A new Think, Make, Innovate has arrived!  This month we are highlighting Christina Root’s second graders at All Saints Catholic Elementary in Cedar Rapids (@asbruinsnation)!

What is a makerspace without communication and collaboration? When we ask students to share their ideas, it flexes the making muscles and leads to refinement and reflection. Students have to voice their successes and challenges and open up for feedback. You can do this in a variety of ways in your classroom or makerspace. But, always begin with modeling and setting expectations! 

• What does it look like to share to a group? 
• How will we provide feedback to our peers? (I like, I wish, What if)
• How will we receive feedback? (Feedback Capture Grid)

These discussions should be your starting point. Never assume students are experts when collaborating or communicating!

A non-tech option might be a gallery walk when students share face-to-face in small groups. ‘Shark Tank’ can be a fun way to demo your ideas and receive feedback in a larger group setting too. Varying sharing situations requires students to alter how and what we might share with different types of audiences. 
Another idea could be to have a “Maker Museum” or even a “Museum of Fails” that showcase what students have made--successfully and unsuccessfully. Don’t have a large space? Create small exhibit areas around your building instead! But a little tip from us to you--(thanks, Dr. Robert Dillon!), make sure to put an expiration date on your displays! Don’t let it get overcrowded or stale!

But that’s not all! Consider students with anxiety when having to share face-to-face. Or, what will we do when we want to share to a broader audience? Enter technology.
In our student video below, you can observe second grade students sharing via Seesaw. You will observe these students sharing with video or with pictures and audio recording. But no matter how they share, one thing they have in common is honest, insightful reflection. If you aren’t a Seesaw user, no problem! Flipgrid is also a great tool that has the same great tools built right in!

Our Maker Community wants to see what you make! Please email pictures and videos to makerspace@gwaea.org. You can also tag @DLGWAEA on any social media platform! And make sure to use... 

​#HaveFunMaking!

​~Amber and Mindy

January 2020 was an important month for YouTube because it marked the rollout of a number of new changes that will indelibly affect the future of the platform and the people who use it. For teachers, and for schools, these are important changes to be aware of as they look to curate content, upload content, and work with students to do the same. So, here's a quick summary of what you need to know. 

Investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General found Google to be guilty of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, (COPPA). It was judged to be guilty of collecting data from kids under 13 and using that data to serve personalized ads to those users. This is a direct violation of COPPA. Google were served a fine of $174m, and, perhaps more importantly, it was compelled to make changes to to YouTube. These changes would make YouTube compliant with the terms of COPPA, but they would also alter the way that YouTube works for its users.

In short, the biggest change is that you now need to choose an audience for the videos you upload to YouTube. More specifically, you have to say whether your video is made for kids, or not made for kids. You can set this option as a channel-wide setting, or make the decision on a case by case basis when you upload your videos. Once YouTube knows the intended audience for a video, it can turn off features like data collection and personalized ads in order to better comply with COPPA.

Well, it might not, but if you mark a channel or video as made for kids, there are some other things you should know about. For instance, your video will no longer autoplay on the YouTube homepage, you can't add cards or end screens, the notification bell is disabled, and your video can't be added to a playlist or to the watch later list. Videos that are marked as made for kids, are also more likely to be promoted alongside other videos that have the same designation, so this could affect your discoverability on YouTube. 

​However, these are just some of the features that are disabled with the made for kids audience setting. You can see the full list here on Google's support page. Playlists are probably the biggest drawback, but there is nothing stopping you adding your videos to a Wakelet collection or to a Google Slides presentation as an alternative. 

This can be a bit of a gray area, but YouTube does have some guidance for you. If children under the age of 13 are the primary audience for your video, then your video should be labelled as made for kids. If children are in your video, or your video has toys, characters, or animation aimed at children, then it should also be labelled made for kids. Songs, stories and poems directed at children are also in this category. More information here. 

Although this can be confusing for some people, ultimately the responsibility as to what choice you make does like with you as the account holder. YouTube says, "As a creator, you know your videos and your audience best, and it is your legal responsibility to comply with COPPA and/or other applicable laws and designate your content accurately. If you fail to categorize your content correctly, there may be consequences on YouTube. Additionally, there may be legal consequences under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) or other applicable local laws." (Source)

As Amber Bridge said on a recent episode of our podcast, think about the age of your students. If your students are 13 years or older, then you probably don't have a lot to worry about here. You will not need to mark your content as made for kids, because the videos you upload to YouTube for your students are aimed at an audience that is 13 or older. However, if you are an elementary teacher, you may need to think a little harder about this. Are you creating a video for your students or for other teachers? These would be a different audience, and that is absolutely fine because you always have the option of picking and choosing your audience depending on the content of your video.

​For instance, a school YouTube channel may have some classroom videos that fall into the "made for kids" category, and some others that are more directed at parents, so they would be labelled as "not made for kids". It would just depend on the content. All you do is be mindful when uploading your videos and use your best judgement to make sure you comply with the new changes. 

In addition to the video above, Google has some support documents that address most of the issues surrounding the audience settings on YouTube. Those articles are linked below, along with episode 71 of The Edtech Take Out, which also features a conversation around the same topic!

• Frequently asked questions about “made for kids”
• Determining if your content is "made for kids"
• Set your channel or video’s audience

Subscribe in Apple Podcasts | Subscribe on Android

If you have questions about any of these changes and the impact it has on you or your students, contact your Digital Learning Consultant for more information!

Jonathan Wylie
Digital Learning Consultant
Grant Wood AEA

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.​

Search the Hour of Code activities page or check out our Smores that highlight ways to integrate Computer Science into the content areas. Each content area resource highlights activities for elementary, middle school, and high school learners and includes some of our favorite unplugged and online activities. 

1. 2019 Hour of Code Resources & Activity Suggestions for #CSforGood
2. Activity Suggestions for CS + Math
3. Activity Suggestions for CS + Science
4. Activity Suggestions for CS + Social Studies
5. Activity Suggestions for CS + Language Arts
6. Activity Suggestions for CS + Music, Media, & Art

Did you know that Computer Science Professionals are available to support your event in person or virtually? Grant Wood AEA schools should contact Gary Vogt from the Regional IT Sector Board at gary.vogt@kirkwood.edu to arrange a face to face volunteer from local computer science and information technology professionals. ​

- Corey Rogers (@corey_rogers)

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