 Hi, I'm Trey Leith. I'm the Executive Director of Maker Ed and welcome to the K-12 online conference. Today I would like to talk to you about Maker Ed and Maker Education and how Maker Education can transform the lives of youth and their learning experiences and how Maker Ed can help you as an educator make those changes. So what I'd like to do in the keynote today is explain a little more about the Maker Education in general and Maker Ed. Stephanie Chang will come on later and explain some of our programs in more specifics. We'd like to show you a couple of videos too. So thank you very much for coming and listening to the keynote today. Humans are makers. In fact we have been making since the beginning of our humanity and in many ways it is making that makes us human. Making is a innovative creative social activity where we create things with our hands and our brains. We have been doing this since the beginning of our existence as humans. For example here you see some art that our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago made. This art on caves used innovations in pigments and drawing methods etc. But we started innovating early on with those drawings. So for example this is an animation. Many of the drawings include repetitions of different parts of the body of the animal. So for example here there are three tails drawn. Tails drawn on different levels of the stone next to each other. Many of these drawings are similar. Heads moving up and down. Horses running. Spears being thrown. So very early on we took those drawings that we were doing and making and innovating and creating them. And we know that we were doing this as a social group because they were being drawn by men, women, and children with. And as you know as time went on we innovated on that even further. And here is a early flip book movie for example. And we started making more and more complex animations and art. Till we're today where we actually have computerized animated movies that can often be very realistic. So we have been making and innovating and creating since the very beginning and it is often what makes us human. There have been make movements in the beginning too. Early on with early industrialization and automation there were counter movements to return us to our making roots or do-it-yourself ability at the handcrafted view. This is a view of an arts and crafts movement chair handmade meticulously created. The arts and crafts movement isn't a perfect example or analogy of today's maker movement but it is has a similar impetus that we as humans are makers. And individually and socially we are makers and we need and we return to our roots. Making or do-it-yourself magazines and materials have existed from very early on since we have been printing for example another innovation made by humans. For example here are two from the early 1950s to make maker magazines in sense popular home craft and home repairs how to make your own boat trailer your own sunroom greenhouses etc make your own chimney make your own boats the one on the left is has actually how to make your own baby grand piano and more as it says more than 150 projects you can make. So we were always wanting to make things ourselves whether those be crafts or complex electronics we have always wished to create with our hands and innovate ourselves and learn from that. In fact we have known from the very beginning that from very early on that making and hands-on creating things is the best way we humans learn it's because that's the way we have been doing it since the beginning. There are many terms for this constructivism experiential learning project-based learning etc but it's basically that the interaction as a community and the creating things with our own hands and innovating and working from that creates a learning experience that is both deep and engaged and this is the way we learn. Well about 10 years ago magazine was started to be published by O'Reilly and now make maker media called Make Magazine similar to the many magazines that have and books that have come in the past of doing things yourself and creating things yourself and building on projects and innovating and developing them with your own hands. Make Magazine took another step as technology and computerized materials became so inexpensive that we could start creating our own electronic and computerized projects. So Make Magazine was born and goes from as you see showing soapbox creating your own soapbox derby cars to creating electronic textiles hacking your plants for example. So Make Magazine is the a new iteration of a long-standing desire to make things ourselves and as technology got cheaper we can now actually add technology to that. Well as people were making they actually started wanting to show that off and so two maker fairs got started. The maker fair in the Bay Area of California and the maker fair of New York for example are two very large maker fairs that attract over hundreds of thousands of people to show off the things they have made and innovated and created and to look at what other humans have made, innovated and created as it's often called it's the greatest show and tell on earth. It includes artists and musicians it includes people doing crafts robotics alternative energies it says here hands on science industrial arts and much more and as the maker fair one of the maker fair one of the maker fair model says we are all makers. The maker fair became extremely popular and there have been many maker fairs M-I-N-I many maker fairs throughout the world in fact over a hundred now and cities as far apart as Washington DC and Lagos Nigeria these have been becoming increasingly popular starting in many new cities and growing in each of those cities as people have gone back to making as their activity. The maker education initiative for maker ed got started about three years ago and it's basically to give maker education we know that making or hands-on learning is an engaged and deep way of learning and we want to support educators in creating maker education programs and approaches. Thanks Trey for providing such great historical context into making a maker education it really informs the work that we do today into the future as well. Hi everyone I'm Stephanie Chang I am maker ed's director of programs and I'm excited to tell you a little bit more about our organization and some of the work that we do and hopefully invite you to engage in some of the programs and services that we offer but before I dive into that I wanted to show you a quick video clip of some of our young makers. These are youths close to our heart who participate in our young makers program out here in the Bay Area and it's a story I think you'll resonate with. It provides context again into explaining why we do the work we do and how we can make an impact on youth through making. I always hear like big noises in the room and you hear a bunch of hammering and then building and drilling. One time I was hammering something and then I was like wait this is a good beat and so I started hammering random things in my lab. What's similar between music and making is that they both have the ability of freedom you could do whatever you want. I'm Sasha I'm 14 years old and I'm going to the 10th grade. The first time that I knew I had test anxiety was in eighth grade it was our midterm for English and I studied really hard for and I should remember sitting down at the test my hands were shaking and I just was freaking out and then got a really bad grade. I was going on trip with my family and I remember just walking through a cave and I see a little hole inside the cave so I asked the cave guide what's behind that is there like a another room or something he's like we don't know we don't want to destroy the caves and I was like huh dad why don't we build a robot that can go inside there and scan the cave and map it out so we know if the cave is worth being destroyed for that small hole or not. I saw Sasha building stuff I'm like hey I can build stuff also my name is Alina I'm 10 years old and I'm going to fifth grade. A creative person can be anyone I think no one has to tell you what to do you can just like build anything you want. Right now my mom just gave me a vcr player and it was all broken and right now I'm trying to take it apart and understand the components. My name is Kai I'm 11 years old and I'm going to sixth grade. This is like a big problem to me when it gets overly hard I feel like it's not going to be possible. I don't give up because I always know if you just keep trying you'll get it one time at least. Before I started the project I felt like I wasn't the making type I felt as if I was incapable of building something. After I built the project I felt stronger and that boosted me up and saying hey you know I can actually do something. I feel more free when I'm making. To continue working with educators organizations and communities to bring making into new environments and integrate them into existing ones. So let's get started. Maker Ed's vision is every child a maker. It's a bold statement but we truly believe that every child is born a maker and as such we as educators and mentors have both the honor and the responsibility of fostering that inclination in kids from when they're born throughout their lifetimes. Everyone at some point in their lives has made something. It may have been something minuscule. It may have been something enormous. It might have had a huge impact on a family member or friend or maybe it was just for an individual purpose. But whatever the case that process of making the act of creating the invention the iteration the struggles that anyone goes through that creates the essence behind maker education. And we feel that this act empowers and allows for youth across the board to feel confident and creative to contribute to their own communities and their own lives. Maker Ed's mission is to create more opportunities for all young people to develop confidence creativity and interest in science technology engineering math art and learning as a whole through making. We work with educators organizations and communities at large to do just that whether supporting them behind the scenes or on the front lines. Our work falls into a couple of different buckets. We provide training and support to educators no matter their institution or setting. For some it is to help them start thinking and get started with their programming and figure out what type of making or maker education program works best for their communities. And for others is to help them develop and sustain the work that they've already begun. At Maker Ed we also offer a number of resources whether directly connected to the programs that we offer or as a one off. We maintain and create an online resource library with over a hundred different resources both internal and external. Additionally we've created playbooks released research briefs and written other documentation and collaboration with other organizations that additionally provide stories and cases for how making can impact communities. We also like to think of ourselves as connectors and we are delighted to be able to provide links and connections from one educator to another or from one organization to another. It's an opportunity for those who are starting and developing not maker education programs to share their successes and challenges to learn from one another and really to collaborate. We are also thrilled to be able to highlight the work and stories of educators whether in small communities or large and show off their successes and impact. We feel like as a community of makers and maker educators this is one of the best ways to really bring the movement forward and keep the momentum going as well. We also care a lot about linking research to practice. As maker education is a new and evolving field there are great questions being asked and good research being done. And through this work researchers and practitioners are able to trade stories share wisdom and further the field overall. We touch upon these buckets in all of Maker Ed's programs. Maker Core is a spring and summer season program focused on professional development that combines online training with hands-on practice to create and provide programming within youth serving organizations across the nation. The Maker Vista project is in partnership with the Corporation for National Community Service under their AmeriCorps Vista portfolio and works behind the scenes to ensure eradication of poverty through maker education means. Our Young Makers program is a flexible club model that brings together youth and mentors to create a project of their own choosing to showcase a showcase event. And our open portfolio project focuses on portfolios as an alternative means of assessment. All of these programs and more are the ways in which we work with educators and the organizations and communities within which they work to ultimately impact the growth the development and the opportunities of our youth. Everything is hands-on. It's a very learner driven experience. It's not a competitive environment. Everyone wants to see everybody succeed. It's definitely interdisciplinary because it's real materials, real tools, real problems. There's not just one answer, there's many. Maker Ed is a nonprofit organization that's bringing making opportunities to communities. And they are masters at bringing all of us Maker educators together. They learn something and they teach you something and that in turn teaches everybody else. Maker Ed has had huge impact on my professional development. The philosophy that we've been given as a part of Maker Ed is that it's one of cross-pollination of ideas. The thing that surprised me the most about this experience is that I learned more about how I teach than what I teach. I just see this tremendous energy in the educators when they walk away from an experience with Maker Ed. You're not really looking for the end product. How you get there is more important. If kids can understand the scientific and the engineering and the math principles behind what they're making, they can change the world. I remembered letting a kid know that, you know, she had really solved a hard problem and this is a kid that had very low self-esteem and then as she walked away she sort of did a little dance. That's just like one of those moments where you realize like it's so small, right? And it could disappear if you don't know it, but that might stay with that child for the rest of their life. That's great. My biggest hope for the students is for their imaginations to just run wild. These are kids that don't look at the world as happening to them. They really look at the world as theirs to design. In the Maker Ed community we create, we explore, we learn and we imagine. Thanks again for joining us today on our keynote. We hope you were inspired to bring making into your educational settings and classrooms. We have lots of resources as our vision is every child or maker. We do have lots of resources for you to use, so I would encourage you to check those out, including a newly released Youth Maker Space playbook that helps you think through and design a maker space for your youth and students. We have a robust resource library for you to check out resources. A lot of different things around making education and we have started recruiting for our Maker Core program and partners, so if you have a chance check those out. You will see the links at the end of this. And thank you again.