Where Tech Meets Experiential Education-Advocating For Physical Computing

Figure A & B. Re-Imagining Dewey fro the 21st Century, by John Seely Brown, Year, Retrieved from http://www.johnseelybrown.com/

A few excerpts from the latest grant proposal:

Tell us about your school and the role technology currently plays in the classroom and learning experiences of the students. (max 500 words)

At Louis Riel School, we are a public school within the Calgary Board of Education with a theme ‘the science of learning’. As our principal constantly reminds us: “we are not a bunch of students in lab coats, with beakers, following instructions” such as experiments where you add this chemical, measure this arc. We have embraced the vision of experimentation in the ‘makerspace movement’, one that is inquiry-based, learner-driven, it is cross-disciplinary and as such undisciplined in an engaged and powerful way.

We seek methods for students to play and build and hack and make. Of course we do. We're human. The Maker Movement, and the role technology plays in our school, is a contemporary version of do it yourself culture, just with newer technology. As Maker Movement pioneering teacher Audrey Waters explains: “Perhaps you remember the old illustration that said ‘here's three chords, now form a band’ -- today, it's ‘here's a motherboard and some cables, now go build a computer.’" The role technology plays in our school is the joy of learning -- lifelong learning -- in informal rather than formal environments.

Our students work or will begin with: Arduino, paper mache, Legos, cardboard, robots, rockets, welding machines, gears, circuit boards, computer-assisted drawing software, string, vinyl cutters, LED lights, the command line, string, rubber bands, wire, duct tape, play dough, steamworks, sensors, hot glue guns, scissors, Raspberry Pis, gyroscopes, tesla coils, musical instruments, fire, water cannons, plastic, wood, motors, solar power, and wearable computers.

We are currently seeking support for an upgrade to our Career and Technology Foundations Makerspace. Students would benefit greatly from current prototype hardware, software and a 3D printer station.

Technology at Louis Riel School is not something just for students in the engineering or computer science. It must be openly democratic and participatory. Steve Jobs once said “Apple's innovation was a result of the company's existence at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts”.

Our goal is to instill some technical know-how, technical literacy, and also a comfort level with technical experimentation. As technology shapes how we learn, how we communicate, how we play and how we work. We embrace this as a school. Louis Riel School’s CTF ‘Career and Technology Foundations’ is inquiry-based. It is learner-driven. It is cross-disciplinary. CTF will be implemented province wide in the 2014-15 school year and we are happily beginning this process a year early. Our students deserve the best, most current, engaging, empowering curriculum possible. We are also, as a science alternative school, positioned as a hub for innovative instructional leadership within our public system. Our students, community, parents and staff seek new and alternative ways to flourish during this exciting time in education.

How will the technology purchased using the grant foster and advance student learning, keeping students inspired, motivated and empowered? (max 500 words)

The technology integrated would encompass two integral stations in the Louis Riel SchoolMakerspace: a 3D printer station and a prototype tinkering station. Both stations invoke some of the educational practices that we know work well: small group discussion, collaboration, participatory, project-based, and peer-to-peer learning, experimentation, inquiry, curiosity, play. These practices and their values help students learn to build and make their own knowledge.

A 3D printer station will provide our students with more relevant, more technical projects, directly related to real world manufacturing. The imagination and excitement regarding the possibilities for a new form of low-cost and local manufacturing. “3D printers have the potential to bring about the next industrial revolution”, say both the Economist and New Scientist magazine. "They have the potential to revive North American manufacturing” says Forbes.

Our 2013-2014 school year will began by our entire school participating in the first annual Calgary ‘Beakerhead’ festival “bringing art, engineering and science lovers to stage a hands-on spectacle of technology and creativity” in order to set the tone for prototype tinkering and 21st century manufacturing. This will continue the inspiration we wish to instill in our students to:

Learn by doing. Learn by making. NOT learn by clicking.

Our upgraded makerspace with prototype tinkering tools give students -- all students -- an opportunity for hands-on experimentation, prototyping, problem-solving, and design-thinking.
By letting students make -- whether they're digital artifacts or physical artifacts -- we can support them in gaining these critical skills. By making a pinball machine for a physics class, for example. Making paper or binding a book for a literature class. Building an app for a political science class. 3D modeling for an archeology class. 3D printing for a math class. Blacksmithing for history class. The possibilities for projects are endless.

The Calgary Board of Education has modified all option classes to be called CTF (Career and Technology Foundations) driven by project-based learning pedagogy.  We long to expose students to cutting edge technologies that could in turn lead to employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, because of the makerspace connection to open source hardware and software, students aren't learning just how to use proprietary tools. They aren't just learning a specific piece of software. Instead, they learn how to find resources and -- this is key -- they learn how to learn.
Most importantly here, these technologies are in the hands of the learner. Makerspaces mean that students are not the objects of technology, they're the subjects. They have agency in a makerspace. They are not the consumers of technology, they are creators. They are makers and builders and thinkers.

This grant will foster and advance student learning by keeping students inspired, motivated and empowered by its potential for futuristic, beautiful learning spaces. The Maker Movement, prototype tinkering and 3D printing can help shift the academic landscape away from a teacher-focused endeavor to a more learner-centered one. Learners filled with intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation.