Welcome to our Parent Creativity Lab Workshop Blog Series where, this time, it’s the parents’ moment in the spotlight as they participate in a monthly designing and making activity. Here at Lighthouse, we have parents apply themselves in these projects to experience maker-centered learning for themselves. My teammate, Maritza Ortiz, translates as I do my…
Designing Making Experiences (DME) is a two-day workshop, hosted by Aaron Vanderwerff and Angi Chau, where educators gather to engage in hands-on making and design their own making curriculum to take back to their classrooms. The training alternates between the Creativity Lab at Lighthouse in Oakland and the Bourn Idea Lab at Castilleja School in…
One year ago I moved from D.C. to Oakland, CA to be a Maker Ed AmeriCorps VISTA at Lighthouse Creativity Lab. Today is my last day of service. It is hard to decide what to share, but important to me, probably more personally than professionally. But that is beside the point. It’s like that old…
Do you want to be part of a growing movement to improve the educational experience of low-income youth in Oakland through experiential, hands-on learning? The Lighthouse Creativity Lab has been integrating design and making into our school’s practice over the past four years giving students the opportunity to think through and create their own visions…
Our own Aaron Vanderwerff has been nominated for a piece he wrote for EdSurge, “Makers in the Classroom: A How-To Guide.”
In a perfect world I’d sit them all in two long rows, facing each other, scissors in hand, able to look up, across, or over for help and we would walk through cutting tightly curved lines. But what world is perfect anyway? Welcome to making with first graders. As a fun introduction for making Making…
I have spent the last nine months deeply submerged in Making (in School). When given the opportunity to share what I’ve seen, I never feel I can share enough, perhaps because the nature of the idea of “Making in School” itself is so grandiose. There are so many facets to it, so many ways to…
For just under the past year, our Maker Ed VISTA volunteers have made a huge contribution to the Creativity Lab program. They made it possible for us to share our practices with interested educators, expand out outreach, and make our in school making program what it is today! And now, we are looking for a…
The Summer of Making at the Creativity Lab was jam packed full of wonderful ideas, great projects, building, making, and a lot of fun! Here are some of the highlights captured on video.
Last week a team of engineers from Intel Labs, the research department of Intel, visited Lighthouse to run a Galileo workshop with middle school maker students. The Galileo is a mini computer, that can be used to interact with things like lights and sensors. Students made robotic creatures flash eyes and move wings using photo…