After working with my maker kit: Squishy Circuits for the past 8 weeks, I do not see myself using my maker kit in my classroom. First, when my Squishy Circuits arrived, I was disappointed that I had to make the conductive and insulating dough on top of making the provided circuit. I think it would be difficult to make conductive and insulating dough for every student. Also, the dough got moldy after a week; it would be hard to continuously make dough for an entire class throughout the school year. The Squishy Circuit would not be good for an entire class all year round.
Overall, I think the Squishy Circuit is a great way for an individual student to learn about science but Squishy Circuits is not adequate for a whole World Geography class. I spent a lot of time thinking and researching ideas on how to use my Squishy Circuit for my World Geography content. I did not come up with many direct connections other than metaphors for how new technology throughout history has changed our way of life. I feel that the Squishy Circuits is a very specific maker kit designed for science classrooms.
While, I don’t see myself using my Squishy Circuits in my classroom, I do see the benefits from the maker movement. The maker movement gives my students opportunities to make, produce or create. Grant Wiggins believes teachers need to have a way to assess creative thinking because creating is an essential part of the classroom. I need to come up with more creative assessments, where learning and assessment are linked together. I would like to create a project for each World Geography Unit. For my next Europe unit, I am working on a European monument project, where students have to recreate a European monument with SketchUp and write up a historical reflection.
In addition, I would like to use GoogleDocs along with the unit projects. My students created Latin American Country Projects last week and a couple of groups used GoogleDocs to collaborate and communicate throughout the week. I want to utilize this skill for the whole classroom. GoogleDocs is a great example of the Maker Education Initiative to create a record of participation; having students can share their learning with each other. GoogleDocs combines: content, collaboration, creativity and technology.
I have learned a lot throughout CEP 811. CEP 811 has expanded my eyes to the available technology. In the beginning of the course, I felt overwhelmed with all the new technology but during week 6, I really liked how the http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/ organized the Universal Design for Learning tools.
So far, in the MAET process, I feel that the CEP 811 Week 1 Explore Goal 3 states it best: things will not work on the first try, you must fail. I read this week 1 and was confused but now during week 8, I appreciate the failure sentiment. CEP 811 made me uncomfortable and each week, I wondered what new skill was I going to have to learn each week. However overall, I did learn and grow a lot. The MAET statement on evaluation states, “As adult learners, we are most interested in your growth.” I may not have received a 4.0 in this class but I learned a lot of new technologies that I am going to try to use in my World Geography classroom.
Resources
Maker education initative . (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.makered.org/about/
Wiggins, G. (2012, February 3). On assessing for creativity: yes you can, and yes you should. [Web log comment]. Retreived from http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/on-assessing-for-creativity-yes-you-can-and-yes-you-should/
mprovines 