Explore some resources to help you get started with the different problem solving frameworks we described in the video.

Engineering Design Cycle
Stages: Ask, Research, Imagine, Plan, Create, Test & Evaluate, Improve

Here are a few resources for each stage
Ask: QFT Process to encourage student questioning. 🎥Check out this short video of the different stages of the QFT Process.
Imagine: Brainstorming with a group goes much more smoothly if you check out these rules 🎥in this video from the d.school
Plan & Create: These two stages go hand-in-hand and it's a great way to get students to think about their plan on paper first before they start building. Consider their plan as the first stage of prototyping as explained 🎥in this video from the Whittlesea Tech School.
Test & Evaluate & Improve: Students will need feedback on their creation. They'll need feedback not only from the product itself and how it works, but also from others to help them to help them to clarify their ideas. Consider this 💻Ladder Feedback protocol to give feedback in a way that helps the creators see the value in their designs and ways they can make it stronger.

💻Explore Teach Engineering for more support and classroom ideas to get started.

Design Thinking
Stages: Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test & Share

​Here are a few resources for each stage
Empathy: Empathy is such a strong stage of the design thinking process. Consider having students connect with who they are creating for by a creating an empathy map. Learn more about the process from the 📄Interaction Design Foundation.
Define: After connecting with who you are creating for, it's important to simplify and focus exactly what problem you are connecting with and how it will supports the user's needs by considering the empathy map. A POV statement does just that! Read more about the process from the 📄Interaction Design Foundation.
Ideate: Here's the reciprocal video from the Imagine Stage above, 🎥How Not to Brainstorm from the d.school. Sometimes students really need to see how not to, before they can realize how to do something.
Prototype: Building a small-scale model of what you'd envisioned is a great step for students. With design thinking, it really truly is about connecting, considering, and reminding yourself all the time about who you are creating for. Learn more about 📄Prototyping for Empathy from Interaction Design Foundation.
Test & Share: Trying out your prototype and getting feedback from the intended audience is key with design thinking. In a classroom situation, you may be having students create for each other or for an outside audience. We like the 💻I Like/I Wish feedback protocol from IDEO to get feedback to students about their designs.

Ready to Learn More? Check out 💻the d.School 

​Whatever you try, we'd love to know how it goes! Send us your photos or videos through social media and tag @dlgwaea or send an email to makerspace@gwaea.org and we will post them on our website, www.dlgwaea.org. And as always...

#HaveFunMaking
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~Amber & Mindy

‘Creative constraints’ has been a common phrase heard on Think, Make, Innovate. In our current reality of self-isolation and quarantine, creative constraints has become our anthem.

Recently, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles challenged the community to recreate famous works of art with household items. The community responded with gusto! This seems like the perfect challenge for our students, but with a bit of a twist! Because Grant Wood is our famous local artist, we wanted to challenge our teachers, students, and own Grant Wood staff to recreate famous Grant Wood artwork.

A few suggestions or tips we have to get started:
Get your family involved.
Include your pets!
Household items, toys, and food are great items to create with.
Use lighting to your advantage.

Get inspired by checking out our Wakelet with some examples from the Getty Museum Challenge and see a small collection of Grant Wood Art that is just waiting to be remade.
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We can’t wait to see what you make! Make sure to share your pictures with us by tagging @DLGWAEA or use #HaveFunMaking. You can also email us at makerspace@gwaea.org.

~Amber Bridge and Mindy Cairney
​Digital Learning Consultants

What does Making or Maker Experiences mean to you?
We'd love to hear your thoughts!  Add a comment below to join in on the conversation and make sure that you are following along with #MakerMarch all month long.
And remember #HaveFunMaking!

~Amber Bridge, Digital Learning Consultant
@abridgesmith

A new Think, Make, Innovate is out and we are giving you a behind the scenes connection with Sara Pflughaupt, Solon Community School District's Teacher Librarian (@scsdlibraries) in this guest blog post.​

Last year, an amazing group of educators assembled to be a part of a new course called Creative Challenges Teacher Cohort.  The goal of the course was meant to give teachers an opportunity to think and learn more about Making, STEM and Design Thinking and build up the community of teachers around the area who are working to try new things in their classroom to get their students creating.  
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At the end of our year, many of the teachers said they’d like to continue on, so we have been moving forward with more creative adventures.  And in this go round, I want to give more of a voice to our cohort members. Keep reading to learn more from a few of the teachers in this Cohort about creative challenges and the importance of student creativity. 

From Gina Miller (@GinaBeckMiller), Belle Plaine Community School District
Creative Challenges are basically problem solving and adaptability in action.  

When I think of the purpose of creative challenges it is to instill within our students the ability to recognize a problem and develop the ability to brainstorm possible scenarios or strategies to assist their current coping, with problem solving regardless of the size of the problem they are facing.  Too many times students immediately run to an adult to have them fix it, give them the answer, do something for them. 

 My largest goal as an educator is to use purposeful activities/lessons that assist in problem solving practice, critical thinking, tying it to real world applications, empathy training/sensitivity to others,  and, in turn, prepare students for their futures. We definitely do not do kids favors by doing things for them, rather than walking them through, what are your options for solving this problem? What have you done before to solve this type of problem, what have you noticed about the way(s) others have solved similar problems, or research to find how this problem has been or could be solved. I encourage students to use engineering design models or scientific process models to tackle any problem.

I also strongly feel that I push students to look at something, to not just see it, but to observe everything about something, how it works, what it was designed to do, the intended design and then encourage them to reverse engineer and / or think of new and original ways that object could be sued, or revamped to fit new needs.

My other biggest passion/and even pet peeve, is tenacity & resiliency development.  I have so many students that want something to be perfect immediately, to not have to make revisions, to believe that they should be able to make something come to fruition because they can think about how it should/could be and they cannot make the connections between their brain and their hands or their dreams and their plans. (hey that rhymes!) 

From Bridget Speer (@sewfun82) Benton Community School District
Quote: There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning. ~Jiddu Krishnamurti
    As a teacher, mom, and aunt, one of the things I am very passionate about is reaching all learners. I was a typical good student. I did my homework, didn’t get into too much trouble in class, read a lot. However, the things I remember most are the times when we got our hands “dirty” in projects. One time, our class made popcorn balls and sold them to raise money to buy trees for the playground. Another time, I remember creating types of Native American homes as we learned about different tribes. One of my favorites was creating a model of the Mississippi in our 8th grade science room complete with a pump to circulate the water! I can’t believe that anyone let us (or our teacher) haul that much sand, dirt and rocks into the classroom.
As I think about my work with students in our STEAM Lab, my goals are

1. Build community
2. Connect student learning with the curriculum
3. Sharing out with community stakeholders

The STEAM Lab is a place where everyone is welcome. At Benton Community, our motto is “A Place to Belong”. One of my personal goals it to get to know and use all my students’ names. As I work with students in creative challenges, I get to know more than just their name. I also have learned in almost 15 years of teaching, there are so many students with more knowledge than myself, at least in a few subjects! Our STEAM Lab should be a space for students to share their expertise. It can also be a safe place to take a risk and try something new. Students and staff can build strong relationships and a sense of community as they investigate creative challenges in collaboration.
Often people see makerspace as an arts & crafts session or unorganized mess. However, I believe that with creative challenges, we can expose students to powerful connections to learning. I have seen students demonstrate understanding of angles and polygons while coding robots. Other students developed empathy by researching and creating realistic habitats for a skunk that was at the center of their class read aloud. Makerspace doesn’t have to be extra.

From Melissa Kane (@Abookworm813), Anamosa Community School District 
Thinking about thinking seems like a redundant statement but as I started thinking about the importance of a Makerspace that really is the key. So often we only see the product that is finished when our time is done; not the struggle it took to get the fabric to stand up to cover the wagon or the thirteen changes made to the code to make the wheel spin.

We need to take the time to talk through the process and explain the learning that happened. We need to use words like clarity, precision, empathy, and persisting as we discuss how we made it to the end product. This needs to just be part of the process and reflection as we work to and finish the product. I think of digital tools like Seesaw and Flipgrid that could allow students to create video clips about their learning and then edited together to share or review the journey of learning. 

I also like the idea of sharing this learning out to others. I think it would be great to try and share the process with an engineer or professional in the field of what is created to get some feedback on the connection to real life could be a powerful tool for students as well. Tagging on Instagram and Twitter could be a way for students to get this interaction outside of the school walls.

If we allow these things to happen as we are using the Makerspace the importance may be seen by others outside the space as well. What are some ways you use to help your students think about their thinking in the Makerspace? 


A big thanks to Gina, Bridget, and Melissa for sharing!
Amber Bridge
@abridgesmith
Digital Learning 

Not only is #havefunmaking the last line that we say of our Think, Make, Innovate episodes, but we really hope that anyone that takes up one of our Think, Make, Innovate challenges has FUN while making!  It has been magic to be able to capture these moments as part of past episodes of Think, Make, Innovate.

Maker opportunities create these amazing moments worth celebrating.  Making discoveries in learning through making, it gives you this magical “wow” or “what just happened” moment.  You did not know this was going to happen, but It usually hooks you, and gives you a internal drive to want to know and do more.

When you make something, it gives you a lot to be proud about.  You get to see and hold your work in your hands. It’s this physical evidence that you did something and you want to say to everyone, “Did you see what I made?” During a maker experience, you learn SO much along the way.  It gives you this great opportunity to connect your in and out of school experiences to make and collaborate with others. In the Sphero Boats episode, one student was captured saying, drawing on past experience in science class to jog her classmates memory.

Plus, when you make something, you are eager to share it out with the world!  The world? Wait, how am I going to do that?
Well, we hope that we can offer that to you through our online student maker community.  If you have your students participate in one of our Think, Make, Innovate Maker Challenges, we’d love to help you share their work with the world by highlight them on our website and resharing through our social media accounts.
Choose the path that’s best for you to share with us:

1. Email us at makerspace@gwaea.org
   
2. Tweet or Instagram us @dlgwaea
   
3. Use the hashtag #havefunmaking
   

We have been working to revamp our #havefuncommunity to showcase student creations from our different maker challenges and love some feedback from you.

You can now see where our makers are from with our new Maker Map.

And you can search by maker topics and get inspired by our makers’ creations.  Check out the screen shot below that highlights new search features. You could even pull up one of the examples and to share with the class and ask the student to figure out how they did that or can you figure out a different way to do this?

What else would you like to see added to our maker community?  Leave us a comment on this blog to help us best share and inspire your students to get creating!
And of course....
#havefunmaking!

~Amber Bridge (@abridgesmith) 
Digital Learning Consultant, Grant Wood AEA