At the beginning of my graduate course, I was asked and I answered the following questions: what is making and maker education? What is innovation? Making is creating something and having an end product. Maker education is learning and encouraging students to create something. Innovation is creating with no step by step rules. For example, using the ingredients available to you to create a new meal and throwing out the recipe book. I didn’t realize at this moment how much deeper these concepts run.
Throughout these past seven weeks, I have spent the majority of my time learning the craft of making and innovating within my teaching profession. I realized that this learning has also intertwined with me on a personal level as well. This week I made a video using the application 1SE. It is called Innovative Course Long Self Reflection Project. The video shows my explorations of making and innovating but also gives insight into my identity and personality. I investigated Virtual Reality with VR Goggles in the classroom with my students. I created lesson plans and innovative dinners, spent time with my loved ones and quality time outdoors. I celebrated the life of our matriarch, my grandmother.
I learned the impact of re-purposing the world around me and exploring old and new ways of designing learning experiences. Re-purposing, exploring and experiencing encourages “children to construct things in the world, they construct new ideas in their heads, which motivates them to construct new things in the world, and on and on, in a never-ending spiral of learning” (Resnick, 2017). I learned the value of failing and how important it is to encourage our children to iterate. I gained a deeper understanding of how to create lessons, activities, experiences, and environments that are rooted in creativity and purposeful design practices.
Resources:
Resnick, M. (2017). Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating creativity through projects, passion, peers, and play. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
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