As part of the Creativity Lab’s mission to empower thoughtful, capable people through making, we disseminate best practices by offering professional development to educators from around country. This past year we offered several opportunities, from a new Making Math workshop — designed to focus on integrating making and abstract mathematical concepts — to Designing Making Experiences.
Part of joining the Creativity Lab team meant making a project of my own. Can’t teach making or talk making unless you’ve got some experience making—right? So, I brainstormed what I might like to do, and why it might make a good project. I wanted to incorporate some circuitry, as it’s a big part of…
This one comes to you a little late, but that just goes to show how busy we stay at the Creativity Lab. I got a better chance to tinker with Arduino and MaKey Makey at our (go figure) “Learn to Make: Arduino & MaKey MaKey” workshop. For those of you who are really familiar with…
We spent a week using the MaKey MaKey and Scratch to create interactive instruments and controllers. The MaKey MaKey is a kit that let’s you interact directly with your computer to control the keyboard and mouse. The week was popular with students, and in 5 days they learned the concept of circuits, programming, and made…
Over the last three weeks I have watched one of our regular drop-in makers, Yarely (a 4th going on 5th grader), go from making very simple, crafty, step-by-step projects for kids to making projects that blow away her 7th and 8th grade summer making peers. I bring this up for two reasons. First, when a…