Snippets from Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators

Design, Make, Play

• Maker mindset and philosophy - You can choose to define yourself by what you can buy/consume or by what you can make.
• Makerspace.com
• Makezine.com
• YoungMakers.org
• Great learning environments should provide the following:

• Choice.  Learners choose and define the problem they want to solve or what they want to make within the setting you provide.  Consequently, the setting should be inviting and designed carefully to help reach a learning goal.  This is challenging but using their adaptation of Stanford University's d.school problem-framing framework will help a lot (on page 43).  I've made a Prezi "Generating Authentic Design Problems" from it that you are free to see and use
• Discovery and Accomplishment.  Learners get stuck and then unstuck, or in other words they reach the limits of their ability and have to learn more in order to move forward and accomplish their goal.  This process is a deeply ingrained part of human nature.  Babies try over and over again until they learn on their own how to walk, then run and jump.  Supervisers and parents should be careful not to step in and do something for the learner.  It may prevent the desired learning and growth.  Advice is appropriate especially if sought for by the learner or if you can tell that without it the learner will give up.  Like a young child proper support can accelerate the learning but it can easily be overdone.  Remember the moments when you've felt the thrill of discovery and facilitate the learner as he pursues the goal of personal discovery and accomplishment being careful not to inadvertently diminish it or take it from him.
• Inspiration.  This can come from examples put in the environment by the environment's creators but should over time consist primarily of the creations of others who have voluntarily left them as examples for others.
• Solidarity (meaning a sense of unity and purpose shared by the learners).  This manifests itself in the natural sharing of tips, ideas, and even projects between the learners.
• Squishy Circuits - playdough electricified (This looks like so much fun.  I am excited to try it myself)

• Go to the website to get recipes for conductive and resistive playdough.  (If you want some deionized or distilled water, ask your closest biology or chemistry lab.)
• This playdough can be used at all levels and may be especially helpful to teach basic circuits before moving students onto breadboards and wires where less of the conductive material of the circuit is visible.
•  RAFT - Resource Area For Teachers
• If you could sift the landfill and pull out all the usable discarded items from all kinds of businesses and put them in a warehouse, then provide idea sheets and training to help teachers use them in all kinds of hands-on activities, you would have made RAFT.
• Vuja de - the opposite of deja vu - the ability to see something you have seen many times, and see it as if for the first time.
• SciPlay's Guided Play Games
• Guided play games (GPG's) can actually cause the students to engage attentively, longer than merely a free play experience because there is a goal to achieve.  It's like taking the thrill of beating a level in a video game and combining that with real-world learning about acceleration or energy by allowing students to push a scooter cart or slide down a slide with sensors that take the physical measurements whenever they begin.