Authentic Assessment:
Maker Faire and the Public Showcase of Work
Less than 24 hours ago, the Hillbrook school spent the weekend at the Bay Area Maker Faire where hundreds of thousands of curious onlookers got to see the kind of work Hillbrook’s students are making in the school’s MakeSpace for applied technology, engineering, art, math and science (t.e.a.m.s.). Hours of energy, designing, testing and prototyping paid off, as students shared their work with the world and got to see the looks of amazement and joy as their games were on display.
While both machines arrived at the faire grounds Friday unfinished, students spent much of Saturday getting one machine up and playable. Once online, the game miraculously lasted all weekend under the heavy user testing environment of the Maker Faire with only one small repair issue by Sunday afternoon, a loose flipper. This testament of engineering by the class of 2017 is evidence that with enough time and hope, even kids can make something real, like a working pinball machine.
Hillbrook’s booth was in the Young Makers Expo Hall, along with other Bay Area schools such as the Menlo School, Nueva, Castilleja, Lighthouse Community Charter, Athenian and East Bay School for Boys. Maker Faire not only gives students a place to share their work with like-minded inventors and scientists, it gives students a chance to practice their public speaking. Above, 5th grader Haley explains the class project to interested players. Historically (Hillbrook attended first in 2013) Maker Faire has been a right of passage for 5th graders but 6th graders have also used the venue for testing and showing the products they designed in problem based science level 6.
Below 6th grade student Claire shares her tactile memory game called “TextureTiles” with interested gamers at the Faire. She has been working on this game all semester as part of her requirement to research a problem and design a solution that addresses that problem. She chose the lack of educational games for the blind as her topic. Claire went above and beyond the yearly goal of doing two forms of active research for her product design by doing two additional forms of active research at Maker Faire. She attended the event on Saturday, felt she had some improvement to do on her experiment design and came back for a second round of testing on Sunday, this time with a bigger and more impressive set-up.
Maker Faire is an exciting platform for students to share and talk about their ideas and inventions. Maker Faire opens the doors for students into a community where they are accepted as smart, creative and cool. With adult help, students can also fill out the project application themselves as students from Lighthouse Community Charter School do. Taking ownership over the process of showing work to the public is an extremely valuable skill for young makers to have and one we will create more space for in preparation for Maker Faire 2015!
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