Category Archives: STEAM

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STEAM Surprise

steamsurprise

I came back to my office today after helping some folks with their use of Evernote, and on my desk was this surprise. It is the creation of Emma R. in my STEAM by Design Seminar. We are working on the City of Lights project with our Arduino Basic Kits and CircuitScribe Maker Kits.  I purchased the CircuitScribe Maker kits at https://www.circuitscribe.com/product/maker-kit/. She and the most of the group have been working on putting it together. She worked extra hard as we found out our jumper wires were not male/female so we had to improvise. I am loving how these seminars are going as it is clear to me that with guidance our students are capable of striving and learning with less help and direction from the oldest life form in the room.

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Finding Time for STEAM – NCAIS Conference

time

This Friday, 10/21/16, I will be presenting in room 6 from 10:15 – 10:45 at the Annual NCAIS Conference. I proposed this session last year as I think other schools could benefit on how I have approached developing the STEAM by Design Seminar.

Proposal Summary
Making, Makerspaces, and Design Thinking are powerful new instructional methods and concepts that many schools are adopting or trying to adopt. This session will focus on how a Middle School teacher started a STEAM by Design class in a schedule that did not have any room. Come to this session to find a place to add a STEAM by Design seminar in your school.

Proposal Description
Schools are faced with a dilemma when trying to institute new programs or classes. Most schedules in schools are already full leaving little or no room for creating new models of learning and teaching. Our Middle School wanted to have a STEAM class with Coding, Design Thinking, Electronics, 3D Design, 3D Printing, and Making. How do we add something to an already full schedule for students in a way that will not overload the students while also exposing them to these skills and concepts. The answer was to look at the area where students are provided time to study even on days when perhaps they do not need the time to study, or that they would like to learn something about STEAM and still have the time to study when needed. Therefore we are offering a STEAM by Design Seminar as a year-long class open to any seventh or eighth grade student who wants to take the seminar (provided they are also not a double foreign language student). The seminar will meet three out of the six days that their study hall meets. The STEAM by Design Seminar will explore these concepts and skills using the online resources (Project Ignite by Autodesk and CodeMonkey). With this approach, our school plans to infuse the STEAM concepts and skills related to STEAM and Making without wide institutional change that would require committees and time. If we fail, we iterate and adjust to the next design.

This is the presentation I will be using so please feel free to make a copy of

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STEAMing Along

arduinoworking

The STEAM by Design Seminar has met only a few times since the start of school. The image above shows a group of STEAMERS working with Arduino Basic Kit and Project Ignite. I actually purchased the kits from Project Ignite as the kits have all of the parts needed to do most of the lessons in the Project Ignite Classrooms. I am very pleased with how our group has embraced the concept of the seminar as on the first day I asked why they wanted to be a part of the seminar. There were quite a few “I thought it would be cool” and a few “My parents thought I should do it” with the usual enthusiasm of a middle school student when they had no choice in the matter.

Since the first day most of the “My parents” contingent have stuck around and are now saying things like; “Yes, I did it” or other exclamations of delight. The ability to work together is a process and shows signs of life that will help us down the road. Today, one student got her Arduino to do the Blink Sketch and was so proud she wanted to take a video to show her mom and dad. Pinch me now. Of course this seminar is very different and has taken some adjustment as I do not tell them what to do, am less helpful when I want them to find the answer themselves, or create conditions where failure is a real possibility. Today, after a failed print we tried to figure out what caused it. I pointed them to the great Simply3D resource for how to figure this out. After we determined with thought it was Layer Shifting, I asked them what tool could we use to find how to fix it? Some said a book or do you not know? I said I know of a tool but could not remember the name of it although I did know the name of a co-founder. I said if we can figure out who Sergey Brin was perhaps we would find the tool I was thinking about. Yep, a student Googled it and found he was internet entrepreneur that founded Google with Larry Page. We therefore have tried to slow down the speed of the printer to see if that helps.

3D Printers

I have not felt as excited to be teaching a class in years. I feel like the old Science teacher I was before I got into technology.  I also read today this post on Computational Thinking which affirmed my concepts for this class even more.