STEAM CAMP as Professional Development - Part 2

In my last post, I described the framework I use in my integrated STEAM-inspired residencies to design a one-week STEAM camp in rural Vermont. The INSPIRE phase let students feel circuits and game design before teaching them the concepts and skills to create their own games. The CREATE CONFIDENCE phase used skill-building sprints to provide them just enough command of real tools and processes available to them to get started designing their own games.

The MEANINGFUL MAKING Phase

The MEANINGFUL MAKING phase is where the students design and create their own games in an open studio format. Here we see creative and practical problem-solving play out as campers created a game prototype that was ready to test, revise, and pitch. Our culminating event included a game arcade with peers and a pitch to guests who role-played "potential investors".

By midweek, the campers were ready for the Meanintful Making phase.  "When can we start creating our own games?" they asked. They were inspired and they had gained enough confidence from the skill-building sprints to dive into creating games using their own ideas.

Scroll through the slides to see the fun games created this week

To my surprise, most of them started designing board games. In some residencies I've seen a strong preference to create physical games; at other times I've seen more students gravitate towards creating video games. I think the choice of medium came down to what they created in the skill-builders. During the laser cutter sprint, the campers ended up with a laser-cut game piece. Holding their beautifully crafted game pieces that they had designed themselves, students had an immediate desire to build a game around it. This led them to imagine board games above video games.

It also really drove home the role of aesthetics in the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) of game design—a testament to what Ron Berger describes as the power of giving students the opportunity to create "beautiful works." Using Cuttle.xyz and The Noun Project to produce a game piece with the laser cutter gave the students something beautiful that they could touch and feel. Something they had designed. Some students were really motivated to create a game around that piece. Others used the skills they had learned to design different game assets that could be used with the theme their game was based on.

Just in Time Learning during Studio Time

Although we had not covered boolean modifiers like "union" and "subtract" in the laser cutter skill-builder, many students needed this skill to weld parts of their designs together while creating game assets. When one student needed to attach a dog's leg to its body, I showed her how. She immediately turned teacher—showing others how to use "union" to keep their own designs intact. This just-in-time peer teaching spread quickly, and it became one of the most powerful features of open studio time.

Another common element in many of the games our students made was the use of LED lights triggered by copper tape "switches" as part of the game mechanics. Students' use of LED switches in their games echoed what they'd learned in the Simple Circuits and Switches skill-builder—a clear sign that those hands-on sprints built genuine confidence with the tools. In this case, our skill-builder helped students understand at least one way circuits could add to the MDA of game design.

Next time, I'd include an explicit brainstorming session on different ways circuits could enhance game design. It might spark more varied student solutions and help students see possibilities beyond what they experienced in the 45-minute skill-builder.

Balancing Student Vision with Growth

As instructors, our role was to expand student thinking about what's possible beyond the quick skill-builder they experienced. We were constantly looking for opportunities to build on the basic skills when a student's idea provided the perfect opportunity to learn the next level.

This happened when two students imagined a game called Poison Lights that would require 6 switches and simple
circuits—far more than what we'd taught. With the students' foundational understanding of simple circuits, their game would require 6 batteries to control six different switch-light combinations. At first, we tried to convince the students to reduce the number of lights necessary for their game mechanics. After those efforts failed, I leaned into the students' vision and determination, teaching them how to use a negative and positive bus to achieve the results they were seeking.

Using Cuttle to document a multi-light circuit design with a  negative and positive bus 

I was reminded that respecting student vision—and not limiting what's possible to the skills they already possess—is a crucial part of the Meaningful Making stage. This scenario also reminded me that teachers need a chance to play and develop their own advanced skills, so that they can be ready to take students to new levels of learning just in time. This is much more effective than having students sit through many "just-in-case" skill-building sessions before the meaningful making phase begins.

The balance matters. Spending too much time on just-in-case skill-builders reduces open studio time for meaningful making. It's better to save advanced skill-building (like parallel circuits) for when a student's vision makes that lesson the perfect solution to the problem they're trying to solve.

Yet spend too little time on a new skill that has game-changing potential, and you can also limit students' understanding of a tool or process. We saw this play out with the micro:bits.

The Micro:bit Lesson: Coaching as Possibility-Expanding

Each camper was told they could take home their micro:bit at the end of the week—following the UK's pedagogical decision to give each 5th grader their own. The campers were excited, but they needed one-on-one encouragement to think about ways to integrate the micro:bit in their games. The potential of the micro:bit needed further exploration than the time we gave it. Had we had longer than a week, we could have built more confidence with the computer science concepts that make the micro:bit such a powerful tool.

Instead, I used my computer science background to coach students to integrate the micro:bit in doable ways that naturally fit into their designs. The students hadn't built enough confidence to see these possibilities on their own.

Here's an important lesson for facilitators: A good coach doesn't limit their input to answering student requests for help. A good coach looks for ways to help students grow in ways they might not have imagined yet. There is a delicate balance between allowing student voice and offering ideas that help a student accomplish what they hadn't yet imagined was possible.

When one student explained that he wanted the micro:bit to display the name of each player's turn, I suggested a simpler, more flexible solution that was actually codable using the computer concepts the students had learned. "What if every time your turn is done, you press a button, and the micro:bit rotates through an LED graphical display that points to whose turn it is (Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, Player 4)?" Then I paired him up with one of the math teachers in the room and got them started coding this solution. They both came away with pride and  additional confidence with computer science.

Fairy lights controlled by microbit blink when you win.

Another student had designed 4 corner posts for lights he wanted to use in the aesthetics of his game. Although he'd learned that external lights could be controlled with the micro:bit, there wasn't enough time in the week for him to learn all the skills needed to implement his vision. But I quickly thought of a way for him to use the "code a light to blink" skill they'd already practiced, and apply it to a set of fairy lights to add a unique feature to his game. There was just enough time in the week for me to show him how to modify the switch of the fairy light so that the lights could instead be controlled by the programmable pin of the micro:bit.

With just the right amount of coaching, another camper who created a beautifully designed game called A Dog's Life needed some guidance to think of a way that a micro:bit could add random play to her game without sacrificing the stacks of A/B  game cards she'd created. "Remember the dice you coded during the skill-builder?" I asked. "It randomly selected a number between 1 and 6 and displayed dots on the screen. Could you change that code so it tells the player which Card Deck they can pick from (A or B)?"

This was just the right amount of challenge for Lizzie to build on what she'd learned earlier, but apply it to her game aesthetics. But she didn't stop there. She created a fun holder for the micro:bit that matched her game's visual design. This is another example of giving students the opportunity to create beautiful works.

Game aesthetics doesn't always come in visual form. One student was determined to use the micro:bit's ability to play music and composed two different musical loops to fit the theme of his game mechanics.

Resilience and Joy in the Creative Process

Another big win for us happened when a student who had missed most of the camp days came back on the last day. We thought about having him become a co-designer to another student's game in progress, but then we remembered that he'd created a pirate-themed game piece earlier as part of the laser cutter skill-builder. With a little one-on-one coaching from one of the STEAM fellowship educators, he quickly came up with a "doable" but fun, colorful game board that brought lots of joy to his peers.

Problem-solving, testing, revising, perseverance, creative solutions—these became integral parts of open studio time. Watching Piper and another student troubleshoot the circuit design on the back of their Farm Animal Game board, and seeing the pride in their eyes when the light finally lit up after they figured out where the short circuit was and how to fix it—that was priceless.

Sure, there were stressful times where students experienced different phases of the creative process.

But the STEAM fellowship educators were fantastic facilitators who successfully moved each student through each emotion with everyone feeling awesome by the end of camp. This was evident in the joy we watched as campers laughed while playtesting each other's games, and the pride we heard as they pitched their games to our guests role-playing potential investors during our culminating event.

Facilitation and Coaching

The coaching skills that the STEAM Fellowship educators brought to the Meaningful Making time were instrumental to the camp's success. Rather than stepping in to fix a stuck prototype or handing over an answer, they moved table to table asking powerful questions:

What's this mechanic actually doing for the player? Does the theme match the way the game feels to play?

Their questioning pushed students past a working prototype into amazing finished games—"beautiful works" that the students were proud to share.

The STEAM fellowship educators brought more than strategically timed questions to the mix. They understood that physical movement, social time, community circles, and brain breaks were essential ingredients to sustaining creative efforts. Their strong pedagogical skills were evident in painting game boards outside, inventing silly games with hula hoops during brain breaks, or grounding student energy during a community circle. By the end of the week, I was reminded that integrated STEAM-based projects create Maker Empowerment in both students and teachers.

By Friday the campers were ready to playtest their games and get feedback from their peers during our Game Arcade Gallery.  Finally, each camper pitched their game to special guests who role played game investors.  During the pitch, the campers shared how their game best met the MDA of Game Design (Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics). 

Here's What This Means for Your Classroom

You don't need a week-long camp or a room full of maker tools to bring this framework to life. Whether you're integrating game design into a literature unit, using simple circuits in a science project, or building confidence with basic maker tools, the three-phase INSPIRE-CREATE CONFIDENCE-MEANINGFUL MAKING sequence works.

Start small: Pick one skill-builder that gets students' hands on something beautiful—whether that's a paper circuit, a coded micro:bit, or a beautifully designed game tile. Let them hold it. Feel the weight of their own creation. Then step back and watch what they imagine building around it.

And remember: Your role as facilitator is not to have all the answers. It's to ask the questions that push students past "it works" into "it's beautiful and purposeful." The coaching questions that emerged in our camp—What's this mechanic actually doing for the player? Does the theme match the way the game feels to play?—are portable. Use them. Ask them while you're sitting alongside a student, not standing at the front.

The joy and maker empowerment we witnessed this summer wasn't magic. It used a simple  framework, some thoughtful facilitation, and the decision to respect student vision while believing in their capacity to grow beyond what they thought was possible.

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Maker Empowerment as defined by Harvard Project Zero: Agency of Design. https://pz.harvard.edu/projects/agency-by-design

Many thanks to VREC (Vermont Rural Education Collaborative) and North Country Encore for growing the capacity to create, inclination to make, and sensitivity to the design of STEAM integrated learning in our schools by embedding professional development (STEAM fellowship) into a STEAM-based summer camp. I look forward to seeing how our STEAM educators bring the joy of learning through creating and making back to their classrooms during the 2026-2027 school year.