I have found that two things grab the interest of kids right away when ti comes to learning.

1. They love things that move.
2. They love things that light up.

For this part of the course will be focusing on item #1 through an opportunity to develop a practice of tinkering and making. I believe that tinkering is a serious endeavor—one that is generalizable across content areas and especially good at interweaving disciplines in a way that leads to complex projects and individualized learning opportunities.

Tinkering has recently been introduced into the educational field as a potential driver of creativity, excitement, and innovation in science learning. It is seen by many as an effective means to engage in exploring STEM concepts, practices and phenomena. Tinkering typically blends the high and low tech tools of science along with a strong aesthetic dimension that supports children’s (and adults’) self expression.

The goal with learning as with all the other sections are to help you see and experience the connections between art, science, and technology. The way we do this is not an adult making everyone follow step by step instructions, but rather allowing the learner to follow their own path to understanding by investigating tools and materials and exploring questions that interest them. This opens up a wide range of possible answers rather than any specific “right” one, particularly for teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) subjects in the classroom.

We will focus on how to develop these activities while also exploring the why behind them as well. Through exploration and dialogue we will also examine activity design around specific materials, facilitation strategies, and environmental organization. We’ll also share some guiding principles and learning indicators we’ve developed that can help you integrate tinkering into your elementary and middle-school science program.

Activity Design

• Create stations with proper materials to allow students to build what they want instead of being told what to do.
• Create examples for them to see and use for when they get stuck!
• Consider the age of the student to determine what materials you want precut vs. openness for them to make it all
• Have students sit around a communal(round) table so they can see each other, help one another along the way.
• Keep materials in the middle of the table so everyone has access and easy to share
• Place tools off to the sides of the room as stations i.e. hot glue gun station, sharp tool station, etc.
• Provide a playlist or resource guide of videos and examples for them to explore

Challenges to Consider

• Do the work first as educator so you understand how it works.
• Students will become frustrated because the mechanisms are linear so it can be hard to go back and fix previous mistakes
• Encourage students to focus on process vs. end product to keep with the growth of tinkering

Things to Remember

• Two parts to Cardboard Automata
  • Bottom part is the mechanism
  • Top part is the narrative which tells the story
• Have students
  • Focus on motion first and not worry about the story aspect to begin just to understand how it works
  • The story will naturally develop around the motion. Otherwise, they can see how to bring their stories to life.
• Don't do the work for them
  • Ask questions and have them come up with the solutions
  • Provide them examples to see how other examples work
  • Remind them to pay attention to details
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