Sylvia Libow Martinez's Blog, page 9

I just completed my duties as a judge for theCTE Makeover Challenge team out ofthe U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career and Technical Education. I’ll be looking forward to seeing who wins, and if the selection of entries I readare any indication, these schools should all win!

It will be great to meet the winners at the World Maker Faire in New York in October.

I had the opportunity to see Bran Ferren speak at an event (Infosys Crossroads) recently. He’s an “American technologist, artist, architectural designer, vehicle designer, engineer, lighting and sound designer, visual effects artist, scientist, lecturer, photographer, entrepreneur, and inventor.” (Wikipedia)

During his fascinating talk, he drew a quick sketch that looked like this:

And he described how change always happens – by some “new way” sneaking up and overtaking the “old way” of doin...

I was invited to be a guest of the Fab Academy in their monthly recitation. TomasDiez ofFab Lab Barcelona and Sherry Lassiter of the MIT Media Lab were the hosts. We had a great conversation and questions from all around the world!

Fab Academy is a distributed educational model that gives certificates in making and fabrication aspart of the global Fab Lab / Fab Academy network.

Lastweek I wrote about Design Thinking being only one lens through which to view design — product design for a specific audience. The most common question after that is, what else is there?

One need only to look at the Wikipedia entry on design to start to see that this isn’t an easy question to answer. It lists more than twenty design disciplines, multiple process models, approaches, methods, and tries to differentiate between design as art, engineering, and production.

And on top is a big w...

Meet the Influencer: SylviaMartinez

Literacy Beat just posted a blog interview in which I answer two questions:

What tips or advice might you offer to teachers who want to be advocates for learning through literacy in the digital world?

I think that it’s important for teachers to keep an eye on what’s happening outside of school, not just in the digital world, but in the world at large. The Maker Movement, for example, is a trend that is going to change the world, possibly as much as the Indu...

“Making in the classroom is nota shopping list or a special place, it’s a stance towards learning.”

Martinez Handout PDF for download

Presentations, webinars, and blog at sylviamartinez.com

Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager. Called, the “bible of the Maker Movement in schools,” Invent to Learn has helped thousands of educators embrace the tools, technology, a...

It always bothers me when people talk about how information is overloading children today. It just seems like adults projecting their own anxiety onto children. Children have no idea that there is “more” information now, their context is the present. They aren’t overloaded any more than thepreviousgeneration was overloaded the first time theywalked into a library. No one ran out screaming “I’ll never read them all!!!”

That’s not to say that children don’t need guidance. But let’s leave our ad...

[image error]The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) just added a new report to their Ed Tech Next Series: Students as Digital Creatorsfor CoSN members. This report explores the ways in which K–12 schools everywhere are carving out space in their buildings and curriculum to empower students as storytellers, artists, performers, designers, engineers, coders, gamers, inventors, builders, producers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The report offers expert perspectives on why and how to foster digital creat...

Learning is an engagement of the mind that changes the mind.

—Martin Heidegger

One of the biggest issues I have with many descriptions of “making” in education is that it’s about students just being creative with tools or materials. I strongly disagree. Making is not just the simple act of you being the difference between raw materialsand finished product, as in “I made dinner” or even “I made a robot.” I don’t think we always need to ascribe learning to the act of making — but the act of mak...

People often ask me two questions about Design Thinking. First, is the same as making, and second, do I like it. It’s obvious there are similarities and overlaps, and similar ways that they can be implemented well (or not so well). I think design is the key to modern STEM education, but it’s a mistake to think that using Design Thinking methodology is the same as teaching design. Design Thinking gets the “big D, big T” treatment because it’s a methodology invented at the Institute of Design a...