PD Palooza - Is it really only Monday?

It's day 6 of my Professional Development Palooza. Last week I spend five wonderfully, awesome days with my fellow facilitators. I haven't even mentally come down from that high or had the chance to quietly debrief so I'm a bit overwhelmed today. I will do a more in depth debrief on NTAC sometime this week, but overall there was a lot of learning about my fellow facilitators as collaborators, as learners, and as colleagues - especially the PBL Chopped Team.

But that's for another day.

Today is the end of my first day at the Infosys Pathfinders Maker Educator Bootcamp at Indiana University. I have been so excited about this workshop since I was accepted back in March; however, I'm mentally drained.

....

So after stepping away for a bit and coming back to my notes, I've had a few revelations.

THE PRODUCTS AREN'T THE MOST IMPORTANT PART

I found myself saying this a lot this past trimester -- PROCESS OVER PRODUCTS. One of the facilitators shared the quote, "It's not about the stuff that we make, it's the meaning we make" - Jay Silver, CEO Makey Makey. I firmly believe that students learn more throughout the process than they do with creating a perfect product, but I'd not connected this with making and the makerspace. The idea that it's not about the final product someone makes, but instead what they take away from the process (fails, struggles, inquiry, learning) is far more important.

CONTENT INTEGRATION IS KEY

I was so excited to walk away with a great variety of ideas and ways to integrate the content with the making. I've listed a few examples of what I heard today below. The "ah-ha" piece here was the fact that quite a few of the ideas have to do with storytelling.

Rube Goldberg machines (LOTS HERE) 

Math: Have a group collaborate to create a Rube Goldberg machine. You can direct what it needs to do or you can let them be creative. Set guidelines. Then, using content specific technical writing, they have to write step by step process instructions for another group (measurements, angles, etc.) When they're finished they disassemble it and trade with another group, who then has to build the same thing using only the group's directions.

Science: This would work with the ecosystem project we created for the PBL Chopped Competition. Students learning about invasive species and their effect on ecosystem's health could create a Rube Goldberg machine to show the process/effects.

Social Studies: Works great for anything chronological (Wars, Presidential Elections, etc.)

ELA: Use to follow plot lines/arcs in a story, illustrate theme, and even compare/connect multiple texts.

Found Poetry

(Blackout poems, six word memoirs, magnet poetry)

Individual - describe characters in a book, outline theme in a book, write original poetry, teach parts of speech

Collaborative - have students complete a piece individually then ask them to rotate (similar to a Chalk Talk) and add on to the previous student's work. Or you could also have groups create a piece and then tell them that they have to integrate and connect all the group's pieces together into one large class display

Memes

These are great for reflection, temperature checks, exit tickets, character profiles/traits, analyzing different perspectives in stories

WONDERS, QUESTIONS, & NEED TO KNOWS

I wonder how some of the work will be "authentic". How will students connect to a real world audience or do real world work? I think the latter is going to be easier or better connected to making that the first, although my film literature project is a prime example of a project that meets both expectations. I just wonder that if students build a Rube Goldberg machine how it will go beyond simply "a cool thing they do and turn in to the teacher". Something I want to explore further over the next few days.

FINAL THOUGHTS

At this point I'm tired and slightly frustrated. Looking over the schedule tomorrow, I'm overwhelmed with how little processing time we get. There is almost no time to reflect on what we're doing or time to really dig into next steps for our maker space, culture, processes, etc. We're making something for the "Passion Project", but I have yet to really clearly see what that is (a product? a project?) and what kind of feedback I should expect from the visiting students.