EDIT 4180
Kelsey Rose Brown
What kind of maker am I?
In seventh and eighth grades, I attended a magnet school that emphasized projects and hands-on learning. I made dioramas, posters, mobiles, brochures, models, PowerPoints, and books weekly. This model of learning allows students creativity while they are learning core content materials. Additionally, I became so much better at problem-solving, time-management, working independently and in a group, leadership, and presentation skills because of it. I love the idea of students creatively working towards a goal - especially when it comes to nontraditional hands-on classroom methods - and am very excited to work on designing Maker Kits this semester.
January 15 - Paper Circuits
View instructions for TapeTricity Cards here
January 29 - Makey Makey
Visit Makey Makey's website here
Play dough pieces make perfect controllers for a dance dance revolution-style game
Exploring with alligator clips attached to conductors to make unconventional computer keys
Lead, another conductor, could be used to make our picture come to live with drum noises
January 5 - Carbon Light Bulb
Language-Rich Science
Our guests from the Department of Educational Theory and Practice really got me thinking about language-rich science, especially in discussing their LISELL-B grant. One of our maker space kits will be tailored to the grant's ideas specifically, but it would certainly be worthwhile to use the language-rich principles in our other kits as well. It is important to incorporate academic language in our maker space recipes, along with proper contextual evidence for students who may not be familiar with words like execute, evaluate, analyze, or hypothesis, just to name a few. As we learned with our light bulb lesson, scaffolding instructions becomes very important for English Language Learners in science. Starting with a drawing, answering questions in students' own words, and finally rewording answers in academic language ensures students the opportunity to fully understand and learn from the lesson. Our maker space kits will be successful if we are able to include these elements, along with the appropriate core content materials, into our kits.
February 16 - Barrow Elementary Teacher Maker Space
See Mr. Plemmons's Symbaloo here
February 19 - Barrow Elementary Maker Space
March 19 - Shrinky Dinks at Barrow Elementary
April 2 - Pop Up Maker Space at Tate
Read Mr. Plemmons's write up about the day