Can MAKING a Collaborative Garden teach us MAKING and CODING skills? Let's find out!

Many of you know that I love finding new ways to introduce kids to coding.  Many of you know that I love getting girls involved with technology.  Well ever since last fall, I have been dreaming of a project that will do both get girls involved in Making and in Coding.  I'm planning on using it for our next Girls Make IT  Day.

Here is Part 1 of CREATE a COLLABORATIVE GARDEN with CODE  project.  When I first started to think about this project,  I was thinking we might create a 3D map or a Village where we all make structures of buildings that have LED's inside the buildings.  This was inspired by +Leah Joly  Christmas village project and the 3DVermont project.

From MIT News

Then +Mara Siegel posted this  a link to  a Robot Garden from  MIT  aimed at making CODING more accessible.  That's exactly what I was thinking, but with  less complexity. After all they are MIT!  Instead of 100 robots and distributed algorithms,  my idea was to start with a half dozen flowers designed to include a programmable LED and then have the garden slowly grow with each iteration of the workshop.

So I combined all these ideas and in the next few days I'm going to blog about my journey into making my 'simpler'  version of creating an accessible Collaborative Coding A Garden Project.

Here is Part 1 of a series of blog post I will use to document my journey during this new Maker project.

I loved the garden idea. If everyone involved created something for the garden that they could code, what a fun dynamic intersection of art and technology we would have.  I immediately started looking around for some fun ways to MAKE flowers that could have a programmable LED.
I was inspired by this video of creating Flowers from stockings and could easily see a way to work this into our idea for a Collaborative Garden.

I looked into two fabric stores, neither of which had fabric that was stretchable like Stockings, so Off to Walmart.  Finding colored stockings turned out to be harder than I thought,  but I eventually found some colorful somewhat sheer tights in the children's department.

I picked up different gauge craft wire and ended up using the 20 gauge wire.

With a little practice wrapping wire around an toilet paper roll, stretching fabric and securing the fabric by wrapping thread and tying knots, I soon had 10 petals ready to go.   

The next step was to assembling the petals around the flame of an LED powered tea candle that I found at Walmart (6 for $2.50)

So far so good... Now for the geeky part.  If you've ever done a toy hacking project, you know how much fun it can be to tear things apart.  When I took apart the tea candle votive, I discovered a 2032 battery,  and LED and a switch.   This was so perfect.  Not only did I have all the supplies I needed at less than 40 cents per flower,  I had a great opportunity to include 'hacking'  in my project and to also review the circuits and switch concepts we introduced in our last Girls Make IT DAy.

At this point the girls could change the LED to a different color and have a stand alone light.  

Or they could change the LED to one with longer leads to open up a whole array of options for using their new flowers in a project.  

Here a short video preview of what the flower hack looks like (Sorry about the 3D printer noise in the background, I was printing parts for version 2 of the flower)

Ah the possibilities... Come back tomorrow and see what I come up with. 

Let's Make it, Girls!

For a few months now I've been cooking up something fun with   Jill Dawson,  Vermont Works for Women and the Generator!  And today we're ready to unveil a fun all girls Maker Event that will be held Friday January 30 at the Generator in Burlington Vermont.    We hope you will get your school involved.  Find two middle school girls and an educator and sign up a team today. 



What We Made This Summer at Create Make Learn

How many times have the things your students made become refrigerator art? 

Well here is our virtual refrigerator - filled with the amazing things educators made this summer as part of the Create Make Learn Summer Institute 2014 held at the Generator (Burlington Maker Space) and Champlain College.   We have just set our dates for next year. 

Save the Date 

Create Make Learn Summer Institute 2015

 July 13 - July 17 

If you want to be get an early-bird registration invitation a week before General Registration opens, sign up to be on the Create Make Learn Mailing List here. 

Making a Big Difference at Essex HS STEM Academy

“It seems so little but its making such a big difference”  described a STEM Academy student as he snapped together components of each finger printed from ABS filament off the uPrint 3D printer located in Room D-104 of Essex High School. He described that the 3D printed hand his team was assembling was going to help a 17 year old boy from Washington state.  

When I walked into the room, minutes before class was about to start, I noticed 4  lunch trays, some pliers, a hammer, and a few other tools  strategically placed on round circular tables. Each lunch tray contained 32 ABS parts that had been printed over the previous  few weeks.  “This one part took 22 hours to print” explained STEM Academy leader,  Lea Ann Smith,  as she held up the largest piece in the collection.  

Lea Ann Smith and Doug Horne,  dedicated teachers who have put in countless hours to make sure that the each part was  successfully printed and ready for the weekly advisory meeting time of the STEM Academy students greeted their 17 students with a look of anticipation as they walked through the door.

Although their teachers,  Mr. Horne  and Mrs. Smith,  were also learning the process outlined by the eNable community for assembling the hands, their years of experience brought many skills to the process, ranging from an understanding of technical 3D modeling software like Rhino to classroom management in a  project based learning environment. Mrs. Smith learned about the eNable community while attending the CREATE MAKE LEARN Summer Institute last summer and saw this as the perfect authentic project for her STEM academy students. Together with her co-teacher, Mr. Horne, they skillfully administered just the right amount of direction and scaffolding to guide the students successfully to the next step of the process -  not an easy tasks for a class that meets once a week for 30 minutes.

Just last week the students had used RHINO to scale the pieces and prepare them for the printer. One STL file had to be scaled to fit a 3 year old child, the other a 17 year old boy, and the last two were going to help a 58 year man who had lost fingers on both hands. The students were matched with their recipients by a community of volunteers collaborating to match those in need of fingers with 3D printer enthusiast called eNable. (Learn more about them at Enabling the Future)

Mr. Horne created a smooth transition from last week’s class by gathering the students quickly into their seats  facing a wall sized slideshow of the printed parts.  

With only 30 minutes of classroom time per week,  the students knew they had little time to waste if they were to stay on schedule with their plan to eNable each of the hand donors with a newly assembled 3D printed hand.  The students took a few minutes to review the instructional video from eNable volunteer, Jeremy Simon, demonstrating how to work with the snap screws and individual components of the hand.   

After  reviewing some key components of the video,  the students grabbed a set of clearly printed directions, and quickly grouped around the lunch trays and

went right to work moving their 3D hand assembly to the next level.   Meanwhile  Mr. Horne and Mrs. Smith answered questions and  encouraged each group to write a short paragraph providing the donor with an update of the progress of their eagerly anticipated hand.  

The 17 students taking part in these 4 eNable hand assemblies  are part of the Medical Advisory portion of the STEM Academy  at Essex High School in Essex, Vermont.  The STEM Academy  currently consists of 50 students and seven faculty members.  The purpose of the Academy is to give students an opportunity to experience STEM disciplines in a deeper and more meaningful way than is typically available in the classroom.  The major elements of the program are enrollment in the weekly STEM Advisory, attending STEM Lecture Series events, participating in an internship and creating an independent project.  Students in the STEM Academy will be exposed to a wide variety of new ideas and hands on projects.  They will meet people who share their interests, both in their high school peer group and in the community, and they will learn how work collaboratively and creatively with these people to solve interesting and relevant problems.

Communication,  collaboration,  close reads, technical skills, career education,  along with a feeling of contribution to quality of human life were all part of this powerful carefully designed instructional experience that aims to make a BIG difference from such a small but precious time slot in the week of these Vermont students. Follow them on Twitter @EssexSTEM

3D printer Communal Build a Success at Champlain Maker Faire

Just ten minutes before the close of the Champlain Mini Maker Faire,  the last piece (the power supply) of the 3D printer was added to our communal 3D printer build and we all cheered as the glow of the green light indicated that the 3D printer was complete.  Yeah!

After mentoring several educators in building their own 3D printers earlier this year at the Create Make Learn Summer Institute held the The Generator this summer, Craig Lyndes and I had a vision that we could start and finish the build of a 3d printer at the faire and include as many people as possible in that build.

Oh what fun we had.  It was amazing to watch father/daughter teams; mother/son teams; father/son teams; mother/daughter teams; husband wife teams;  students teams; and volunteers of all ages from Kindergarten students to retired engineers join us in completing the 41 steps necessary to turn a box of parts into a working 3D printer.

See MORE PICTURES here

We ordered our Printrbot Simple Maker Edition Kit a few weeks ago and opened the box at 10 A.M.  Saturday morning at the Coach Barn of Shelburne Farm as the Champlain Maker Faire opened its doors.  Jill Dawson started by sorting out the parts in our trusty egg carton, and we recruited the first visitor to walk by our exhibit to start cutting through the laser cut wooden pieces.   Williston Central School teachers,  Julie Rogers and Leah Joly joined us to help  build, document, and answer questions about what is happening with making in Vermont Schools.  In the afternoon,  John Cioffi and middle school students from St. Albans City School not only helped with the build, but brought their own Printrbot Maker Edition kit that they were in progress of building in their classroom.   By the end of Day one several volunteers from the Maker Faire had completed about half the steps in the build.

Day 2 brought a whole new set of volunteers to the Create Make Learn exhibit. Shannon Walters from Integrated Arts Academy,  Sydney Whipple from Lake Region High School, along with Sue Wade,  Erica Bertucci and Rosies Girls representatives from St. Albans City School were key to engaging volunteers to join our communal 3D printer build

Many thanks to the educators from our Create Make Learn Summer Institute who volunteered  to help run the exhibit which included the interactive 3D printer build,  several 3D printers printing out various size artifacts,  a library of books that can support making in education, Little Bits and Legos, students and their projects from St. Albans City School and Rosie's Girls and displays of the projects that several teachers made during our summer course.  


The next few blog post will dive deeper into what we learned from this amazing collaboration.

Announcing CREATE MAKE LEARN 's mobile pop-up maker space

TechSavvy Solution announces Create Make Learn ~  a mobile learning experience that brings the opportunity to CREATE and MAKE to teachers, students, and life-long learners.

After months of planning, organizing, collaborating with amazingly creative educators and supporters, we launched  our first CREATE MAKE LEARN event in Burlington, Vermont.  

Fifty educators spent the week learning together creating, making, and learning together. Each of them is returning to their classroom with new skills, new tools, and new ideas for increasing student engagement, empowerment, and agency as well as ideas of how to use the power of making to meet new educational standards.

The resounding “we want more” from participants has validated our vision to turn Create Make Learn into a mobile learning experience that brings the opportunity to CREATE and MAKE to more learners.   This vision started  in Austin, Texas during SxSw 2014 and continued as we traveled, worked, and learned from our 1983 Bluebird bus.   We, soon, started to make plans for what this might look like as we drove towards Vermont.  

The success of our first event “igniting the spark” of creating and making with Vermont educators has confirmed that we need to follow our heart and continue to ignite the spirit of creating and making in more educators in hopes of transforming the learning experience of today’s students.  Follow Create, Make, Learn on Google Plus   or Join our Mailing List

Thank you Shelly Fryer for capturing the reason why we need to ignite the spark of learning by creating and making during our first Create, Make Learn event in Burlington, Vermont. Thank you to Wes Fryer, Kevin Jarrett, Craig Lyndes, Caleb Clark for being awesome collaborators in making this first event a huge success.

Sierra's journey of personalized learning with 3D printing

Sierra 's Science Fair Project

On Thursday, June 13, the gym at Monkton Central School was buzzing with students passionately showing off their science fair projects.  The artifacts, ranging from poster boards to digital exhibits created using applications like Haiku Deck and Prezi, to 3D printed hands, represented learning driven from the curiosity inside each of these 5th grade students.    

The curiosity of 10 year old, Sierra, about how 3D printing can be used to improve the lives of humans and animals, lead her to a journey that went far beyond textbook or Internet research.  It lead her to connect with the e-NABLE community for some real ‘hands on’ learning assembling her own 3D printed prosthetic hand.  

While Sierra was doing research for her science project, her mom noticed an announcement of a Google Hangout on Air where Vermont educators were conducting their own inquiry about the role of 3D printing in education.  She quickly followed up with Vermont educator, Lucie deLaBruere,  to get contact information about  Jon Schull, researcher scientist from Rochester Institute of Technology who had  joined the conversation and shared the work of the e-NABLE community.  Sierra and her mom, Lianne, reached out to the eNable community and got a quick response from volunteer member Jeremy Simon.

Jeremy, who runs 3D Universe, helped Sierra understand the math involved in printing a hand and printed a hand that fit her own hand.  Within just a few days, Sierra and her Mom were opening a package mailed to them from Jeremy which contained the hardware and 3D printed parts that Jeremy had printed for Sierra to assemble a 3D printed hand.  Sierra followed the step by step directions posted online, stopping for an occasional ice cream break, while her mom documented the progress using the iMotion app on her iPad.

Persevering past her bedtime, Sierra finished the assembled hand within 2 days. The build took approximately 5 hours and made it possible for her to reach the following conclusion for her science project:

“My results show that the 3D printed hands can help people in need of hands. I know because of my research.  People have sent hands everywhere to people who need them and they work - people can pick up things.  It’s like a real hand!”

As often happens during authentic personalized learning, the whole class learned from watching their classmate’s journey, and Sierra’s teacher, Ms. Gagner, invited Jeremy Simon, e-NABLE volunteer, to share his expertise about 3D printing with the whole class via Skype.  Bringing experts into the classroom using virtual field trips via Skype and Google Hangouts is expanding the possibilities of what students learn and from whom they learn, making learning even more personal than ever. 

Student learning is no longer limited to what their teacher’s know or to what publishers include in textbooks.  Mentors like Jeremy Simon can help individual students or a whole class understand new ideas and concepts, with students driving the learning with their questions being answered in real time.

After a successful assembly of the “Cyborg beast” as a model for her science fair project, Sierra wanted to take her learning to the next level and actually print a 3D hand for a real child.  The e-NABLE community quickly found an 8 year old girl who has a functional thumb, but missing fingers.  Sierra is working with her new mentor, Jeremy from 3D Universe, to help build and test a new type of design, that will be sent to an 8 year old girl, 2000 miles away.

In an era where the educational landscape is filled with talk of personalized learning, Sierra’s story provides a powerful example and model of how maker tools and maker empowerment can contribute to true personalized learning.  

Learn more about Sierra and her project here:

• http://enablingthefuture.org/2014/06/13/e-nabling-sierra-part-3/
• http://www.3duniverse.org/2014/05/16/e-nabling-sierra/