Presenter: Steve Sherman Location: Cape Town, South Africa @LivingMaths
Presentation Title: Merry Makers
Presentation Description: As the Head of the Imagination Chapter in Cape Town, I get to help young students and their parents get in touch with their creative juices every week. I then connect with other chapter leaders around the world and we share our ideas and experiences. I will include footage and photos in my presentation, share ideas and give you a small taste of some of our projects. I hope that you are encouraged to create a maker space at school and promote making activities to your students.
Presenter: Stephanie Chang, Trey Lathe Location: Oakland, CA, USA @MakerEdOrg
Presentation Title: Maker Ed: The work and the impact
Presentation Description: The maker education movement carries with it the momentum and promise to transform education — and ultimately, how we view learning and teaching altogether. It brings together elements of various educational pedagogies and practices, historical movements, and current trends, engaging all youth in interdisciplinary, hands-on learning experiences that are reflective and purposeful. Maker Ed, a non-profit organization that works with educators, organizations, and communities nationwide, help to train, support, and connect educator’s efforts to integrate making into their educational approaches and make a deep, long-lasting impact on their youth.
Presenter: Leigh Zeitz Location: Cedar Falls, Iowa @zeitz
Presentation Description: Join Dr. Z in the journey 6th graders took into the Crazy World of Rube Goldberg. You will experience the fun they had developing complex chain reactions to accomplish simple tasks. Using a Problem-Based Learning format, these students explored physics while they built contraptions to drop a marble in a bucket, dip a chip in salsa, pop a balloon and even create a banana smoothie. Dr. Z shares how the inventors expressed their experiences through KidBlog and how these activities aligned with Common Core Standards in Science, Technology and Writing. It’s 20 minutes of fun and exploration into exciting ways to learn.
Presenter: Karen Wilkinson – Director, Tinkering Studio Location: San Francisco, CA / United States @TinkeringStudio
Presentation Description: The Tinkering Studio is a public space within the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where we design opportunities for people to “think with their hands” in order to construct meaning and understanding through STEM-rich learning experiences. In this talk, I’ll touch on some of the underlying ideas behind this work and hopefully show why a constructionist theory of learning is ideally suited to maker-centered education.
Presenter: Vinnie Vrotny and Sheryl Peterson Location: Palatine, IL US @vvrotny and @speterson224
Presentation Title: STEAM: Creating A Maker Mindset
Presentation Description: Look around a lower grade or early childhood classroom. You will see a flurry of activity, students building, constructing, and experimenting with materials. This dynamic changes in middle and high school, as these once confident students begin with questions such as, “Why are we doing this?”, “Am I doing this right?”, and “Is this on the test?” which changes to the statement, “I am not good at this.”
A new movement which is emerging, the Maker Movement, which now challenges students to become the learner they once were, willing to try and confident in their ability to learn. It is:
School Projects + Technology = Maker 2.0
During this session, you will learn how one school has transformed its space and created a STEAM curriculum designed to allow students to rediscover their inner kindergartner. The focus of this session will be on the curriculum is being built to allow middle school students to either explore and discover their passions or dive deep into a self-identified areas of passion so that they can become someone who is willing to try, confident in their ability to learn new things, often with the help of others, and a willing to prototype, fail, reflect, and rebuild.
This session will share the environment and classroom tools which will supplement this. You will find out how you can start small, for less than 0 and scale upwards from there.
