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.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://www.livingmaths.com/maker-movement-resources/

Additional Information:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Living-Maths-191424357561419/timeline/

Presentation Description: If we truly believe that teachers teach how they are taught, then our professional learning should look radically different than most inservices and workshops currently do. This presentation outlines one approach to helping teachers learn and experience what a MakerSpace might look like inside either a STEAM classroom or as a club outside the regular school day.

At our STEAMmaker camp, students and teachers become true learners, as they experience a hands-on learning environment unlike their traditional school classroom. Here, they get to think, ideate, prototype, test, and publish answers to challenges that are issued to them, all while working on self-designed challenges. Students and teachers work in teams as parallel learners to create solutions to various challenges, all while fostering a sense of independence and joy inside collaborative learning. And as a result, both students and teachers develop understanding and leadership to be a core member of a STEAMmaker movement in their own schools/districts, should they choose to take summer camp back home!

If you want students and teachers to learn how to be risk-takers, to be hands-on tinkerers, to be active builders and growers, then you want a STEAMmaker Camp.

Presentation Title: Making Space to Make

Presentation Description: The idea of making things is nothing new. It’s timeless. However, as culture and technology have shifted, we’ve moved, as Dale Dougherty points out, from making things out of necessity and just “being smart” to being much more consumers of things and of information. The culture of schooling has shifted right along with this as we watch standards and accountability take much more of a front seat, often resulting in kids’ making of interesting things and immersing themselves in interesting projects wane. In this presentation, I share from a father’s perspective how making at home keeps my kids’ interest and passion for learning sharp. The tools of the trade are very much of the traditional kind, yet new tools have opened up new doors and new possibilities for them as they are able to pursue their passions and discover new passions like never before possible. I suggest here that the same learning opportunity can and should happen at school and not be limited to a club or home experience. Our new technologies and new interest-based/passion-based learning spaces make this more possible than ever before.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://ransomtech.edublogs.org/2013/10/29/making-space-to-make/

Presentation Description: The Center for Make/Hack/Play grew out of a system asking itself questions about the purpose and role of schools as institutions of learning. In this presentation, Bud Hunt unpacks the terms that guide his inquiry about and work within schools.

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:

• http://makehackplay.org