Students participate in a design process.
“Aren’t we just cutting up boxes so students can build them back into boxes?” I was working with a 3rd grade teacher on a lesson for the NGSS performance expectation: 3-ESS3-1. Make a claim about the merit of a design solution that reduces the impacts of a weather-related hazard. Students were building models of weather-resistant…
At the culmination of a month-long 3rd and 4th grade Expedition on Natural Occurrences, the Creativity Lab developed two making projects based on Housing and Civil Engineering. Collaborating with 3/4th grade teachers, the Lab created two design challenges focusing on earthquakes and tsunamis, natural occurrences relevant to the Bay Area and California.
In our ongoing meeting of Portfolio Development and Career Pathways, we planned a Presentation Day for Middle-School during our School Assembly, and finalized a Portfolio Feedback Day for our High School Students.
Our ongoing meeting of the Making, Art(s) and Design Inquiry Group took place this week, where we discussed connections across the MAD classes, continued our work linked to career pathways, and discussed how to design a Portfolio Experience for our students.
One of the key focuses of a maker-centered classroom or environment is to encourage students to develop a “maker mindset”. But how can educators promote a dispositional shift toward maker empowerment in students? Agency by Design (AbD) has been working on solutions to this question for some time, and in their research, they have developed…
Welcome to our blog mentoring series where it is my goal to shine the light on our bright Lighthouse students as they create making projects throughout the 2016-17 school year. One area we will focus on is developing student agency which is one of the core values associated with maker-centered learning. This is one of…
Projects using toys are immediately engaging for students, and can provide surprising learning opportunities. Our first grade class had a whole unit on toys; they took apart toy cars to learn about how they worked, built tops (while learning some basic physics concepts), and designed new toys from scratch using a variety of materials.
By Aaron Vanderwerff & Christine Mytko Originally published on Autodesk Design Academy. Why Making? Looking for ways to engage your students in deep learning? Hoping to hone your ability to help students truly understand what they are learning? Integrating making into your practice engages students, provides a true context for character development (think persistence), and…
Fun fact: here at the Creativity Lab, Making isn’t just about making things. Making is also about learning to see the world with new eyes, and developing deeper knowledge and understanding of the world around us. One of the ways we incorporate this idea is through using Agency by Design’s thinking routines. Educators can easily integrate these routines into any subject — even those not typically associated with making, like the Humanities. The first routine, called Parts, Purposes, and Complexities, (PPC) is a great one to start with, and is applicable to physical objects as well as abstract ideas and constructs.
This project was inspired by the hit video Caine’s Arcade, and concluded our summer making program.