User Generated Education

In Learning in the Making I discuss the importance of and strategies for integrating technology into the curriculum.

Maker education needs to be intentional. It follows, then, that if we want to bring maker education into more formal and traditional classrooms—as well as more informal environments such as afterschool and community programs—it needs to be integrated into the curriculum using lesson plans. This chapter begins with a discussion of the characteristics of an effective maker education curriculum and then suggests a lesson plan framework for maker education– enhanced lesson plans.  A powerful maker education curriculum includes the following elements: 

• Instructional challenges are hands-on, experiential, and naturally engaging for learners. 
• Learning tasks are authentic and relevant, and they promote life skills outside of the formal classroom. 
• Challenges are designed to be novel and create excitement and joy for learners. 
• Learner choice and voice are valued. 
• Lessons address cross-curricular standards and are interdisciplinary (like life).
• Learning activities get learners interested in and excited about a broad array of topics, especially in the areas of science, engineering, math, language arts, and fine arts. 
• Communication, collaboration, and problem solving are built into the learning process. 
• Reading and writing are integrated into learning activities in the form of fun, interesting books and stories and through writing original stories, narratives, and journalistic reports. 
• Educational technology is incorporated in authentic ways; the emphasis is not to learn technology just for the sake of learning it. 

Educators need to approach their curriculum and lessons with a maker mindset. With this mindset, they can figure out creative ways to integrate maker activities into existing lessons and instructional activities. Educators in these situations start with the standards and objectives of their lessons, as they typically do with “regular” lessons, and then design or identify maker activities that meet the standards and the lesson. It simply becomes a matter of “How can I add a making element to my lessons to reinforce concepts being learned?” 

The micro:book

The MakeCode file can be found at https://makecode.microbit.org/S60459-46795-24643-21228

The micro:book Lesson

After showing the micro:book activity to a bi-lingual co-teacher, Natalia, she took off with it to develop a lesson to teach her Spanish-speaking students types of sentences. See the video below for her explanation of this lesson and a student example.