As I begin to write a proposal to the Miller Community Education Foundation (MCEF) for money to purchase equipment for The Playground, I think an important exercise will be to define what Maker Education is to me and how I find ways of its incorporation to what I do in the classroom.
This is what I want for my students:
As a Life Science teacher, I have standards to abide by and timelines to meet. I am held accountable to ensuring that we cover ground on foundational concepts so that my students can be successful in successive coursework at the higher levels. I read of a metaphor once that really stuck with me about this issue of needing to teach to the standards. It goes something like this… Teachers are like architects. The standards are the building codes that must be enforced and followed. But, what kind of architect would you rather be? One that is only capable of building a typical house that will just do. Or, would you rather be Frank Lloyd Wright and create houses that are still structurally code abiding buildings, but simply have something recognizably magnificent emanating from it? Of course, I want to be the Frank Lloyd Wright of curriculum designers. But, I’ll take this metaphor even further. I want to build a magnificent curriculum to which my students can come to occupy themselves in for the year or semester and within that time, I want to provide them the opportunity to make this house their home. To customize some of the internal aspects and asethetics. To provide them the means for which they can imprint themselves onto its grandeur. So how do I accomplish such lofty desires? First, I learn about my subject matter deeply and I build my curriculum on the themes that persist as the cohesive string tying all concepts together. In Life Science, those themes are the characteristics of living organisms. Everything learned by students stem from that list and validates the reasons for why we learn the concepts that we cover in class. Next, I create or collect only the labs, activities, and projects that serve the above goals. That is how I vet all value that is added to my curriculum. How does Maker Education fit into all of this? To me, Maker Education is more than just having students build stuff using technology. Maker Education is the philosophy I take to ensure that my students have the opportunity to create their own homes within the houses that I provide. My students engage in activities to create, to recreate, or to design key aspects of their learning experience. The timing of those actions don’t have to be constant to be effective. It is ok to have students make, tinker, and develop their own designs sporadically throughout the course. The key is to deliberately incorporate some of this perspective with enough frequency that it is relevantly instilled into students as something they value. Additionally, the student-created designs should not be free of form in a Life Science class. When my students create their own dichotomous keys for sharks, they are creating their designs in a structured format. I want a dichotomous key, after all, as the product of their efforts. This key is equivalent to a computer program with binary choices. In having students create their own dichotomous keys, as opposed to simply reading the key to identify a shark, students engage in computational language development as they make and tinker with their designs. Students bring their personally constructed keys to be peer edited as a final cap to this activity. This is when they discover how important clarity in language and usage of evidence is so important to science. I consider this exercise a form of making. High tech machines are not always required to do such work. After students create their own dichotomous keys, they appreciate far more deeply the work involved in classifying life on Earth. Teachers of any subject matter can develop a student-centered learning experience where students make in order to demonstrate learning. I wonder how many teachers employ this approach to their teaching? Please share your stories with me and let me know. Terry Chou
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AuthorTerry Chou is a science teacher at Joaquin Miller Middle School in San Jose, CA. Three years ago, she fell in love with the idea of teaching innovation as a way to bring a unique research experience to her students and SEARCH class was born. This further developed her keen dedication to the advancing of science education. Archives
January 2017
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