 Hi, this is Making the Case for Making in Schools, a building learning K-12 online keynote presentation for K-12 online 2013. My name is Sylvia Martinez. And I'm Gary Stager. And we're going to be talking about making the case for making in schools. Gary and I wrote a book called Invent to Learn, Making, Tinking, and Engineering in the Classroom, and we've been working all over the world doing workshops, helping teachers understand what the maker movement is. The tools, the materials, the technology, but not only that, the mindset, the design potential, and how to make the case for making in the classroom. If you'd like to subscribe to our newsletter and find out more about new resources, events that are running, and all sorts of exciting things going on, just send an email to friend at inventtolearn.com, and you'll be on the list. And by the way, all the resources we mentioned in this session are available at inventtolearn.com. So, making in the classroom is something that is a time-honored tradition in school, but the maker movement brings something new to the classroom. The maker movement is a global revolution in tools and technology that's going on worldwide. People are sharing solutions using new kinds of technology like 3D printing and microprocessors, sharing the code, the design, and their solutions all around the world. Bringing that into the classroom means that students can use these materials and learn through first-hand experience, and do projects that create opportunities for deeper meaning, and use computers in a way that really supercharges learning. We know that students want to use real tools and materials, and in fact, this survey by Project Tomorrow surveyed 300,000 United States students, parents, teachers, and administrators, and the students said, hands down, that their best learning experiences are hands-on and group-oriented. These kids aren't slackers. They're asking for real research, real tools, and teachers who are excited about science. But teachers say that they're not able to do this. Only 25% say they're using project-based methods with their students. 16%. That's really low. Say they're assigning projects that help students develop problem-solving skills, exactly what we want students to develop. And teachers know that 21st century tools and technology would help, but they lack the time and the funding to implement them and feel constrained by mandated curriculum. In addition, when they asked these various groups if their school gets a passing grade for preparing students for STEM careers and majors, they had very different responses. The administrators, 57%, thought they were doing a pretty good job. That's still not a passing grade overall. Teachers and parents, only 47%, thought the schools were working hard to get these students STEM ready. And look at the students. 23% think that they're getting the tools and learning they need to be prepared for STEM careers and majors. This is a problem not only that we aren't doing a very good job, but we may be fooling ourselves into thinking we're doing better than we actually are. When we talk about making in the classroom, the first thing we need to think about is what do we mean by learning? And when Gary and I talk about learning, we're talking about learning that occurs when a new experience makes connections to existing knowledge. This is how learning happens. Learning can't be delivered to the learner. And the best way to ensure understanding inside the head is through active construction of shareable things outside the head. This is constructionism, and it can occur in the classroom through making things. And knowledge is a consequence of experience. We want kids to have real experiences, rich, deep experiences, where they're not only able to learn by doing, but they're able to learn by doing by making real things, things that are valued and useful and powerful in their world and in their community. The maker movement, the excitement, the enthusiasm, the energy behind a maker movement creates opportunities where we're not only working on projects that blur the artificial boundaries between subject areas, but we dissolve the distinctions between what is considered art and technology and science, mathematics and engineering. We concretize abstract concepts through direct first-hand engineering experiences and activities. But perhaps most importantly of all, we can once and for all end the destructive practice of sorting kids into vocational and academic tracks. When the same tools and technology and process skills are as likely to be found and required in the physics lab as the art studio and the auto shop, then every child needs to have access to these kinds of experiences. Best of all, the maker movement with its associated technology and tools and habits of mind may represent our one last best shot at returning the best progressive traditions to our classroom. Now one of the most exciting manifestations of the maker movement is the global maker fair phenomena. There are three major maker fairs in the United States, but there's a thousand mini maker fairs a year currently being held in communities, probably where you live. These are some photographs from the San Mateo Maker Fair, which is perhaps the largest of all, where adults and children come together for an entire weekend of learning by doing, of challenging one another, of sharing their expertise and knowledge and wisdom by making things, by offering workshops in tinkering and soldering and programming and welding and lock picking and driving giant cupcake cars around or building enormous mousetraps or robots out of cardboard. One of the exciting things about the maker movement is that there are children who are beloved and cherished and respected and nurtured at the center of the movement. They're not just Shirley Temple-esque show ponies, they're celebrated for their excellence, for what they know and can do and their willingness to share what they know and can do with others. And they like being in the company of adults. They gain great nourishment from being with adults, in the company of adults from which they can gain greater expertise and share what they know, whether it's Cain of Cain's Arcade or Super Awesome Sylvia, Super Awesome Sylvia's Maker Show or Skyler St. Ledger or Joey Huddy, a new kid named Quinn who's designing microcontrollers and running workshops all over the world and he's 12 years old. These kids have expertise that they're willing to share and they're excited about learning from others as well. Where you go at a Maker Faire, you see children and adults working together. Creates rich apprenticeship experiences. It smooths the transition from childhood to adulthood, which is so incredibly important. And this isn't just some one-off renaissance festival. The Maker Faire south of San Francisco this past May had over 150,000 people in attendance learning and doing and making and creating and inventing with technology. This orders a magnitude greater than the largest educational technology conference in the world. One of the things that we kept hearing when we went to Maker Faire is parents kept telling us things like, my kid is so excited about programming and robotics, I can't get him out to finish his homework, and really school's the problem. School's killing my kid. One of the reasons we wrote the book is to help teachers understand how to bring the excitement, the diversity, the intergenerational collaboration, the whimsy, exactly, of Maker Faire to classrooms. Because we really believe that kids can be and are mathematicians, designers, scientists, artists, inventors, engineers, and storytellers today. This isn't something that we're teaching them to be in the future. They can use all the tools in the Maker Movement in an appropriate child-centered way to learn the things that we want them to learn in school. In the Invent to Learn workshops that we've been leading around the world, we can set up eight or ten stations, centers for teachers to explore these technologies and to learn by doing, by having the kinds of experiences we want them to produce for their children. And yet, almost nothing we use costs more than $50. Right. So let's talk about some of those tools. There are so many tools, fabulous tools that are completely appropriate for classroom use that you can find today. This is a really short list, and we have lots more in the book and lots more links online. In our book, we identified three primary areas of game-changing technologies. Right. So the three game changers are things that really super-charge learning out of this list. Number one is computer-controlled fabrication. You've probably heard of 3D printers. It's been all over the news, NASA is talking about printing pizzas for astronauts, doctors are printing human ears out of cow cartilage. I mean, there's an amazing technology here that allows students to design three-dimensional objects of their own choosing. Until recently, the only artifacts you could create on the computer lived on the screen or on paper. Now a lot of adults get really excited about 3D printing, but we should, you know, keep our excitement in check and recognize that all the powerful learning experiences come from the design end, not what you spit out of the printer. It's as if someone asked you to replace your English literature curriculum with laser printing. So from now on, our high school is no longer going to teach Shakespeare and Chaucer, we're going to teach Helvetica. The second area we identified as a real game changer for classrooms is physical computing. You probably know robotics. That's just one aspect of physical computing. There are so many others. There's microprocessors that allow the digital world to connect to the analog world through sensors, light sensors, sound sensors, temperature, switches and motors. Connecting to the internet. Also very inexpensive computers like Raspberry Pi. For $35, you can have a full computer that's small enough to attach to a project or buy multiples and let kids build projects that have intelligence. There's also wearable computing. Small computers that are built specifically to be sewn into items of clothing so that you can have smart gloves or a GPS powered light display on your jacket. These kinds of ... Or a school sweatshirt that has turn signals on the back or a backpack that detects intruders or a necklace that warns you when a teacher you dread is approaching. Right. So the physical computing aspect brings computing out into the real world and makes it possible to explore and measure and do these kinds of engineering practices that are real and useful and interesting. Some people are excited that we can use computers to teach while we've always wanted to teach maybe with greater comprehension or efficacy or stickiness, but what really excites me is using computers to learn and do things that would have been impossible just a few years ago. These game changers represent that. So computing is simply a way of embedding intelligence and interactivity into everyday objects, even paper. Programming is the third one. We're not just talking about computer science and computer programming as a requirement for all kids in their liberal arts education, merely as a path to a vocation, but more importantly as a way of controlling their world of having agency, over learning and life in an increasingly technological world. We're reminded of what my colleague and friend Seabourn Pepper began saying in the mid-1960s when he asked the question, does the computer program the child or the child program the computer? And there are amazing new languages being invented every day that work with these physical computing components that are block based that are good for media, that are good for three dimensional programming. From kindergarten to twelfth grade. These other materials aren't something we're saying don't use. In fact what we're saying is use everything together, bring together electronic components like LEDs and displays with old fashioned traditional materials like cardboard. If you're doing exciting making in the classroom, add to it with these game changing components. We're adding colors to the crayon box, we're adding tools to the tool set. And the last part of these tools is the internet. The internet is a place where the maker movement shares everything. Designs, ideas, communities, there's help. These websites can kick start your projects and provide a place for students to share their ideas with the global community. We're talking about kids learning through first hand experience and regrettably over the past few decades learning with one's hands has been viewed as subservient, as inferior to learning with one's head. And the maker movement teaches us that all children need to be learning with their head, hearts, and hands in order to be prepared to solve the problems that school never even anticipated. The best thing that school can do is to prepare kids to solve problems that their teachers never even imagined. And these game changing technologies have real long term value. This isn't something you do on Tuesday and then move on. These become part of the toolbox of a child who can solve problems. The goal is for students to develop fluency. And research supports this. There are decades of research saying that hands on experiences support learning and that they should come first. A new study out of Stanford reconfirmed this. Classes should do hands on exercises before reading and before video. These Stanford researchers found. We often turn that upside down in school and preload the students with a lot of vocabulary and preparation when they don't even really know what we're talking about yet. But giving kids real tools and real experiences first lead them to ask the next question. And a teacher who's paying attention can then introduce vocabulary when it's appropriate. Exactly, seize the teachable moment. This is not a new idea. These tools and technologies just make it more acute, make it more acute, make it more aware, and make it really happen in science and math class. One of the things that we get when we're talking about small children is that play is how children learn. It's completely obvious when you're looking at a baby that when they play with a ball, when they play with their own hand, they're tinkering with themselves, with their world, with ideas and learning in that way. But as children grow up, we sort of lose that certainty. Edith Ackerman says that design and play involve breaking loose from habitual ways of thinking and making dreams come true. Making hidden ideas tangible and shareable. Making these kinds of ideas shareable is something that really is made better when you're working with materials that are exciting and you want to share with them. Edith Ackerman, by the way, is going to be on the faculty of our Summer Institute, Constructing Modern Knowledge, in New Hampshire this summer. And she'll talk more about her extensive work in the role that play has in learning. So we also know that we all have to deal with standards. The Common Core has a lot of new standards, but it also calls for creativity and problem-solving skills. And the next generation science standards, which were actually written by scientists in the National Academy of Sciences, talk about the role of, the critical role of engineering and computer science and tinkering and messing about and creating spaces in which those kinds of experiences can be rich and deep and meaningful. I recently had the opportunity to work in an incredibly conservative school context, where passing through a math classroom, I saw that the Common Core math standards were printed in poster size and laminated and adorning the walls of the classroom. In fact, there was nothing else on the walls to inspire or motivate or spark the curiosity of a child. And one morning we spent two hours playing with turtle art, this really lovely programming environment in which you use formal mathematical ideas to create beautiful images. And after two hours of what seemed like play and was joyful on the part of the teachers in the workshop, I asked the math teacher if he would go get the Common Core posters that were hanging on his walls. And we hung them around the lab in which I was working. And I had gone foraging through the supply closet to find reusable smiley face stickers. And I gave each teacher a sheet of smiley face stickers and asked them to read the Common Core standards and put a smiley face next to each of the standards that we addressed during our two hours of programming. And we got to about four dozen standards in the course of two hours of meaningful work with powerful computational ideas. I found that I needed a pedagogical theory to describe how it was possible that at the end of a short workshop or our four day summer institute where regular teachers create projects that two years ago would have earned them a slot at the TED conference and five years ago would have earned them an engineering PhD. How is it possible that with no direct instruction they could accomplish so much? How is it possible that a kid can build a robot the first time that they're in a robotics workshop with me that's more sophisticated and complex than if they followed a two year scope and sequence curriculum? And this pedagogical hypothesis I created called a good prompt that's worth a thousand words says that if you have four elements in place, you can solve problems that are bigger than yourself. Those elements are a good prompt, motivating challenge, thoughtful question, appropriate materials, sufficient time and a supportive culture that includes a range of expertise. If those conditions exist, you can solve really big problems. And I found that teachers have to teach stuff that's on the list. You're all obliged to teach some things that are in the curriculum. And in that case, there are three elements you should consider in creating a good prompt and we go into prompt setting a great detail in the book. But briefly, a good prompt should be brief, it should fit on a post-it note. It should have ambiguity. It shouldn't box the kids in with too many prescriptive rubric-like rules and regulations that limit the sort of opportunities for serendipitous learning and for going well beyond exceeding our expectations. And it should be immune to assessment because after all, what's a B plus in a poem or a 93 in a music composition or an A minus in a robot? The best projects push up against the persistence of reality. Now, you may be thinking, well, I need special stuff. I may need a special space. There's a lot of things being written about how to fill up a maker space. But we really believe that you don't need a special space. Making is a stance about learning. It's not a shopping list. It doesn't have to be a special place. And in fact, maybe it shouldn't be a special place. It should be in every classroom. Like the computer lab where kids 30 years after microcomputers came into school are still taking a field trip every two weeks. What's most important about the stuff is having a lot of it. Eleanor Duckworth says, if materials are slim, the only questions likely to be posed are the teachers. You want to give kids a wide range of materials and opportunities. This is one maker space and not very expensive. These materials were acquired on donors' chews by a teacher in New York City. Tracy Regidius. And in fact, the folding tables were a critical part of the maker space. She needed surface area for the children to work on. Right, and the stuff that she brings out is open to all the students. So some kids are working on the computer. Some are making avatars. Some are building robots. Some are cooking squishy circuit dough. All of this stuff is happening all of the time so that the children are the engines of the ideas that are being completed in the maker space. In our lifetime, classrooms used to commonly look like this, where there were centers where kids could get lost in the corner and be full in love with something and gain expertise and be swept away in the flow of doing something that mattered to them. And in fact, this is also a maker space in a cardboard box. This teacher brings a box full of a little component called a makey makey, which is a wonderful little invention kit that connects the computer to the real world, anything conductive like aluminum foil. And his students are building contraptions and inventions that they've created in their own head. When they're done with his block period, everything goes back in the cardboard box and voila, it's a library once again. So there's a lot of lessons for teachers from the maker movement about honoring different problem solving styles that kids aren't necessarily going to solve the problem the way the teacher thinks they're going to solve a problem or it's in the back of the book. Right, and they may not even solve the same, they may not even end up at the same place that you expected and that should be honored. Tinkering is a very important process skill that's really advanced play. Play with a purpose. It's the process of design. It's the way real scientists and engineers go about solving problems. To decorate is a very human thing. We talk about steam instead of stem, we want to add the arts to stem. Well, giving kids a chance to decorate their own projects, things they have ownership of, you will always get artistic additions. One of the most powerful aspects of computing and a physical computing and a digital fabrication is that when you have a hypothesis, you communicate it to the computer and if you're successful, you're inspired to embellish, to enhance, to decorate, to test the larger hypothesis. If you're unsuccessful, you have to engage in debugging processes. That was the major reason we put computers in schools three decades ago. To create a rich context in which debugging of coming up with alternative strategies for solving problems could have power, could have meaning, could have purpose. And the ethos of the maker movement that any problem that you tackle can be solved by sharing, by thinking together, by collaborating, by using what you have on hand is a great thing for kids to have the feeling that they can solve any problem. That they trust themselves to come up with good answers and ideas that are valuable to themselves and to the whole community. As Joey Huddy, one of the young makers who's gaining prominence, says on his website, don't be bored, make something. Right, one of the things that teachers often say they have is the biggest problem for them is time. Time for iteration, time for the students to explore, time for students to step back and look at their creations and think about what they want to do next. Having expertise available in the community is incredibly important and it doesn't have to be just teachers, students can be leaders in these things. You can have students take home a Raspberry Pi and then come back to school and share that expertise with everyone else. Where they made a Minecraft server or a home entertainment system or a web server or wrote a video game. And most importantly, this doesn't mean unguided discovery. This isn't kids wandering around and then magic, magic just happens. This is something that teachers explicitly can learn how to do, is to facilitate these kinds of environments. We have a chapter in our book called Shaping the Learning Environment. This is what professional educators do. Where we know from the great educators of Reggio Emilia that the classroom can be the third teacher that can be filled with materials of wonder. And that those materials can be placed deliberately in the room to seize the developmental moment, to seize the teachable moment. To help amplify a kid's potential, to lead them in a path that seems obvious. Based on the teacher truly understanding their child and each of the children that they serve. And being capable of making their invisible thinking visible or their private thinking public. And really what we're going for is that making isn't just about what you do with your hands, it's what you do with your head. It's about making meaning and making sense of the world with materials that help you do that, materials that really matter. So that students grapple with big ideas that are relevant to them and personal, and the teacher's role in this is crucial. You may be thinking, wow, this is all great. Now, how do I get everyone else convinced that this is a good idea? I think you really have to lead by example. People can't choose from what they haven't seen. You have to convince people that making is the curriculum, is real work. It's not just for kids who can't do the real work or what you do on Friday afternoon after you've finished the worksheets. We have to make the case to parents, to administrators, that we don't know what the jobs of the future will be. We have to teach kids tackle problems that not even the teacher knows the answer to. And there are allies everywhere, makerspaces, hackerspaces, online communities, a lot of the resources in our book, that we can lead you to some of these communities. And finally, how do teachers learn to teach this way is a really good question. You can't be expected to teach 21st century learners if you haven't learned anything this century. In our workshops and in our summer institute, we ask teachers to be learners themselves, to take off their teacher hat and feel a little selfish, because when they feel what it feels like to learn with these materials and learn this way, then you can start talking about how to bring this back into the classroom. The epiphanies that teachers have come from working with these materials and learning this way, not by being talked at or reading it in a book. I had an experience with a teacher at our summer institute where we were debriefing and she said, you know, something happened to me on the second day, which is always a critical day. She said, I was feeling overwhelmed, the project was too hard, we'd bitten off more than we can chew. I wasn't sure I liked the group I was in, I took a walk, I had to. I had to get outside, I needed a cup of coffee, I needed a little sunshine. And when I came back, everything was different. My group said they missed me, the problems all of a sudden became clearer. And she said, then it dawned on me, when do I give my kids time to do that? When do my kids take a walk, have a cup of coffee? How can I create opportunities in my classroom for my kids to take a deep breath and look at what they're working on and make decisions and come back to it with a refreshed attitude? Just like I felt when I had that experience. I learned decades ago that when I was programming a computer and I was faced with an insurmountable bug or some problem that I couldn't solve. It seemed that just standing up, turning my back and walking away from the computer was enough to sort of unlock the key to solving the problem that I wanted to solve. And we've had teachers report to us in our workshops and in constructing modern knowledge that they started with low tech materials like cardboard and saw that as the start of a glide path towards microcontroller programming or remarkably more sophisticated projects. That it seems that once you start making something in one medium, you prime the pump and create a stance at a worldview that gives you a sense of yourself that you can make things in other domains. And since, as I said earlier, knowledge is a consequence of experience. Having those sort of making experiences with a more substantial range of materials than have ever existed before creates greater opportunities for learning to result. Absolutely, and we're not saying that you have to start with one kind of material like cardboard and work up to more complicated materials. Some teachers walk into our workshops, some kids walk into the classroom wanting to solve problems that no one has ever faced before. They want to start with the hardest things. It's a personal challenge for them and that's their learning style. Often bringing tools that they already own but they need a safe and supportive environment and the time that's required to increase their mastery. So, we thank you for this opportunity. We hope you'll take a look at our book Invent to Learn and our summer institute Constructing Modern Knowledge at ConstructingModern Knowledge.com. It's July 8th to 11th, 2014 and we'll be once again visiting the MIT Media Lab where many of these technologies were invented or pioneered or accelerated. And you come away from this experience, inspired to create opportunities for kids to learn through direct experience by making tinkering, engineering. And we'll gain some of the sort of enthusiasm, passion, chutzpah to inspire this to take off in your school. We know what to do. We know that these experiences are powerful and meaningful for kids. And despite the other conditions we may find ourselves in as educators in 2013. There has also never been cooler stuff available or more access to expertise outside of school or inspiration for the kinds of learning experiences we've often dreamed of for our own children. Then they may be found in a maker movement. And you know how to get in touch with us. We'd be happy to help you on the journey as you go forward. And we both appreciate the time that you've taken to listen to this presentation and the work that you do on behalf of the children that you serve.