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I was sitting at my computer trying to finish the final edits on a short video from my most recent STEAM residency. Five minutes. That was my goal. Keep it to five minutes.
Explaining how I engineered this game controller
How do you tell the story of a whole year of learning in five minutes? How do you capture the aha moments of teachers gaining creative confidence while guiding their students through hands-on, minds-on projects? Or the moment a sixth grader stood in front of his parents at our culminating STEAM event — face absolutely beaming — explaining in real detail how he'd engineered his own game controller? His parents are trying it out, laughing, asking him questions, and he's just lit up. Easier said than done.
This was a different kind of STEAM residency model for me. Instead of coming in for a week or two and leaving, we spread the Graded 4 - 6 residency across across the school year. I kept coming back (onsite and through Zoom) coaching teachers through the various stages of project-based learning with a STEAM-integrated focus. We had time to build something deeper — a relationship with the teachers, a chance to try things, see what happened, adjust, and try again. The residency wrapped up with a culminating event engaging the community, a debrief with educators about how extending this project might enrich their curriculum, and a folder full of both lesson plans and resources that could expand on what we created collaboratively.
Community engagement during our culminating event - STEAM Night
By the time I sat down to edit, I had plenty of media, plenty of moments, plenty of evidence of what learning through creating and making can look like when connected to Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics — not to mention English Language Arts and Computer Science.
As I scrolled through photos and video clips, I started thinking about how my maker residencies were now called STEAM residencies. The educators I know who used to call themselves Maker Educators — people who built makerspaces, who found funding for laser cutters in school libraries, who handed kids copper tape and LEDs and said "figure it out" — a lot of them are now calling themselves STEAM educators. I found myself reflecting about this shift from Maker Education to STEAM education.
I got curious enough to ask my AI assistant to help create a timeline of how both movements moved through their adoption cycles.
I was surprised to find that Maker Education and STEAM grew up almost at the same time but spread through schools in completely different ways. Maker education bubbled up from individual teachers who loved the pedagogical promise of learning through creating and making. STEAM mostly came down from school leadership looking for a framework that connected to academic subjects — especially science — and one that helped the arts, engineering, and practical arts survive budget conversations.
I have witnessed many shifts during my own history with emerging technologies. I've been doing project-based learning since the 1980s, and I've always been the person helping schools adopt emerging technologies. Typewriters to computers, computers to the internet, web design with html to Google tools, creating digital games to coding physical artifacts with circuit boards, laser cutters, and 3D printers. Sure, the emerging technologies were cool, but it was never about the tools — it was about transforming what learning could be. As I reflected on the shift from MAKER EDUCATION to STEAM focused learning, I started to ask questions like:
"Was it just a label change, or did something more fundamental shift? Does it matter? And what does it mean for students? Does it change our professional development needs? "
Create Make Learn Summer Institute
By 2012, I had come to believe that educators didn't just need to learn new tools to transform learning — they needed to actually feel what it was like to learn through creating and making themselves. Immersively. Hands-on. Not a tutorial, but the real experience of what learning through creating feels like from the inside. That's where Create Make Learn came from. And as it happened, 2012 was right around the moment the maker movement was picking up steam in education (pun very much intended). Making gave project-based learning new materials, new processes, new ways for kids to turn ideas into physical, shareable things. The Create Make Learn community grew up around that energy — educators learning from each other, trading ideas, finding connection with people who were excited about the same hands-on, minds-on approach. The students were always the real beneficiaries, but the educators needed each other to get there.
That community grew steadily from 2012 to 2020. Then the pandemic hit, and all of it went into storage — literally. Every ounce of energy in a school building went toward getting kids back in the classroom and keeping them six feet apart. Hands-on, collaborative, materials-heavy learning simply wasn't possible.
The post-pandemic return has been harder than I expected. Schools are searching for ways to include the hands-on learning from the maker movement while simultaneously dealing with learning loss, higher social-emotional needs, funding cuts, and teacher attrition. It's a much harder landscape than the one I started in. However, we are seeing some schools shift from makerspaces in schools to STEAM classrooms.
STEAM had been quietly developing in parallel to the maker movement the whole time. But where maker education was wonderfully open-ended, STEAM offered something school leaders could point to — a clearer connection to academic subjects, a name that survived a budget meeting, and a visible place for the arts. To a lot of school leaders, it felt more anchored and more fundable than an open-ended makerspace. So the energy of maker education, in many schools, quietly turned into STEAM programming.
But this was much more than a label change. Maker education was mostly driven by individual early-adopter teachers who wanted it and pushed for it. For over a decade, Create Make Learn was a vehicle for maker educators to connect, collaborate, and grow.
Meanwhile STEAM is gathering momentum in a different way — school leaders deciding they want STEAM programming and then looking for teachers to design and run it. That's a fundamentally different starting point, and it creates a fundamentally different professional development need.
Teachers and students learning to use laser cutter in a in a residency at Newport City Elementary
As I find myself really working with teachers to build meaningful STEAM experiences or STEAM residency, I start with the first stage of DESIGN THINKING -- EMPATHY!! and a close look at the each school's unique landscape — its space, its tools, its goals, its culture. Only then, can we start to DEFINE the outcomes we are looking for from a STEAM residency. The "How might we " question leads to a wild BRAINSTORMING or IDEATE stage which eventually leads to a PROTOTYPE design for the residency. Together we TEST our prototype and gather feedback from both teachers and students.
I'd always been familiar with the artist-in-residency model — an artist visits a school for a stretch of time and works with students toward something real: a mural, a concert, a finished piece. I started to similarities with my work with teachers and students and the residency model. They both have similar ingredients: sustained time in a school, modeling, hands-on experience, and a product or event that teachers and students build together. With mentoring and coaching as teachers learn, you have both embedded professional learning and engaging student experiences. I started to more deeply reflect on the past decade from my early work with the Tarrant Institute to my most recent collaborations with the Vermont Arts Council.
With the help of my AI assistant, I started to more examine my recent STEAM residencies to identify the elements that made it a powerful practice. Here is the visual representation that my AI assistant created from my reflections.
But this is just the beginning of an inquiry that I hope you'll take with me. The "What if" question that frames my thinking these days seems to be ....
“How might we design STEAM based residencies that fit inside the constraints that our schools face, while still carrying the spirit of what made the original Create Make Learn institutes work: the inspiration, the immersion, the community."
If you are a school that would like to prototype STEAM residencies with me (ranging from single days, to multi-day, to a year long STEAM residency), let's talk.
Recently I was visiting my grandson's first-grade classroom to watch his class present their procedural writing — Julian's book was titled How to Make Scrambled Eggs. After I listened to him read each step I told him that the procedural writing they were doing in class was similar to the coding activities we do during our visits together. His eyes lit up!
On the way out, I mentioned this to his teacher and she invited me to come back as a special guest to introduce this idea to both the first grade and second grade classrooms (My grandson, Oliver, is in second grade in the same school). I was excited to bring one of my STEAM residency
When I was planning the visit, I followed the same design thinking process I use to customize all my STEAM integrated maker/CS residencies. I asked the teachers what their students were currently studying. The first graders were exploring change and cycles. The second graders were working on measurement. I LOVE the challenge of connecting STEAM and CS to curricular content. Soon an idea started buzzing around in my head: bees making honey.
As I was thinking about the change from nectar to honey, it seemed the perfect way to introduce computer science concepts to younger learners. PLUS-- I had access to a fleet of little coding robots that looked like BEES! The journey from flower to honeycomb gave us a chance to understand how an algorithm is a a series of steps where a bee flies to flowers (inputs), collects nectar (data), returns to the hive (processing), passes it bee-to-bee (transformation), fans it dry in the honeycomb (output). Every step matters. Every step is in order. Change the sequence and there's no honey. I couldn't wait to get started designing this lesson.
Why Bee Bots?
I have access to a variety of robots that my grandchildren (and other younger learners) love to code, but I decided on the BeeBots for several reasons:
Of course, they looked like BEES and provided a strong visual connection to the 'change' process we would explore.
There was no need to install apps/software/logins. As a guest teacher, I didn't have a relationship with the IT staff in the building, nor was a I familiar with the process that would be required.
It reduced the 'screen time' element from the lesson. We were working with our hands, our minds, and our manipulatives. We were NOT introducing TWO new elements (software AND a robot we can code).
The limited time that comes with being a guest teacher, meant that the lesson objectives had to be achievable in a shorter amount of time. (Of course, I hoped to inspire the teachers to explore additional resources I would leave with them about introducing computer science to younger learners.
I knew I wanted to ground the lesson using a read-aloud. I have been working on designing STEAM and CS residencies. inspired by literature for the past few years, and love to watch students' response to literature. I prompted my AI assistant with just the right information from my evolving lesson plan to come up witha draft story.
After tweaking the draft story to better fit my lesson design, I added some coding challenges that would engage the students while learning computer science concepts. When seeking to engage students with hands on projects, I strike for the those projects to be minds-on experiences where the learning takes place -- not just dessert projects.
Every page has a coding challenge embedded right in it. The goal is for the story to be read aloud, one page at a time, then to have the students experience the coding challenge --not as a worksheet, but as as a puzzle to solve with their robots, right then and there, on a story map spread out on the floor in front of them.
How to integrate coding challenges with the story
Example from Page 1: Buzz wakes up and wiggles her wings. Challenge: Can you make your BeeBot wiggle — without moving forward? (Students use creative problem solving to discover that left-turn + right-turn = a wiggle.
I often create a grid using blue painters tape on the classroom floor to use with Bee-Bots. But because this was not my classroom and I had limited time 'in the classroom' I created a half dozen story maps using poster board. First I drew a 3×4 grid where each square is exactly 6 inches, which is exactly one BeeBot step. I pasted story images in each cell: the hive, the old oak tree, the babbling brook, the sunflower patch, the lavender and clover, the pollen field, the marigold garden, additional bees, and the honeycomb.
The story Map
A 4×3 grid of 6 inch squares fits perfectly on one piece of standard poster board. You can use this PDF to help you construct the story map-- you don't have to lay out the images in the same order. Also, feel free to resize as desired. Make sure to paste the image corners down flat. Even a slightly lifted corner will catch the BeeBot's wheels and throw off the whole path.
Introducing computer science to younger learners
I started the lesson by introducing the concept of computer scientist as a career. I asked students: "Does anyone know what a computer scientist does?. We spent some time talking about ways that computer scientist influence our lives - from video games to practical inventions we use every day.
Research tells us thatfoundational ideas about who belongs in certain careers begin forming around ages 7 and 8.If students — especially girls and students from underrepresented communities — have never been invited to see themselves as coders, that window begins to close before we even know it was open. A single hour with a BeeBot won't change everything. But it can plant a seed. It can let a child hold a robot and think:I did that. I made it go there. I'm a programmer. This is a career that people like me can choose.
Then I had students try to "program their teacher"— She stood in the middle of the classroom and I asked them to give her directions to reach the tissue box. Just like a robot, she followed their instructions literally. When they said "go forward," she went forward. When they forgot to tell her to turn, she walked in the wrong direction. They learned immediately:computers do exactly what you say, not what you mean. This started to really understand the computer science concept of programming or coding.
Introducing the robots
It was now time to introduce the BeeBot itself — letting each pair hold one, count its buttons, explore its underside. We talked about safety rules the same way we talk about rules for any tool in a makerspace: " these rules keep the robot safe, not just you. The most important: never pull the robot backward. Lift it instead." (If you have limited Bee-Bots, you can simply have students take turns being the 'student demonstrator' as you lead the class through the lesson, and then use your Bee Bots as stations.
Before we started the read-aloud of our story, I let the students freely explore how they might get their robot to reach the tissue box (which was still on the floor of their classroom). This quickly turned into a chaotic huddle of students and their robots as they approached the tissue box, but it also filled the room with exciting energy.
To transition to our next activity, I selected a student to demonstrate how to "code" the robot more intentionally and think ahead of the task you wanted the robot to complete.
The Read-Aloud and Coding Challenge
As we prepared for the Read-Aloud, I distributed a poster board/story map to each group of 4 students. Two pairs of students (previously assigned by their teacher) worked on each map simultaneously — one student physically coded the robot, while the other planned and verbally directed the next move. I reminded the students to switch roles frequently. This kept everyone engaged and gave each student meaningful time with the robot.
Before we started our read-aloud, we practiced a classroom signal for each student to STOP, TURN OFF the ROBOT, and LISTEN for the next instruction. We practiced this a few times, since I knew that transitioning from "freely coding your robot" to LISTENING to the next page in the read-aloud might the tricky part of my lesson design.
Introducing CS Concepts and Vocabulary
I was intentional about introducing computer science vocabulary throughout — but always anchored to what students were already doing. Here's how some CS concept appeared naturally in the lesson:
Algorithm sounds like a big word, but the students loved saying it and quickly understood it to mean a series of steps that you can repeat to achieve a tasks.
Sequencing was everywhere. Every time a student planned a path from one story stop to another, they were sequencing. I kept returning to the procedural writing connection: "You know how Julian's scrambled eggs recipe wouldn't work if you cracked the eggs after you cooked them? Same thing here. Order matters."
Debugging became the most powerful mindset shift of the day. When a BeeBot veered off the poster board instead of toward the sunflower, I didn't let students feel like they'd failed. I said: "You just found a bug. That means you're a real programmer." By the end of the session, students were using the word "debug" naturally instead of 'its not working."
With the help of my AI assistance, I created some additional resources to help both teachers and students gain confidence with Computer Science Concepts and Vocabulary. You might, also, want to experiment with a Bee-Bot Emulator on our interactive white board as an additional station.
For second graders, the BeeBot provided an opportunity to practice using the measurement skills they had been learning. Make sure to have rulers or measuring tapes handy as you ask questions like: "How far does the robot move when you code it to GO forward. How wide is each square on the storymap? " After completing a path, students counted how many squares their robot had traveled, then measured and calculated the total distance in inches. Some pairs compared two different routes between the same stops and asked: which is shorter?
What I'd Do Again (And What I'd Tweak)
✓
Start with the body, not the robot.
Programming the teacher first grounded the abstract idea of "giving a machine instructions" in something students already understood from their own bodies and daily language.
✓
Free exploration before structure.
Letting students play freely with the BeeBot before the story began — "can you get it to the tissue box?" — built confidence that made the structured coding activity feel safe to attempt.
✓
Use a student to model, not just the teacher.
Following the Mr. Vacca model lesson, I asked a student (my grandson Julian, who'd been practicing) to demonstrate coding the BeeBot for his classmates. Peer modeling worked better than I expected.
✓
Using Coding planning worksheets
I photocopied coding planning worksheets for each students, but ended up not using them during our limited time together. I decided to not interrupt the exploratory flow of the creative problem solving that accompanied each coding challenge. Instead I recommend that the classroom teacher use these planning sheets during a followup activity to review, reinforce, and reflect the computational thinking process that the students experienced. Not using the planning sheets on the first day is more inline with constructivist learning. However, I do feel that using them during a follow up session provides our younger learners an opportunity for deeper learning and metacognition.
Everything You Need to Try This
I've packaged everything from this lesson so another teacher can pick it up and run with it. You don't need to be a CS expert. You don't need to have done this before. You need a BeeBot (or two), a piece of poster board, and a desire to let your students explore the joy of computational thinking.
BeeBot Story Map — 3×4 Grid (Poster Board)A landscape-format map with 5 numbered story stops, decorative landmarks, coordinate labels, a legend, and a BeeBot button reference. Print landscape, mount on poster board. Each cell = 6 inches.
BeeBot Coding Cards — Full SetSequencing, loop, debug, algorithm, event, and decision cards — each tied to the honey journey story. Includes a teacher guide explaining how and when to use each card type, plus key discussion questions.
90-Minute Lesson Plan Lesson Sequence, timeline, objectives, NGSS + ISTE standards alignment, vocabulary table with kid-friendly definitions, differentiation strategies, and formative assessment prompts.
🐝 Thank you to Ms. Manolis and Ms. Gargiulo and their first and second graders in NYC public schools for iniviting me into their classroom to introduce computer science to them.
You don't need to be a computer science teacher to teach computer science. You just need a story worth following, a robot worth coding, and the belief that every child in your classroom is already a computational thinker — they just haven't been told yet.
An additional thanks to Mr. Flint from Charlotte Elementary School for loaning us some additional Beebots.
VRmont Cup 2026: A Game Design Competition for Vermont MS/HS Students
As educators, we are constantly trying to use our students' interests and aptitudes to motivate them to learn important skills that will prepare them for their future. One interest that so many of my students had in common was that they loved to play video games. Not only did they love video games, they were good at them. Many of my students also had interests in art, music, writing, or coding. So when I saw the poster from BRIC about a statewide game design competition, I immediately thought of very specific students I had who were fantastic artists, coders, musicians, and writers who would have loved an experience like this.
So I immediately checked out the VRmont Studios website to learn more. From the info on the website, I could tell that this was going to be an exciting opportunity for middle school and high school students to learn so many skills using game design as a vehicle. But I had a few questions, so I reached out to Ben McVetty, the Director of STEAM Programming at BRIC, and he really helped me understand the vision they had for VRmont Cup and the role teachers might play in getting their students involved.
My Takeaways from My Conversation with Ben
Game design can provide a meaningful learning experience for students with many diverse talents by helping them apply those talents to projects they care about. Game design isn't just about coding—it's storytelling, art, music, project management, and marketing all working together.
This VRmont Cup (a statewide video game competition) gives students (ages 11- 18) will run from February 16th through April 10th, 2026.
It provides students a chance to see how their individual skills contribute to something bigger, to collaborate with peers who have different strengths, and to learn from professionals in an industry many of them are genuinely interested in. There will be an information session (January 20th and 21st) .
Watch the 15 minute conversation I had with Ben McVety
Ben emphasized that they're not just looking for coders. They need artists, musicians, writers, project managers, and marketers too. This immediately made me think about how many of our students could find their place in this competition, even if they've never thought of themselves as "tech kids." Ben emphasized that "NO EXPERIENCE" is necessary to participate, depending on the track they choose.
The whole experience is centered around an educational game called Threadbare, where players restore culture to a world that has lost it. There are two tracks for students to choose from:
Explore ThreadbareTrack: Students work within an existing minigame called "Evan and the Search for Champ" (yes, as in Lake Champlain's Champ!). They can modify music, change visual assets, add coding elements, create new animations, or rewrite the narrative.
Core Threadbare Track: For students who want more creative freedom, they can design an entirely new minigame from the ground up.
There is a lot of flexibility built in. A student interested only in music composition could join, create and submit just the audio elements, and be judged on that work alone. Or a team of friends with different skills could collaborate and tackle multiple categories together.
The competition has six judging categories, and students can participate in as many or as few as they want:
Art and Animation: Perfect for our visual arts students
Music and Sound Effects: Ideal for band, choir, or students who compose on their own
Narrative and Storytelling: Our creative writers have a place here
Project Management: Great for organized students who love coordinating and keeping things on track
Marketing: Students interested in social media, graphic design, or communications can create promotional content
Coding: Traditional programming and game development
How many students do you have who excel in one of these areas? This competition could provide them an authentic pathway to apply their interests while learning new skills.
When I asked Ben how students without game design experience could participate, he explained that there's substantial support built into the program. Starting February 25th, there are six live workshops—one for each category. The schedule is:
February 25: Coding
March 4: Project Management
March 11: Art and Animation
March 18: Music and Sound Effects
March 25: Narrative and Storytelling
April 1: Marketing
Beyond these workshops, students will have access to office hours with college-age mentors who can help them troubleshoot, brainstorm, and work through challenges. The organizers are also providing learning materials and free resources so students don't need expensive software to participate.
For this first year, they're looking for teachers to help with recruitment—especially reaching those artists, musicians, and writers who might not hear about this opportunity otherwise.
If they want, teachers are welcome to attend the information sessions (January 20th and 21st) and can facilitate local game development groups at school. I could easily see this fitting into an art class, a music class, a creative writing elective, or even an advisory period where students are working on passion projects.
In April, VRmont Studios is planning an exciting culminating event that will include an awards ceremony within a micro-convention held at Hula Lakeside in Burlington. Professional game developers from the region will be there, including judges from Epic Games and former Facebook Gaming staff.
Registration is free and open now at vrmontstudios.com/vrmontcup. The deadline is March 10th, but I'd encourage interested students to sign up sooner so they can attend the info sessions on January 20th or 21st and start planning.
The competition itself runs February 16th through April 10th—about two months. The submission deadline is April 10th, with the micro-convention on April 18th.
If you follow my blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Cuttle.xyz. I truly believe that having a tool like Cuttle.xyz in your digital toolbox opens up lots of possibilities to grow the next generation of creative and practical problem solvers. If you're interested in adding Cuttle to your toolbox, please join me for a FREE series of workshops that will have you feeling confident using the free version of Cuttle in your school.
Create with Cuttle.xyz
Session 1 – Intro Jan 21 3:30 – 5:30 (Zoom)
Session 2 – Intermediate Jan 28 3:30 – 5:30 (Zoom)
Session 3 – Layered Maps Time & Location TBA
Cuttle.xyz is my new favorite tech tool. It allows teachers and students to design their own SVG files that can be used to create projects on a laser cutter or electronic cutter (i.e. Cricut) —Works on Chromebooks —The company has signed data privacy agreements — Company is making their basic editor available to K12 public schools for free
Join us for a series of FREE workshops to help you create confidence with Cuttle.xyz The first two workshops will be held over Zoom after school. If the time doesn’t work for you, register to watch the recording.
The 3rd workshop will be face to face with location and time to be determined by participants who attend the the first two workshop. We’ll create our own layered laser cut maps! Cost will be the cost of the materials.
Cleaning up after a fun New Year's Eve sleepover had me counting all the ways we included creative STEAM play during our holiday this season. Can you spot 10 ways in this picture of our living room on New Year's morning. Scroll down if you need help finding them all. (You might need to zoom in)
Can you spot
1) the copper tape and paper circuits lighting up the star on our Christmas tree window decal
2) 3D printed Candy Cane base
3) Pokemon Pikachu Handmade Ornament - a gift from our grandson
The ChompSaw did not disappoint as a Christmas Gift for my two youngest grandchildren this year. It was a big part of our creative New Year's Eve sleepover which started with the boys showing up in tuxedos! Of course that meant that Grandma and Grandpa had to up our game and go change into fancy clothes, too! Funny how fancy clothes makes Mac & Cheese and Chicken Fingers taste so much better!
Fun treats throughout the night!
Coding the Dash robots to play the xylophone and launch balls!
The ChompSaw sparked all types of creative ideas!
So did colorful tape!
Creative Creations Targets for Dash to launch balls at!
Legos came in handy when creating a ball retrieval system!
Creative way to experience the New Years Countdown- Watch it in Dubai (3 hrs before NYC) It was amazing and the boys loved it as they toasted with root beer floats and sparkling cider
The next morning, they asked if they could get back in their Tuxedo! Of course!
And now time to clean up from a very fun and creative New Year's Eve sleepover!
Resolved to making 2026 full of creativity. Hope you will join me!
