools! We use tape, paper, and confetti to make it work. Makers face problems that lead them to use their imagination - their creative force.