One of our roles as the Maker-Fellow Street Team was to design and run reverse field trips (Maker Party workshops) for Summer Quest students. The plan was to bring the field trip (activities) to the school and have students spend one session making through hands-on activities and another session coding/hacking and creating using Mozilla Webmaker tools (Thimble, Popcorn). These free online tools were used to remix and hack websites of personal choice (through provided templates) and also to create websites that shared students reflection about their creations.
My super talented team members came up with some very creative ideas. During a planning session (which due to other work commitments I was unable to attend) the team came up with the idea to create a type of city grid or map where students could add 3D paper shapes with circuits. Their big idea was to build a power map or grid with circuits that would look like a city map and that students could add structures or buildings to. They planned for students to build 3D structures (buildings) by using paper templates. During the making session students would decorate, cut out and assembled their structures and then be instructed on how to add an LED to it. The completed structures would then be connected to the map and the structure (with the LED) would light up.
I was only able to attend and assist during one of the six reverse field trips this summer. It was so much fun and after participating in just one I was so impressed by how the hands-on making activities really engaged all of the kids. The activities not only allowed students to explore and make, but also gave them the chance to play around with electrical circuits and then reflect on their making process through the use of free web tools. Now, how cool is that?
Below is a Popcorn video I created to show the process students followed for this hands-on project.
Here you can also begin to see my first thoughts on how I could incorporate this into my own classroom.
Reverse Field Trip #1 - Oasis @ IS313 on July 17th, 2013