For Week 6 in CEP 811, we were able to create an infographic that detail what Maker Movement is. This was a fun project to work on because I chose a website, ThingLink, to create an amazing infographic that incorporates all sorts of different medias together such as videos, audio clips, pictures, web links, documents and other infographic together on a picture that represents the subject of the infographic. All you have to do is click the links to information from the colored dots and letters on “The Maker Movement Matters” picture.
I created an infographic that demonstrates what Maker Movement is and how it can help to benefit students within any type of classroom. The research that I have done through CEP 811 has demonstrated that just implementing Maker concepts into today’s classroom will benefit students through various types of learning theories.
One of those learning theories is personalized learning. The fact that innovation like personalized learning is not based on a product, technology, or system that can easily be installed or configured entails changing the relationship between teachers, students and parents and this necessitates empowering and training teachers who are responsible for implementing such a systemic change. (Karmeshu, Raman, & Nedungadi, 2012). Changing the way students learn and collaborate within topics, ideas, and tasks can enable them to learn in various ways–which means that a group of four students working on the same project could ultimately learn four different things from the same assignment. This is personalized learning, however, is the teacher trained to identify this and willing to accept that type of learning protocol? By training teachers to implement concepts from the Maker Movement, more students can become connected and interested in the teaching material, thus creating greater learning outcomes. Personalized learning can be directly connected to Maker learning concepts and within all content classrooms and learning environments.
According to Sheridan, Halverson, Litts, Brahms, Jacobs-Priebe, & Owens (2014), to understand Makerspaces as learning environments, we draw from literature on both formal education environments for making and informal communities of practice in order to reflect the diverse learning and teaching arrangements present in these spaces. To engage students, teachers can create simple, yet interactive Makerspaces. Meaning with just a few tools, teachers can have students working collaboratively to learn tasks and process information in ways that are not possible through books and Powerpoint presentations in the general, ordinary leaning environments of the past.
The Maker Movement refers broadly to the growing number of people who are engaged in the creative production of artifacts in their daily lives and who find physical and digital forums to share their processes and products with others (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014). Students would be able to physically engage in making something for an assignment and then be able to discuss their findings, processes and evaluations for the entire assignment, then the teacher can conduct various assessments to check for understanding that enables students to connect the beginning to the finished product. That is truly real learning for me as an educator.
As the form and function of schools and pedagogy change, this places pressure on teachers to adapt their conventional practice (Deed, Lesko & Lovejoy, 2014). Teachers will need to be trained to understand how to implement technologies into the classroom, how to match student need and disabilities to technologies and how to assess the learning process within a digital environment.
Maker movement is quickly spreading across the world and is becoming more common within the classroom learning environments because teachers are seeing profound affects on student learning. This learning is engaging, measurable and exciting. Students feel connected to the materials, the concepts and ultimately own the literal outcomes of the project. Just think–a student could write a five sentence paragraph summary of a collaborative project and receive a score out of ten, but I am pretty sure the students would be more inclined to create a tangible object by 3D printing and take it home then create videos, and blog to be able to demonstrate to others how they made it. Maker movement is here to stay and you should try it in your classroom today!
Links from my Infographic
The White House–“Educate to Innovate”
References
Deed, C., Lesko, T. M., & Lovejoy, V. (2014, July). Teacher adaption to personalized learning spaces. Teacher Development: An international journal of teacher’s professional development, 18(3), 369-383. DOI: 10.1080/13664530.2014.919345
Halverson, E.R. & Sheridan, K. (2014). The maker movement in education. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4), 495-465.
Karmeshu, Raman, R., & Nedungadi, P. (2012). Modelling diffusion of a personalized learning framework. Education Technology Research Development, 60, 585-600.
Sheridan, K. Halverson, E.R., Litts, B.K., Brahms, L, Jacobs-Priebe, L., & Owens, T. (2014) Learning in the making: A comparative case-study of three maker spaces. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4), 505-565.
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