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Maker Education
In The Classroom
The project was originally intended to be a
pretty simple opportunity for students to show
their understanding of surface area and volume in
the (at the time) new virtual classroom format.
Since then, I have gone back and adapted the lesson to make it into a 3-week PBL that could be used within an in-person classroom. The updated lesson focuses on providing students a variety of different experiences, including research, group work, opportunities to present, and even ties to outside of the classroom as the culmination of the project is the students providing their findings to volunteering adults as they show them how much they could save by switching to tiny house living.
The full lesson can be found in the lesson tab of my website, or by clicking the image. I hope to one day implement this project within a geometry classroom.
I want to make sure that all of my lessons are equitable for all of my students. For this particular lesson, students are allowed to showcase their creativity in the design of the house. The main program used is also accessible through any internet browser. In a non-covid times, I would make sure to allow students enough time in class to complete their work, because requiring students to do online work is not taking into consideration whether the student has access to a computer or internet at home. However, when implementing this lesson I was fortunate enough to know that all students had been gifted a laptop and a hotspot for the semester, so they could access the required program as well as many others I would use in student teaching that I might not have been able to assign otherwise.
At the end of the 2020 Spring Semester I did a short internship with Bedichek Middle School where I assisted a teacher in the creation of a mini Maker PBL for the end of the semester. We built a lesson for his Geometry
class focused on students creating a Tiny
House through Tinkercad, a free 3D
modelling software that can be
accessed through your web
browser.
Over this past semester as a student teacher, my cooperating teacher and I made a virtual Bitmoji classroom that the students could access from our class' blend page. We created it in a way where students could get to every part of the day's lesson from the menu as well as providing some motivational posters to the right, a place for past assignments, a link to our zoom room, and even a section for other funny lighthearted memes and videos.
The Foundry
My internship at The Foundry provided me an area where I could work on my maker teaching skills in a low-stakes environment. As a technician, I would certify students and faculty on anything from 3D printers to carvey mills, to the laser cutter so that they could begin to use the equipment. Certified already or not, many patrons would ask questions regarding the process of using machines. This gave me good practice in answering a variety of different questions and also taught me more about the machines themselves as I tried to work through patrons' issues.
To the right is a picture of a fellow maker and pal Jose after getting certified and doing his first laser cut!
Through both the Maker program and my internship at The Foundry I have learned the value of hands on lessons. I have also done research into various mathematics lessons that revolve around the 3D printer. With a device like this classroom lessons can be taken to the next level. Through incorporating math and engineering students can begin to see where math occurs in the world outside of the classroom. I hope to one day buy my own 3D printer for my classroom because I believe it opens the door for creative and interactive learning in a fun way. One of my goals as a teacher is to help students to realize that each of them can go into any field of their choosing, specifically STEM. Through helping students realize that they too can be engineers using something like a 3D printer, I hope to open their minds to pursuing future careers in STEM fields.
Explore UT
Through Math and Science Teachers of Tomorrow (MASTT) I got to showcase various demos at Explore UT, an event on campus that invites schools and families from the surrounding areas to get a sneak peak at The University of Texas at Austin in hopes to inspire students to attend college.
I helped lead our MASTT booth where we focused on STEM Ed. demos that students could do with household items, to show that science doesn't always require a laboratory. These demos including the walking rainbow (pictured) which introduces absorption and the color spectrum, as well as the moving penny, lung model, and density bottles. The students could interact with any of the demos and were free to ask as many questions as they'd like. However, sometimes it was the adults who had the most questions. ;)
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