Meet Makers in Vermont; Go Inside Quest to Learn School; Help a Robot Come to Life

Spotlight is going on summer break, returning Aug. 27. But first we look at maker culture in Vermont and CNN’s report on gaming and Quest to Learn. We also check in with a group of sixth-grade girls who hoped to launch an object into the stratosphere, and meet a team seeking funding to build one very large robot.

---

Filed by Christine Cupaiuolo

As students start the countdown to a new school year, Spotlight is going to spend these last hazy days of summer on break. We’ll return to our regular publishing schedule on Aug. 27. But first ...

Read this terrific story from Seven Days about Vermont hackers, artists and inventors—all part of the state’s burgeoning maker movement. You’ll also learn about University of Vermont’s FabLab, and a proposed community workshop in the city’s South End called Fab Lab Burlington. Keeping tabs on it all is the volunteer-run Vermont Makers community that holds, among other activities, a monthly book club; “The Information Diet,” by Clay A. Johnson, is assigned for September.

Check out CNN’s interactive report on video games and gaming culture, which takes readers inside Quest to Learn, a New York City school designed around gaming. The story examines the school’s successes and challenges from the viewpoint of students, parents and teachers, and considers whether the Quest to Learn model can succeed within a traditional school system.

“Our assessment system is out of kilter with learning,” says James Gee. “And until we change the assessment system, the assessment system will kill any new models (of schools) because we’ll keep teaching for the old test instead of teaching the new skills.”

Katie Salen, the school’s co-founder and executive director of the Institute of Play, which partners with the NYC public school system to run Quest to Learn, acknowledges the difficulties but is optimistic. And Gregg Betheil, executive director for school programs and partnerships at the New York City Department of Schools, said aspects of Quest are “already finding their way into the DNA of our school system.”

“They start with a really simple idea—kids like to play video games, and games in general,” he said of Quest. “They don’t always like the learning opportunities they have. Not that we should be having them playing video games all the time, but there are things from the design of games that can have import for us in the curriculum design.”

He added: “At the heart, it is not a school driven by technology. It’s a school driven by a sense of purpose and engagement—and the game-like atmosphere encourages that.”

View pictures from the edge of space. Back in June, we told you about a group of sixth-grade girls in Bowling Green, Ky., who launched a plan—Project Terra Incognita—to send “an object into the stratosphere (around 20 miles above the earth’s surface) via a weather balloon and return it safely back to earth without damaging any of the equipment from the fall or extreme temperatures and wind speed.”

Additionally, the girls set out to: 

• Take both HD video and high resolution still photographs of the curvature of the earth and black of space from near orbit.
• Collect data measurements about the speed of ascent/descent and air temperature of near orbit.
• Exhibit the final photographic and video imagery of the teams work.
• Inspire others to challenge the idea that some things are impossible.

With the support of 226 backers, they surpassed their Kickstarter fundraising goal, and on June 28, there was take-off. Find out what happened next.

Looking for a new geek-out project to fund? Consider Stompy, an open-source, 18’ wide, six-legged hydraulic robot that you can ride. Who’s behind this creation? Project Hexapod— a group of 15 students and their instructors who worked together in a class on building giant robots at Artisan’s Asylum, a maker space in Somerville, Mass.

They’ve already spent four months designing, prototyping, simulating, and debugging the robot. Here’s an example of a full-sized leg. Donors who give $300 or more will get to ride it, but you’ll have to line up behind this excited 10-year-old. Support it soon—the deadline is Aug. 23. 

from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/3IHe5wDasV4/

In Pittsburgh, A Modern-Day Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

How gamers, roboticists, technologists, and designers are working along side educators in Pittsburgh to inspire new kinds of learning in and outside of school.

By Heather Chaplin

In 2007, over coffee at Pamela’s Diner in Pittsburgh, Gregg Behr and Jessica Trybus shared their growing sense of just how different today’s kids are.

Behr was the executive director of the Grable Foundation, which gives to youth-oriented organizations in the Pittsburgh area, and Trybus was an adjunct professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and CEO of Etcetera Edutainment.

“That first conversation sparked a realization not only that kids are different today, but that we need to work together differently to facilitate their learning,” Behr said.

That first breakfast was followed by another one, and then another and another. Within a year, Behr found he had a loose network of about 200 people. Participants included roboticists, museum designers, gamers, technologists, teachers and artists. It was all the people, Behr said, who were interested in the work of figuring out this “new way of learning.”

Assemble is a community space for kids to experiment with art and technology. Photo/ Assemble.

Today, these people are the Pittsburgh Kids + Creativity Network, an interdisciplinary network of people collaborating and innovating to create learning products and experiences around the nexus of technology, art and media.

“We realized that a networked model in a connected learning community was really the way to go to foster change,” said Cathy Lewis Long, co-founder of the Spark project, which was created with a $900,000 grant from the Grable Foundation to support the Kids + Creativity Network.

Spark was managed by the Sprout Fund, a small-scale grant making organization focusing on civic engagement, digital media, public art and learning, co-founded by Cathy Lewis Long and Matthew Hannigan.

From 2008 to 2011, Spark awarded grants and supported events coming out of the network around digital learning for 2- to 8-year-olds. It sent weekly updates and hosted the occasional meeting. Then, this past spring,  Spark re-launched the network for pre-K to 12th grade, with a more focused strategy and more definite structure in place.

“It had become apparent, there was really a ‘there’ there,” Behr said.

Today the Kids + Creativity Network has a five-prong organizational structure that allows it to function as a network: First, there’s the network of connections between formal and informal learning environments; then innovation, research and development; then learned research and scholarship; and then commercial and entrepreneurial support. The last prong is the “strategic stewardship” provided by Long and Hannigan through Spark.

“We realized that a more intentional strategy and structure associated with these informal collaborations could yield greater benefits,” Long said. “Our role has evolved into a more formal role of steward of the network.”

To poke around the Spark website is to meet hundreds of people from all areas of the digital media and learning, education, and maker worlds. A random perusal will introduce you to Jeff Baron, director of student engagement for the Consortium of Public Education; Mitra Fatollahpour, an education technology designer and researcher who’s currently working with Human Computer Interaction Institute researchers at Carnegie Mellon; Kevin Crawley, director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments; and Sabrina Haskell, who creates robots “with personality.”

Mister Rogers was just a total geek who wanted to use the technology of his day to engage kids with learning. ... All these people in the network are modern-day Freds.

– Gregg Behr, the Grable Foundation

Network members can find each other’s contact information, see what projects they’ve been involved with, and learn about each other’s affiliations.

The focus on collaboration and bringing people from different backgrounds together has been there since the beginning. Behr still remembers how struck he was by finding himself in early meetings with school superintendents, librarians, videogame designers, science teachers, museum curators, university department heads and members of the maker community. In other words, the network was and is made up of all the different kinds of people who have a stake in figuring out how 21st-century kids learn and what they need to know.

Behr said the interdisciplinary nature of the network led to intense collaboration, not competition.

“When you have a group of people who represent interdisciplinary fields with complementary skill sets, they’re not competitive,” Behr said. For example, a first-grade teacher and a game designer may both be interested in numeracy. “They’re going to say to each other, ‘Let’s build the toy kids can use in your classroom and then take home to learn even more about numbers!’”

For an example of the kind of success the network has been having in a formal learning environment, take the case of the Elizabeth Forward School District in the old industrial section of Pittsburgh. About a year and a half ago, the Elizabeth Forward District superintendent of schools, Bart Rocco, was in a meeting with other superintendents, a representative from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, and Don Marinelli, former director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. Rocco was so excited by what he heard, he went and met again with Marinelli.

The Makeshop at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Photo/ Ben Filio.

This was followed with a research trip to places like Quest to Learn in New York City and the YOUmedia digital space at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago. The Elizabeth Ford District ended up with two grants, one for transforming an old industrial-model classroom into a YOUmedia-styled space and another for converting the library to resemble the YOUmedia room in Chicago.

“The Elizabeth Ford School District is a very unlikely place for the future to be taking hold,” Behr said. “And yet look what’s happening there.”

As for informal learning environments, there’s the Makeshop at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. That grew out of a retreat when the museum’s executive director, Jane Werner, met Carnegie Mellon’s Jesse Schell, who also runs Schell Games. Taking advantage of other nodes in the network— the Technology Center and Research Unit at the University of Pittsburgh, to be specific—the museum designed Makeshop in an attempt to unite digital media and learning and do-it-yourself (DIY) cultures. It’s one of the network’s biggest success stories. Kids can pop in and use recycled materials to build a cityscape, or learn how to DJ with Hip Hop On L.O.C.K., an arts education and mentoring program, the brainchild of another network member, Emmai Alaquiva.

Reefbot. Photo/ Joey Kennedy.

Or take Reefbot, a yellow swimming robot that can be dropped into fish tanks at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PBG Aquarium. The robot, as well as the software and the controls, were a collaboration between Scott Morland at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon and Ashley Kidd from the museum and aquarium.

Or there’s Assemble, a community space for kids and youth to learn about art and technology in a hands-on, inquiry-based way. It was founded by network member Nina Marie Barbuto—who is also involved in Click! Spy School, a Girls, Math & Science Partnership project spearheaded by multimedia artist Heather Mallak that helps teenage girls explore careers in science, math, engineering and technology. The girls complete experiments and interact with mentors at local companies and universities.

So while the network remains a network of connections and ideas, projects like Assemble or the Makeshop give kids a physical space to learn and create. And the connections between the people in the network seem nearly endless.

Behr said the work from the network isn’t that different than what came from Fred Rogers, host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” who was a former Pittsburgh resident himself. In fact, the Fred Rogers Center at St. Vincent’s College is also involved with the network, driving the early childhood research.

“In the 1950s,” Behr said, “Mister Rogers was just a total geek who wanted to use the technology of his day to engage kids with learning. The newfangled technology then was television, and he co-opted it and made it interesting for kids. All these people in the network are modern-day Freds.”

from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/sOEIMSd7Hsk/

Maker Spaces in Libraries?

Maker spaces —workshop areas that encourage tinkering and creating—and other interactive community spaces have been popping up in unexpected places.

---

Filed by Kelsey Herron

One of the newest homes for these collaborative environments has been in public libraries. Many of these spaces expose young learners to STEM skills, and help kids make the connection between what they learn in classrooms and real-world applications.

Related:

Re-Making Detroit: How Jeff Sturges and a Merry Band of Makers Are Building a New City - Literally

The Idea Box, a 9’ by 13’ glass-enclosed space in the Oak Park (Ill.) Public Library, inspires visitors to participate in its rotating installations. According to the library website, changing the Idea Box provides a fresh way to keep visitors engaged.

“Installations vary to reflect the diverse interests in our community. One installation may feature participatory art and culture; another may solicit opinions on an upcoming initiative or library service, or be hands-on, demonstrating new technology,” the site reads.

Past installations have included an exhibition of visitor-created poetry using magnetic words in honor of National Poetry Month, and an open working studio for visual artists. The box has also invited visitors to create their own constellations out of LED touch lights, and contribute to its ever-growing “Post-It Wall.” The library space holds special events, as well, like a photo shoot complete with various backdrops and accessories for visitors to use while taking photos with their library cards.

“It’s like a pop-up shop of creative surprises,” wrote Zachary Slobig in a recent write-up in Good Magazine.

Slobig also discussed the maker space at the Westport Public Library in Connecticut.  Inspired by a local maker faire, the space has its very own Maker-Bot Replication—a 3-D printer used by library-goers to “print” the tools used within the space. Patrons can also help the library’s resident maker Joseph Schott build two airplanes that will hang from the library ceiling.

One of the best things about maker spaces is their ability to harness community involvement and participation. Now that they are in libraries, they offer what may otherwise be rare opportunities (like using a 3-D printer) to a larger, diverse audience.

Buffy Hamilton, a high school librarian and teacher at The Unquiet Library—the Creekview High School Media Center in Canton, Ga.—, recently discussed library maker spaces on her blog and said this new platform for the spaces is ideal for participatory learning.

“I believe that makerspaces can provide students and teachers opportunities to exercise these elements of participatory learning and to form what James Gee calls affinity spaces, communities formed around passions and shared interests,” she said. “Tinkering, collaborative learning, play, conversations for learning, intergenerational learning, experimentation, inquiry, the act of creation, and problem solving–these are just some of the qualities that can happen in makerspaces and encourage participatory learning.”

As Slobig noted, libraries are evolving out of necessity; no longer the formal, silent reading rooms of our childhoods, they are instead, as he words it, “dynamic workshop spaces for creative multimedia learning and doing.”

Another benefit of placing these energetic new spaces of innovation in public libraries: They will likely give kids one more reason to go to the library, where they may discover how to create more worlds of their own making.

from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/k5eJSDFsa5k/

PLAYBACK: Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom

S. Craig Watkins implements connected learning principles working on a digital media and design project with high school students; Howard Rheingold talks with Alec Couros about making learning visible; and Caine Monroy turns 10 with a celebration at his DIY cardboard arcade. 

---

Filed by Christine Cupaiuolo

S. Craig Watkins implements connected learning principles working on a digital media and design project with high school students; Howard Rheingold talks with Alec Couros about making learning visible; and Caine Monroy turns 10 with a celebration at his DIY cardboard arcade.

The Power & Potential of “Connected Learning”: Over at DMLcentral, S. Craig Watkins describes his summer projects: working with a team to implement a digital media and design project with high school students, followed by a two-week game design camp at the University of Texas with middle school students.

“Both projects are what you might call ‘connected learning’ design pilots,” writes Watkins, explaining that the goal with each was to turn theory into practice, putting into action his work with the Connected Learning Research Network. In this post, he reflects on the digital media and design project and also looks back at the challenges to engaging students that he encountered at Texas City High School (including the consequences of blocking social media), where he spent much of the previous academic year.

Watkins seems encouraged that connected learning principles activated students’ academic interests and their engagement with their communities, and the iPod Touch each student was given provided a rich opportunity for creating and sharing media. But there were important lessons learned, too:

Just like it is important to help students learn the basic structure, elements, and conventions of an argumentative essay (i.e., controlling idea, use of evidence to support our argument, recognition of opposing views) it is also important to be that precise when it involves the production of digital media content. Rather than assume that simply because students have technology, production skills, and the autonomy to create content, they still need instructional laddering, support, clearly defined standards, and feedback on the digital media artifacts that educators expect them to produce.

Continue reading Watkins’ reflections.

Professor Alec Couros: “The Connected Teacher”: Howard Rheingold posted a video interview with Alec Couros, a professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina who created the oft-reproduced “The Networked Teacher” diagram (described and remixed here), representing “emerging teacher networks supported by the advancement of social software.”

“In my video interview with Couros,” writes Rheingold, “we get into details about making learning visible and see how one student learned to make mukluks, created a blog post and video to describe her learning, and reflected on her learning process while another student created a Mario Brothers-like video game to summarize his learning and made a video showing how he made the game and why. If you are interested not just in the power of networked digital technology, but the power of learning that is both reflective and networked, Couros and his students are worth your attention.”

Caine’s Arcade and Connected Kids: Caine Monroy, the cardboard arcade master and hero to thousands of kids worldwide who built something magical this summer out of cardboard, has turned 10. In this short essay, which will be published in Jewels of Elul on “The Art of Aging,” Caine reflects on growing older, which he’s not all that happy about.

I particularly love this part, in which he turns the concept of “work” upside down: “When you are a kid you get to ride bikes, scooters, play with toys and use your imagination. You don’t have to go to work or do all the things old people do. I can keep working on my arcade and making it more creative.”

A birthday party was held, naturally, at the arcade. Here’s Caine blowing out his candles.

It’s been less than five months since filmmaker Nirvan Mullick introduced the world to Caine and his dad, George Monroy, sparking conversations about formal and informal learning. There’s now an Imagination Foundation, created to “find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in more kids like Caine,” and a Caine’s Arcade School Pilot Program for Inspired Educators group on Facebook. Plans are underway for a Cardboard Challenge & Global Day of Play in October. Educators and community organizers are invited to sign up now for the September launch. 

from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/rZMGlRXGKdU/

YOUmedia Toolkit Now Available

A new toolkit now makes it easier to plan, build and sustain a digital learning lab in your school, library or museum space.

---

Filed by Sarah Jackson

If you’re an educator, librarian or museum professional and are spending time this summer looking for new ways to engage teenagers, you might want to check out the newly released YOUmedia Network Toolkit.

The YOUmedia Network is a group of libraries, museums and community-based organizations that invite young people to create, learn and build skills with traditional and digital tools at new digital learning labs.

The toolkit includes resources to help organizers plan, build and sustain a digital learning lab in a school, library or museum space. The toolkit is organized into sections like: Getting Started, Physical Space, Online Space, Programs, Staffing, Research, Operations, and Documentation and Evaluation.

YOUmedia first started in Chicago with the digital space for teens at the Harold Washington Library and is now expanding to other libraries and sites around the country. Its core philosophy is that youth are best engaged when they’re following their passions, collaborating with others, and being makers and doers, not passive consumers.

In Chicago this summer, teens are busy recording their own podcasts, gaming, sharing original music and poetry, and collaborating with sound designers from the Steppenwolf Theater as part of a citywide anti-youth violence campaign called “Now is the Time.”

You can view more of these projects in action at Spotlight, and read about how other community organizations, museums and libraries are creating their own digital learning labs.

The project is a collaboration between the MacArthur Foundation, the Chicago Public Library Foundation, IMLS and the Pearson Foundation.

from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/yA-OWwm1Fxc/

Tech-Savvy Teachers Turn to App-Making in the Classroom

Unsatisfied with the quality of educational apps on the market, some tech-savvy teachers are making their own.

---

Filed by Kelsey Herron

We’ve all read about the usage of apps and other mobile technologies in the classroom (when classrooms allow them), but some educators are still unsatisfied with the quality of educational apps. Many teachers are making their own apps in order to help their students build certain skills that traditional teaching methods have difficulty refining.

The Earth Science Regents Buddy App was developed by high school science teacher Frederick Feraco.

High school science teacher Frederick Feraco spent the last half of his academic year developing apps that help his students hone study skills to prepare them for the New York State Regents exams, which students must pass in order to graduate.

“All teachers are judged on how well their students do on Regents and there’s pressure on students having to perform well,” Feraco told The Journal magazine. “I thought it would be great if I could take all of the useful teaching tools I use in the classroom—or I wish I could use in the classroom—and put it on one app.”

Feraco, who teaches at Columbia Secondary School for Science, Math, and Engineering in New York City, started getting interested in apps after he realized how many students are attached to their mobile devices. Feraco has developed 12 “Buddy” apps so far, eight of which are specific to the Regents exams, covering topics ranging from biology to U.S. history, writes Kim Fortson. Available through iTunes, the apps feature interactive quizzes and news updates from subject-specific sources along with videos and flash cards. Feraco has also posted a series of YouTube videos describing each one.

One of the most interesting points Feraco raised was the idea of schools going “BYOD”— meaning students bring their own digital device to use in the classroom. He told Fortson, “I hope that technology can become more advanced in the classroom and if it does, I think these [apps] would be ideal,” he said.

He’s not the only one. Jeff Scheur, an English teacher at Whitney Young Magnet High School in Chicago, recently hired a developer to create the web-based application NoRedInk, which Scheur uses to quiz students on common mistakes in sentence mechanics and grammar, reports Kelsey Sheehy at U.S. News & World Report. Like many other teachers, he noticed an area of opportunity where the standard teaching practices weren’t working as effectively as he wanted.

“Spending 40 hours grading a set of papers and covering them in red ink and getting them back to kids and then not seeing the return … I realized that because of the way the feedback was structured, there wasn’t really an expectation that they would get better,” said Scheur. “In order for them to make use of my feedback I needed to provide them some sort of interface for practicing.”

Launched in February, NoRedInk allows teachers to personalize lessons, track students’ progression through their assignments, and provide instant feedback. More than 13,000 registered users, ranging from fifth-graders to college-age students and teachers, now use the site.

I wish there were more teacher-entrepreneurs informing the discourse of education. It takes a lot of experience to really understand kids’ central motivations.

–  Jeff Scheur, Whitney Young High School

Scheur attributes his years of teaching to the initial success of NoRedInk, and he encourages other educators to create apps that match the needs of students. “I wish there were more teacher-entrepreneurs informing the discourse of education,” he told Sheehy. “It takes a lot of experience to really understand kids’ central motivations.”

There are many new programs out there that are making it easier for teachers to design their own apps for the classroom. Dara Ross, who teaches English as a second language at Brooklyn International High School, began learning the programming skills necessary to create her own app after she joined a pilot program launched by the non-profit organization New Visions for Public Schools. The program enabled her to design an app that assesses students’ emotions as they read.

“It was valuable to work on education with teachers and technologists; I think that combination is not usually talked about,” Ross told Gotham Schools writer Rose D’souza.

Ross and some of her fellow teachers also received help from EDesign Lab, an initiative created to help bridge the gap between software developers and educators. Through the program, teachers have a one-year partnership with developers who act as mentors, which works out well for both parties because many app creators have no teaching experience.

“Everyone working in education software needs to run what they do by teachers because they’re the ones who are going to be using it,” said EDesign Lab mentor Scott Peterman. ”It’s a much richer environment and can lead to a much more productive way of making educational software when the teachers are in the room the whole time.”

Through this program, EDesign Lab developed apps like Evident.ly, where students post videos of science experiments and pose questions to their peers, and the Reading Robot app, which provides students with a virtual “reading buddy” to answer questions while they read.

For educators who want to get involved in the app-creating game, but lack the coding and programming skills, check out EduDemic’s “Ultimate Teacher’s Guide to Creating Educational Apps.” The tutorial breaks down the programs and steps to design your own educational apps, and is perfect for beginners looking to formulate apps to enhance student achievement both at home and in the classroom.

from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/RVvb3o-1dac/