MakerEd is World Wide; Reflections from FabLearn 2015

Last weekend, Hillbrook sent a cohort to Stanford’s School of Education for the FabLearn 2015 conference. Led by professor Paulo Blikstein, this intentionally modestly sized conference seeks to bring together educational researchers and practitioners in K-12 settings to discuss making and engineering in the classroom. Ken Hay, of Hillbrook’s art department was already interested in 3D printing and attended the 2011 conference, when he recommended that I attend myself in 2012. What I saw and learned that weekend changed my teaching forever. Having designed a curriculum for 5th and 6th graders that would use design and problem solving, I felt like I was stepping out into a void. FabLearn taught me that the void was real, but that the void was occupied by good company. That is, FabLearn offered educators such as myself, a community of people asking hard questions and collecting data around the patterns we were seeing in our work.

In the fall of 2013, I applied to be on the FabLearn educator panel to share the story of my first year using maker education in my science classes. I argued in my storytelling, the need to see teachers as researchers when it came to making in school and learning in a maker space. Even if we were standing on the shoulders of giants, such as Montessori, Dewey, Froebel, Seymour Papert and Vygotsky philosophically, little was known about assessment and the documentation of learning in these new settings. Thankfully, during that same FabLearn, professor Blikstein announced the FabLearn Fellowship, an NSF funded program that would select a handful of pioneering teachers already using making in the classroom, to create an open source library of resources for other teachers, such as projects and assessment ideas. I was accepted as a fellow, and I have been learning exponentially ever since.

This last weekend marked the fifth year of this conference and it was particularly momentous for several reasons. First, two of our Hillbrook teachers were selected to share their maker educator story during a busy and exciting poster session. 3rd-4th grade science teacher Jenny Jones and lower school music teacher Kristen Engineer presented their poster entitled, “How to Build Sound Collaboration.” Brava to these maker educators for showing their work with literally the world. The poster session was filled with presenters and attendees who had traveled to FabLearn, from as far away as Brazil and Singapore. It was a truly global collaboration of idea sharing. 

This event was also special because Hillbrook had several attendees at the conference supporting our team including, middle school math teacher Chris Cabrera, lower school head Colleen Schilly and middle school english teacher Rob Greco. Colleen Schilly attended the Educator Panel that I moderated on Saturday and had this takeaway to share; “The consequence of interest is MORE LEARNING. Academic test scores still currently carry a degree of importance in our culture…but interest, passion and purpose are essential. Interest yields greater attention and effort, persistence through challenge, and desire to learn more.” Ms. Schilly continues her reflection by sharing the following questions; “The panels served as a powerful reminder of the future our children are heading towards, and to provoke thought about this very crucial question: How do we provide learning experiences for children this year, next week, TOMORROW in a way that prepares them for this and what’s beyond this?”

Chris Cabrera had a transformative experience in a workshop he attended that I wanted to share as well. Cabrera states, “I was in the CNC workshop where the goal was to separate 20 people into 5 groups and have each group construct an elemental component of a 3-D printer – from scratch. ‘How Unrealistic,’ was my first thought. After 90 minutes, 20 smiling faces stood back in admiration of our creation – a fully functional 3-D printer! This is the essence of the human spirit.”

This year’s FabLearn theme was centered on Equity and Access, a topic near and dear to me,  as well as many of my colleagues, such as surprise attendee, Rob Greco. Greco had this to say about the conference; “I appreciated the efforts made by the organizers to center this year’s conference around ‘Equity and Diversity in Making.’ This focus was most visible to me in:

(1) the Foldscope workshop I attended led by Manu Prakash, whose project is about making technology — specifically microscopy— as widely accessible as possible and with an emphasis on the social aspects of learning through photographs and stories shared by diverse participants around the world. “The end result is not what matters—it’s the story that you tell.” —Manu Prakash, emphasizing that the Foldscope website is as important as the inexpensive microscope that he has designed.

(2) the “Making and Tinkering Towards Transformative Pedagogies and Learning Environments” workshop led by members of the Community Science Workshop, Discovery Cube, the Exploratorium, and Techbridge. In addition to the conversation, the journal making activity they developed and that we all participated in served as an example of a project that can bridge gender and craft/technology divides.

(3) the opportunity to meet two specific individuals of diverse backgrounds and experience who have quickly become friends. We met on Saturday afternoon during a workshop where we were made a microfluidic device together. Then we spent a good portion of the rest of the conference in conversation about topics directly related to equity and diversity in maker culture and education.”

This FabLearn was also significant as a fellow, as this was my second year co-chairing the conference by selecting the papers for the educators panel, along with Aaron Vanderwerff of Lighthouse Community Charter School and Heather Pang of the Castilleja School. In this leadership role, it is always an honor to curate a panel of exceptional and creative educators willing to share best practice. As much as I love the quantitative data offered at the research panel, it is the qualitative data that practitioners share during the educators panel that truly inspires our work and leads the way. Lastly, Professor Blikstein and the Fellows announced the release our first publication, an e-book that can be downloaded for free, entitled Projects and Inspirations for Meaningful Making and Learning. Stay tuned to the FabLearn site to get your copy.