MakerEd Integration For any Subject

This is an example lesson, plus supporting coaches’ documentation, for an integrated maker ed, PBL lesson. It should be seen as a “cooking” technique into which an educator may insert their own curricular ingredients and seasonings. It is meant to support any subject, from math to art to history. Use it as a basis for your own lessons. This is a “Hamburger Helper” for equitable distance learning. Just add your own “meat.” Using this technique of overlapping standards will help you gain back precious teaching time.Since MIT’s Seymour Papert transformed Piaget’s Constructivism into Constructionism, educational researchers have known that significant student agency resulting in a tangible artifact is both more effective and more durable than traditional education techniques. Students in Papert’s lab who were briefly introduced to an early command-line computer graphics program, taught themselves to code simply by playing.The modern pedagogical expression of Papert’s Constructionism is called Maker Ed, or maker education. This educational philosophy is the center of today’s school-based makerspaces. Since our student populations are socio-economically diverse, we cannot depend upon students having any particular physical building materials at home that the school has not supplied – not even cardboard or tape – this framework uses only digital media. Families who express a need are supplied with a loaner Chromebook and subsidized home internet. The exemplar lesson plan is formed around the traditional 4th-grade California Mission history subject, with an emphasis on the difference between the mythical version of heroic explorers working alongside happy Native Americans – that was the only version taught in our schools for generations – and the more brutal reality that we now know to be true.