Although almost any educator would agree these experiences are valuable, carving out space and time for them inside a traditional classroom is no easy feat. Experts say both teachers and students need to develop what they call a \u201cmaker mindset,\u201d which Make Magazine\u2019s Dale Dougherty defines<\/a> as \u201cwhat can you do with what you know?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is an invitation to take ideas and turn them into various kinds of reality,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is the process of iterating over a project to improve it. It is a chance to participate in communities of makers of all ages by sharing your work and expertise. Making can be a compelling social experience, built around relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n But educators, like students, need practice in developing this mindset in order to\u00a0support iterative learning in their classrooms.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of the reason why Jessica Parker, associate professor and department chair at Sonoma State University, has partnered with Maker Media<\/a> and the Sonoma County Office of Education to create the Maker Certificate Program<\/a>, a project of The Startup Classroom<\/a>, available to educators in northern California. (Parker said they didn’t want to just limit the program to educators\u2014it\u2019s also open to junior and senior high school students.)<\/p>\n Parker said the group kicked off the program last fall to \u201cconnect the dots\u201d between Bay Area educators and organizations interested in making\u2014and to create a way for teachers to get support and recognition for maker education.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Maker Certificate Program is about making and<\/em> developing a maker educator mindset,\u201d Parker said. \u201cA learner can\u2019t develop this mindset if they don\u2019t engage in making\u2014the pure joy and excitement and complete and utter frustration and failure of it.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s why some courses in the program include hands-on making activities like paper circuitry and working with LED lights. The program began last fall with the first two courses, \u201cMaking for Educators\u201d and the online course \u201cIntroduction to Making.\u201d A total of five courses are open for enrollment this spring. Educators can mix and match a series of mini-courses designed to suit their interests. So far, 37 teachers plus the four maker educators who serve as instructors have participated. When teachers complete the program, their certificate recognizes the 50 hours of professional development along with five continuing education credits (CEUs).<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the goals of the program is that once educators earn their Maker Educator certificate, they will want to then be an instructor in the program and even create new mini-courses and other professional development opportunities,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n Traditional classroom settings, Parker said, too often value the product over process, whereas the maker movement is the opposite. With making, the process tends to be more important than the final product\u2014if there even is one. With maker projects, things often don\u2019t go right the first time. And we know there is lots of learning in this trial and error<\/a>.<\/p>\n But educators need support to shift their classroom focus from helping students get the right answer to an environment where students can learn from failure and trial and error.<\/p>\n Educator Innovator’s webinar on making in K-12 settings.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThis shift in focus is much more observable and understandable when an educator actually makes and goes through the design process and reflects on that process. And I define that process as learning,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Parker also recently moderated the Educator Innovator<\/em> webinar on making in K\u201312 settings, which Pratt participated in. Five educators from the Bay Area, who are all instrumental in integrating makerspaces or making into their schools, talked about their own unique approaches and challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cI inherited a shop program that started in 1895 but had fallen to the wayside of a college prep school,\u201d said David Clifford, director of innovation and outreach at the East Bay School for Boys. \u201cI had to figure out a way to redesign the program to be relevant to 21st-century students. It\u2019s not just the hard skills. It\u2019s all the skills needed to navigate the 21st century\u2014perseverance, inquiry, wonder, and critical and creative problem solving skills.”<\/p>\n Beth Espinoza, a K\u20134 technology and maker coach at Marin Schools, didn\u2019t have a makerspace to work with when trying to incorporate more making and design thinking into her school this year. So she and her team have put together a new mobile maker cart, which visits classrooms and supports classroom projects. She said although total teacher buy-in doesn\u2019t exist yet, the excitement is slowly growing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re learning,\u201d said Espinoza. \u201cWe\u2019re making our maker movement.\u201d<\/p>\n Sylvia Libow-Martinez, coauthor\u2014with Gary S. Stager\u2014of \u201cInvent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom<\/a>\u201d and making expert in K\u201312 spaces, has written frequently on how making in the classroom requires at least a little bit of diving in blind, like many of the educators in the webinar have done. She recently wrote<\/a> that getting started with making in a classroom is a bit like channeling MacGyver\u2014the hero from the \u201880s TV show who could fix just about anything with a paper clip.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can do more than you think just by trying something, refining it, and trying it again,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAnd if you notice, that\u2019s exactly what iterative design is. Why let the kids have all the fun?\u201d<\/p>\n And as tricky as the logistics and planning might be, the results of deeper, active hands-on learning may be worth it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live in a world where rigor is the idea of success in schools. But rigor can also be joy,\u201d David Clifford said. \u201cWatching these kids as they\u2019re making, the smiles on their faces as they\u2019re also tearing their hair out\u2014that\u2019s learning. It\u2019s messy and exciting and engaging and terrifying and hard.\u201d<\/p>\n By Kathleen Costanza\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Feature Photo\/Jessica Parker<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Maker Certificate Program, based out of Sonoma State University, provides a professional development opportunity for educators looking to create and develop an environment of making in and outside of traditional classroom settings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":7160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,38,350],"tags":[69,124,357,128,597],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7158"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7223,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7158\/revisions\/7223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Screen](\"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-10-at-2.34.44-PM.png\")
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