{"id":13525,"date":"2017-10-05T05:30:03","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T09:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/?p=13525"},"modified":"2018-06-18T10:30:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T14:30:14","slug":"making-as-evidence-of-problem-solving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/making-as-evidence-of-problem-solving\/","title":{"rendered":"Maker-centered learning and transferable skills:"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making as evidence of problem-solving<\/h1>\n

\"makerspacesIt’s quite easy to see how making often takes students on new journeys, where their imagination provides opportunities to exercise the transferable skill of\u00a0<\/span>creative and practical problem solving.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

After a visit by EMMA, students at Malletts Bay School, in Colchester VT, were inspired to use their new skills to create an interactive display for their whole school community.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Making the Malletts Bay Fall Exhibit<\/h2>\n

\"makingAfter a 90 minute EMMA visit to Malletts Bay School <\/a>where fifth grade students learned to use a Makey Makey and code using Scratch, a small group decided to use their new maker skills to create an interactive display for the Fall Open House at their school. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As soon as I saw their creative exhibit start to come to life, I suggested that they might want to share their exhibit with a greater audience at the Champlain Mini Maker Faire.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within a few days, the students\u2019 interactive exhibit included hay bales\u00a0<\/span>with musical chysanthemums and pumpkins. When the students\u00a0<\/span>contacted me to see if I could bring the<\/span>m a cauldron, my curiosity was piqued. I nearly fell over in my chair when I heard the cackling witches laugh and the spooky music that came from the caldron as they stirred the witches brew. Using water in a cauldron as a conductor and adding wire to a witches\u00a0<\/span>brew stick made from PVC pipe was one of the most creative examples of a closed circuit I\u2019ve seen. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These students were so creative in their problem solving, \u00a0I was not at all surprised to discover that they had managed to create a circuit with a plastic skeleton by adding some wire around his finger tips and around his rib cage so that \u201cHarry\u201d — their skeleton — would laugh when you touched his rib cage or offer a different greeting when you shook his left or right hand.<\/p>\n

\"maker-centered
Two students at Malletts Bay School wire up “Harry”, the Halloween skeleton to laugh and talk when exhibit visitors touched him.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Identifying indicators of a transferable skill<\/h3>\n

I can say without a doubt that these students generated ample evidence aligned with the\u00a0<\/span>Creative and Practical Problem Solving performance indicators.<\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

For example, their efforts to use the Makey Makey in creative ways to add pizzazz to their Open House illustrated the ability to “Generate a variety of solutions, use evidence to build a case for best responses, critically evaluate the effectiveness of responses, and repeat that process to generate alternate solutions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And although I was impressed with the ideas and solutions they implemented in their audible garden, I must say that what impressed me even more was how they were able to \u00a0\u201cPersist in solving challenging problems and learn from failure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n