Disciplinary Intuitions offers an elegant way to align several strands of interest to learners and educators today, such as maker culture, STEM, and an increasing emphasis on field-based studies.

The video above shows one such example, of how open-source hardware (such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino) and / or proprietary solutions such as the micro:bit can be used to help surface learners' intuitions about their local environments. The hardware serve as sensor nodes (or motes) with which data on a variety of variables, such as sound and micro-climate - light, air pressure, temperature and humidity - can be collected.

Through the collation and representation of data from within environments already familiar to the learners, analyses are more authentic to them and understanding is more enduring. This curriculum approach is known as Maker Motes, and was featured in the 4 July 2015 edition of Singapore's daily Chinese-language broadsheet - the Lianhe Zaobao.

We offer fully-customisable workshops to meet your STEM-based needs. Have a look at our workshop curriculum and get in touch with us :-)

These workshops are available in both English and Mandarin; for example, in October 2017, through a collaboration hosted by the Education University of Hong Kong, we conducted a workshop for primary school teachers on how coding with micro:bits can be consistent with our philosophy of surfacing learner intuition.

For participants who attended the workshop, please feel free to download the bilingual materials.

We've shared a complete curriculum unit based on Maker Motes in our chapter Learning science authentically through investigating the local environment in the Pearson textbook Technology-enhanced 21st century learning (edited by Chai, Koh, and Teo, 2016).

Our work has also been featured as a case study in the June 2016 issue of UNESCO's newsletter on ICT in education :-)

Issue #31 (July - September 2018) of the Ministry of Education's Contact magazine also carried a feature on our work with schools.

Likewise, the 2020 issue of the annual publication of the National Institute of Education Learning@NIE carried a feature on our work with undergraduates.

We've also embarked on a partnership with the Office of Teacher Education (OTE) and the Academic Computing and Information Services division at the National Institute of Education (NIE), to enable teachers to learn more about Maker Motes at the IoT@NIE Learning Lab in Block 2 of the NIE, under the auspices of the OTE special project on the Internet of Things. Through this collaboration, Maker Motes forms the foundational learning infrastructure for the pre-service course QCS50H Informal science learning environments for primary science conducted by colleagues from the Natural Sciences and Science Education Academic Group of the NIE.

Likewise, we offer an Unrestricted Elective to all undergraduates of the Nanyang Technological University (including those from the NIE), namely: AGE08D Designing learning environments: a focus on the Internet of Things. the course was the focus of study of my PhD student.

We had a booth at Maker Faire Singapore, on the 25th and 26th of June, 2016.

In early 2017, we also came up with a book entitled Landscapes of participatory making, modding and hacking: Maker culture and makerspaces :-)

if you are interested in submitting a paper on this theme, i am currently a Guest Editor for a 2019 Special Issue of the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, themed on Maker-centered Science and Mathematics Education: Learning, Teaching and Environment Design.

We work collaboratively with the Universitias Pendidikan Indonesia on a Digital Learning for Development grant, awarded by the International Development Research Centre. Our initial work has been extended thanks to the generosity of the Human Capital & Education for Asian Development Foundation.

As our work on Maker Motes and the Internet of Things evolves, we are developing our expertise in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Here's a narrative of our programme, from the perspective of a student:

"It was the first days of our science lessons in the school. We were surprised as our science teacher came into the class and showed us plastics boxes that look like bombs. The class were excited and curious with the boxes. We wanted to try straight away the equipment when our teacher explained that the boxes were weather sensors and that they could record the weather and send the data to the internet. We know we have wi-fi in our school but this one is different. “It is a cool box, it generates wi-fi”.

"We were busy working in our groups designing and making a cage for our cricket. We have a lot of fun during the lessons and we cannot wait to see how the cage and sensors work. We were amaze when we know that the sensors can record the sound of our cricket and send it right away to our mobile phone.

“Keren, tinggal masukkan PIN dan bunyi suara jangkrik langsung terekam. Kita bisa tahu berapa frequensinya. Kita tidak perlu ada di situ mencatatnya, bisa tercatat sendiri oleh alat dan besok tinggal membuka di website”.

[Cool, we just need to enter the PIN and the sound of our cricket was automatically recorded. We can know the volume of the sound. We do not need to be there to record the data, the equipment recorded them all and the next morning we just need to open the website and they are all there]

"There were a lot of data recorded in the website. Many of us were not interested in the data except the volume of the sound produces by our cricket. We know that at night our cricket produces high volume sound. When our teachers asked the class to analyse the data, we were actually busy talking about the equipment and what we can do with it.

“Kayaknya di masa yang akan datang ukurannya bisa dibuat lebih kecil, sekecil USB atau bahkan SIM card”.

[In the future the equipment should be made smaller, maybe as big as a USB card or even a SIM card]

“Bisa digunakan untuk mengetahui cuaca. Jadi kalau hari ini kita akan pergi ke luar, misalnya mau piknik kita bisa

menggunakannya untuk mengetahui apakah hari ini akan hujan ataukah tidak. Jadi kita bisa memperkirakan cuaca”

[It can be used to see the weather. So if today we want to go out, like going for picnic, we can use the sensors to know if today is going to rain or not. So we can predict the weather]

“Buat menentukan suhu yang tepat untuk tanaman. Kan untuk menanam tanaman kita harus tahu suhunya”

[We can use it to know the best temperature for a plant. To grow plants we will need the best temperature for the plants]."