Week 27: Broader Professional Context:

Students as Creators Rather than Consumers: Makerspaces

“ We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist… using technologies that haven’t been invented… in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet"                                       Fisch and McLeod (YouTube 2010)

It all started rather innocuously at the end of year, two day PD, December 2015. Mark Osborne, from Core Education, explained that as teachers we could, by simply creating more flexible learning spaces within our classrooms, begin to prepare our learners for the future.  This PD was meant to unsettle and shake up our previously held ideas about education.  I am still having nightmares.

So before the start of the new year I, like so many other teachers at my school, made a few changes to my classroom: most notably I created a green room from a rather large smelly closet, added a few new items of uber-cool movable furniture pieces (a surprise from the BOT) and started planning (with my team of course) how to engage my learners using one-to-one Chromebooks.  Baby steps, right?

Mind Lab was the next step.  Here I found like-minded teachers and research to back up and reconfigure my ideas  - to ground them in theory  - adding oxygen to the fire that Mark had ignited.

The Education Review Office, ERO (2012) writes that in order to raise achievement levels of our priority learners we need to make some changes to our teaching and to nurture their engagement of learning.  Priority learners are learners identified from low SES households - many of whom are Māori and Pacific Islanders.  The ERO report goes on to suggest that schools need to “develop systems, processes and connections that put students at the heart of learning and teaching” (ERO 2012, p. 6).

Technology is one way to target intervention and reduce the achievement gap of priority students by engaging them in their learning.  And it is one of the reasons our school adopted one-to-one devices.  The NMC Horizon Report 2016 illustrates emerging technologies and how they may impact future teaching and learning in schools.  

So I figure when Mark Osborne, ERO and the NMC have an idea that collides then I  have to seriously investigate that technology trend in light of my current teaching practice.  

Maker-centred learning environments start with the main assumption that everyone is a maker. How’s that for inclusion!  Maker spaces are developed so students can be creative, collaborative, hands on, innovative using real world activities. How’s that for student centred!

This maker philosophy has been embraced globally by governments and large business.  For students, making, within a purposeful and dynamic curriculum, is a way of learning how to solve issues they will face in the future. “For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking” (Briggs 2014, n.p.).

“China’s Ministry of Science and Technology has pledged to invest $313 million into research and development of 3D printing technologies to help primary school educators incorporate 3D printing in the classroom” (NMC Horizon Report 2016, p. 36 ).  

In the US, President Obama has endorsed a National Week of Making saying  “We recommit to sparking the creative confidence of all Americans and to giving them the skills, mentors, and resources they need to harness their passion and tackle some of our planet’s greatest challenges” (The White House, 2016, n.p.).

At the end of the day, as a teacher, my job is to develop learners.  Technology has changed the way we do almost everything in our everyday lives.  Of course it is going to impact how and what we teach so that we can foster connected life-long learners. “The success [of priority and all learners] in education is essential to the government’s goal of building a productive and competitive economy...[and helping learners develop] the skills needed to reach their full potential and contribute to the economy and society” (ERO, 2012, p. 4).

References:

Briggs, S. (2014). Students as Creators.  informED Blog. Retrieved from: http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/students-as-creators/

Education Review Office. (2012). Evaluation at a Glance: Priority Learners in New Zealand Schools. Retrieved 18 May 2016, from http://www.ero.govt.nz/About-Us/News-Media-Release…

Fisch, K. and McLeod, S. (2010).  Did You Know?/Shift Happens. Retreived from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

New Media Consortium. (2016). NMC Horizon Report: 2016 K-12 Edition. Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2016-nmc-cosn-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf

The White House. (2016).  Office of the Press Secretary.  Retrieved from: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Blog/2016%20National%20Week%20of%20Making%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf