LevelUP: Helping Youth Blend the Digital and the Physical

December’s Learning Aloud series discussed how youths assume the role of ‘teacher’ to demonstrate how/why they’re doing incredible things with their favorite digital tools and platforms.

This first webinar and the open, realtime chat took place from 3-4pm PT (6-7pm ET) as teens from robotics makerspace LevelUP showed us how they blend their digital & physical worlds. Check out http://bit.ly/1iPD4PV for more details.

From this Series:

• Part 2—Library of Games: Translating Video Game Interest into Real-World Journalism

View the Conversation
During the broadcast, the conversation also took place on Twitter using the hashtags #connectedlearning and #hivebuzz.

Guests for this webinar included:

• Elsa Rodriguez – Programs Manager for Hive Chicago
• Jackie Moore – Founder of the LevelUP Maker Space for Teens in Chicago’s Ford City Mall
• John “JT” Moore
• Stephanie West-Puckett – Teaching Instructor in the Department of English at East Carolina University

Resources for this webinar:

• Engadget.com story on LevelUP
• HiveChicago.org: “Science In the Mall”
• AGAPÉ Werks – Advocates for Giftedeness and Parental Empowerment
• Scratch – a web-based programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab
• PicoBoard – a sensor-laced piece of hardware that allows Scratch projects to interact with the outside world
• More info about using the PicoBoard, via the Scratch Wiki
• Lego Mindstorms NXT – a programmable robotics kit
• The Chicago Knights Robotics Team

Photos/Engadget.com