David's Techsploration day - tomorrow 5/30

Techsploration Day 2014
Carpinteria Family School
12:30 - 2:00 pm (a half hour should be enough time to get the experience)
1480 Linden Ave, Carpinteria, CA 93013

from the north:
SB on 101
Exit Linden Ave.
Left over freeway towards mountains.
School entrance is on right, find parking in lot or street (not in bus turnaround!)
Get visitor pass at Canolino school office
Techsploration will be set up outside on grass area to the right on school grounds (southwest area)

from the south:
NB on 101
exit Casitas Pass Road
left over freeway towards ocean
right on Carpinteria Avenue (Casitas Pass road ends at this intersection)
down about 6 blocks to stoplight at Linden Avenue
Right on Linden Avenue towards mountains over freeway
School entrance is on right, find parking in lot or street (not in bus turnaround!)
Get visitor pass at Canolino school office
Techsploration will be set up outside on grass area to the right on school grounds (southwest area)

Students' Privacy Rights versus Data-Driven Learning

Some open-source software developer friends of mine have been discussing this article and I thought you might find it interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/technology/a-student-data-collector-drops-out.html?_r=0

Basically, the discussions were talking about the need to provide safe places (even on computers) for students to tinker and explore and how important this is while also needing to differentiate learning and how useful that could be. The difficulty is that once you start collecting data from students' tinkering, it can be used for anything and those uses compromise students' privacy rights. It seems kind of like the play that students need to have to explore and take risks only the computer version of that play.

 

Makey Makey projects

Check out these great projects on the video and the discussion about how to encourage people to tinker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLjxB7PXBJo&feature=youtu.be&t=5m34s

Play-Well Summer Camp Registration

Hello everyone!

Summer camp registration is now open for Play-Well.  I know someone asked about that during class this week.  Thought I would provide the link here: Play-Well Summer Camp Registration

Happy Friday :)

Ali's Blog

Thank you Ali for the chance to play with Legos and learn more about Play Well.
I am putting the link for her blog that she shared with us today here in case anyone wants to follow along on her adventures.

http://playingtolearnengineering.blogspot.com/

Video Resources for Engineering is Elementary

The video resources for Engineering is Elementary can be found here.

http://www.eie.org/engineering-elementary/resources/listing?resourceType=188

Please select a few and watch how the students engage in the engineering practices. The ones that are "lesson 4" are usually the full design lessons. The earlier ones test variables that will be important in developing their final design.

"The Overprotected Kid" and different kinds of playgrounds

This article is from a month ago so you might have already seen it, but the discovery learning paper reminded me of it. It's about playgrounds and how it's important for children to be able to explore and take risks.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

A family I used to babysit for went to the Adventure Playground a lot, and it's very similar to the one described in the article (no fires though!). It was really fun and I wish my parents had known about it when I was growing up!
http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/contentdisplay.aspx?id=8656

Very brief summary of class on 4/09/14

Yesterday, we.....

1) Tinkered with Scratch and MakeyMakey. We developed Scratch programs that introduced ourselves and tried out controlling them with the Makey Makey interface.

2) Discussed briefly the readings. Some points that were brought up -

• On page 66, Petrich, Wilkenson, & Bevan (2013) describe the things they were looking for when they were trying to identify whether students were learning in the Tinkering Lab at the Exploratorium. This is one way to operationalize learning that can be detected through video analysis. We were not sure if this was scaleable. 
• Formal learning environments (schools) have some added constraints (e.g., accountability to state standards) but they also allow for different types of testing. Perhaps there is some way to assess learning on a greater scale. We also struggled with how to decide "what" was learned rather than just if students had participated in any learning. 
• Some models for more flexible assessment include badges (e.g., DIY.org) and  Standards-based grading where students are provided with standards and turn in evidence of mastery. 
• We discussed the lack of tinkering opportunities in current elementary schools.

3) Discussed outreach and the perspective of schools and outreach providers.

Resources we discussed
DIY.org
MakeyMakey
Scratch.mit.edu
Design Squad Nation

If you have any additions, please feel free to contribute notes so we have a record of things we talked about.
 

New Play-i Robotics Toys

Robotics and programming toys for really young kids!
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/after-11k-pre-orders-play-i-lands-8m-to-make-programming-kid-friendly-and-bring-its-interactive-toy-robots-to-tikes-near-you/

Dos Pueblos Engineering Robotics - TODAY!

Dos Pueblos Engineering Robotics team 1717 is competing in Las Vegas today. They were regional champions in L.A. last weekend so we are expecting great things from them. You can watch their team compete at
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2014nvlv

Machine Art Contest

The exploratorium and NPR's Science Friday are having a DIY machine art contest -
See ...
http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/2014/03/28/machineart#.Uz2I317F_Eg

and check out the great examples posted at --
https://www.rebelmouse.com/scifri/Science-Club/

Welcome to the class blog

Post items of interest to the class here.