We had the distinct pleasure of working with 19 teachers from Er Xiao, our partner school in Beijing.  David St. Martin and I facilitated a two-hour tinkering activity called Chain Reaction (similar to marble runs and Rube Goldberg).  Working in teams with Mark Day School teachers, the challenge was to create movement from a "begin" block on one table to an "end" block on another table.  Then the "end" block would fall and topple the next "begin" block to continue the chain reaction in a large oval pattern.

The idea was to give teachers the experience of cultivating a tinkering mindset through curiosity, confidence, playfulness, and perseverance.  We gave teachers three goals for the activity: try hard, be creative, and work as a team.

Materials included 2x4s and various wooden pieces, plastic and cardboard tubes, balls and toys, and even "found" items such as chairs and Imagination Playground blocks.  We also set up a workbench with drills and clamps as a tool station for altering and building onto existing materials.

Our post-activity discussion was framed around a technique we use with our students: starting a comment or question with "I like...", "I wish..." or "I wonder..."  It allows for positive feedback, constructive criticism, and introspection. 

The video below starts slowly but then builds to the exciting finish!
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— Tatian Greenleaf

We were invited to present at the Barnes & Noble 2nd Annual Mini Maker Faire in Corte Madera on Saturday, November 5th as part of their "Meet the Makers" workshop series.

David St. Martin and I shared the ways that we integrate design and tinkering into the existing curriculum at Mark Day School, and the ways that we offer informal opportunities for making, such as during lunch time Open Tinkering for 2nd graders and up, after school classes for kindergarteners and up, and summer programs.  

We shared photos and stories about 8th graders designing their own microscopes, 7th and 8th grade elective students building smokeless stoves in collaboration with students at our partner school in South Africa, elective students designing upcycled fashion for our Project Re-Use course while getting feedback from professional clothing designers, 3rd graders building marshmallow catapults to test rapid prototyping skills as part of their IDEA Lab tinkering class, 2nd graders creating anemometers to test wind power in our wind tunnel during their weather unit, kindergarteners in an after school carpentry class learning to saw wood and drill holes, and even more!  We also shared the ways in which we bring our strong social emotional learning program into our tinkering projects, through teamwork, positive feedback, and through encouraging creativity and perseverance.

We also talked about our wonderful global partnerships with schools in South Africa, China, and Costa Rica.  We've had the pleasure of working with students and teachers from all three schools in our Open Lab as they experienced what it means to tinker.

Students from Mark Day School were on hand to demonstrate pinball machines and electrical circuit blocks and to encourage other kids to further build and to modify the existing designs.

— Tatian Greenleaf

Following in the footsteps of our "Inspire" Project Based Learning professional development workshop at Mark Day School this summer, David St. Martin and I have teamed up with Joyce Chen to create a year-long project that allows students to personalize their learning while engaging in real-world planning and presentation of information.  Students will be imagining an 11-day trip to China that parallels the trip some of our students take in the spring to our partner school in Beijing.

Our driving question is: "What do you need to know to be able to go to China?"  Students will be determining the supplementary vocabulary needed to prepare for such a trip -- everything from asking how to get directions to a train station to commenting on a painting at a museum -- and then using the vocabulary to design and make several products including a three-dimensional interactive diorama and a guide book to present later.

During the first two classes, students researched famous landmarks and interesting places to visit using books from our library and a local public library as well as Internet resources.  They created a list of facts about the locations and began to craft an 11-day itinerary that is personally meaningful to them.  Each group will be presenting their versions of the itinerary soon and we will be combining ideas to create an ideal trip.  Stay tuned for more!
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— Tatian Greenleaf

Our first grade teachers, Geneva Conway and Lisa Becker, have been teaching about bubbles for years as part of their colors & rainbows and matter units.  In the recent past, students experimented with changing the percentage of soap in a bubble solution and then used store bought wands to test and record their results.  Last year, Geneva and Lisa approached David St. Martin, our Tinkerer, to brainstorm ways to involve design and tinkering in this project.  David suggested that students could invent their own bubble wands using a variety of materials and tools in the Open Lab and could focus on designing, building, and testing (which are aspects of Design Thinking) their creations.  All three teachers collaborated to redesign the project and have continued to make small changes to evolve it further.  

Students sketched their ideas and then explored the available materials in the Lab.  They were given a tour of the tools and several faculty and staff were present to help with cutting, sawing, drilling, or gluing of materials.  Once students had built their first wands, they were able to go outside and test them using bubble solution.  Some designs worked while others needed revising.  For many students, a quick test was followed by additional designing and building in the Lab before heading back outside to test again.  This cycle of quick iteration and testing is something we teach often in the Lab.

Geneva recently sent out an overview to other teachers who were going to assist on the building and testing day.  I think her words are a great example of how Project Based Learning and a "maker mindset" infuse how we work with students and what we ask students to learn, do, and reflect upon:

We are looking forward to having you join us for our tinkering activity.  Here are some points to know:

• ​You will be assisting the students while they are creating their bubble wands.  You will help them with using some of the tools or supervising them while they are using the simpler, non-electric tools.  Adults will use the glue gun for kids who want to glue parts together.  You may need to offer an extra pair of hands as kids manipulate the parts of their project.  
• Encourage a "growth mindset" and perseverance should a child become frustrated. (Not expecting that, but you never know!) Let them struggle a bit with figuring things out; trial-and-error is part of the process!

This is a great article about what the Maker movement can offer to businesses in terms of not only applicable tech skills but also and especially a "maker mindset" that includes design sensibilities, creative problem-solving, and perseverance.  These are the "soft" and "hard" skills that we actively promote through our design and tinkering program.  The article mentions tools and strategies that we currently use with students: 3D printers, Arduinos, design thinking (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test), hands-on experimentation, and recycled fashion.

​— Tatian Greenleaf

The first question I always get from 3rd graders in my IDEA Lab class is "Can we eat the marshmallow?"  And I always respond the same way, "If you have one marshmallow and you eat it, how many marshmallows do you have left?"  "Zero!" they yell out.  This is a good lesson, not just in appreciating what you have but also in terms of constraints.  They have several constraints for this challenge: (1) limited materials and time, (2) they must work in groups of two or three, (3) they can only touch the spoon and the marshmallow when launching their catapult.

I start by introducing the process of Design Thinking that originated at IDEO and Stanford's d.school:

Students are familiar with the concept of empathy from our Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum.  So they understand what it means to stand in someone else's shoes and to look at a problem from someone else's perspective or needs.  This project doesn't require much empathy since they are designing the product for themselves (and to some extent for me and their homeroom teacher).  The define step is also easy here: I give them constraints and define the challenge: to build a catapult that can fling a marshmallow a long distance.  

I had the privilege of presenting at the Personalized Learning Summit to school and district leaders from around the country.  The topic of my presentation was "Growing a Makerspace."  I wanted to give administrators a hands-on experience of what tinkering is and also provide them with a glimpse of the multitude of ways that we reach students through design and making.  

I packed my car with what looked like the remnants of a large Rube Goldberg contraption which is pretty much what they were: dozens of 2x4 pieces of wood; marbles, basketballs and bowling balls; a remote control car; various tubes; and several rolls of duct tape.

Both Kindergarten classes had a chance to come to the Open Lab for a tinkering activity called "The Fourth Little Pig."  Few people know that after the Three Little Pigs met the Big Bad Wolf, a fourth little pig escaped and ran all the way to the Open Lab, or at least that's how we crafted the story for our students.  The fourth little pig would need a house that was strong enough to withstand the wolf's breath (an air cannon that David St. Martin created):
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We gave students a tray with an outline of where three existing walls would be and directions to build a fourth wall using basic materials on the tray as well as masking tape.  Students learned about the concept of constraints because they would only have one long piece of masking tape and the materials provided to them.  I laser-cut wooden pigs for them that would need to stand inside the house.  

Students worked on building their walls and did initial testing using their breath to simulate the wolf.  For the "real" test, the wolf would blow and try to knock over the pigs.  In almost every case, the first design was unsuccessful and the pigs fell over.  Failing fast is a tenet of design thinking and a maker mindset, and something that we encourage.  While we always want students to ultimately succeed, making mistakes in the early part of a design process is a good learning opportunity and allows students to refine their ideas and build even better prototypes. ​

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One of the ways we've been connecting real-world problem-solving to making is by engaging students around "design team challenges" provided by our faculty and staff.  We asked faculty and staff to submit videos of themselves asking for something to be fixed, built, or invented by our students to improve the classroom or school-wide experience.  We received an intriguing list of ideas including rainwater diverters, 3D models of the new buildings, and portable sound booths.

We decided to start with a problem that exists in Ms. Sedlock's 2nd grade classroom: how to neatly and efficiently store eleven sets of headphones.  Students had been stacking them up in a crate but the cords were getting tangled and Ms. Sedlock figured there had to be a better way.

We invited students in grades two through eight to join us during lunch to participate in a process guided by the Stanford d.school and IDEO's Design Thinking concepts:

To begin, we showed students this video so they could understand the problem and empathize with what was needed and why:

Mark Day School alumna Lindsey Galster (daughter of fourth grade teacher Donna Young) contacted us to propose a joint venture between her fourth grade STEM students from five schools in the Old Adobe Union School District in Petaluma and our Open Lab faculty and resources.  Her students have been participating in a project-based learning study of a local creek and are planning to install informational signs that illustrate various flora near the creek.  This was also an opportunity for her students to see a working makerspace in action and to learn more about tools including the laser cutter and 3D printer.

We researched the best materials for signs that could withstand outdoor weather, which turned out to be marine plywood for the signs, redwood for the posts, and outdoor acrylic paint for the lettering.  [For a fascinating look into how marine plywood is made, watch this video.]  Prior to their visit, students researched their plants and drew pictures of them using sharpies.  In the Open Lab, they worked at various stations to scan their pictures on an iPad and send them to the laser cutter for "vector engraving."  Each student also created a stencil on card stock and then painted in the letters on their wooden sign below their engraved drawing.

The students were engaged and excited throughout the process!  And they were quite proud of their signs when they were done.  Not only did they have a chance to learn about our digital and hand tools but we had the opportunity to learn from them about their creek plants (I learned that horsetail plants and cattail plants are often confused but that horsetail plants grow in meadows while cattail plants grow near water).

— Tatian Greenleaf