Reflecting on the Past to Improve the Future

Wow! What a ride!

Taking a look back over the last few weeks, and everything I have made clarified several things to me; about me. We will come back to this later. First a trip down memory lane.

My Favorite Build

It's really hard to pick just one. They all have their own pros and cons. Off course, if the thing worked, that was great! But, in the end, I am not convinced that making a light blink is more successful (or educational) than say...exploding one on accident. These projects were less about getting them to do what they were supposed to do, and more about creating something. Creativity, deep thinking, beautifying a bunch of wires, pieces off metal and lights stuck into a holey plastic board. It was like sculpting, but then figuring out how to get the sculptures to interact with its environment. I enjoyed documenting my learning through pictures, videos, and blog plats. I'd like to share my favorites:

The Ultimate Goal of Education??

I re-evaluated my blog post and I was able to see evidence of leaps and bounds of learning. I love the scaffolding that this discretely structured class used to guide us into creating our own things. It seems similar to math in that there is an end goal, but no specified path that everyone must follow to reach it. When I started this class I was feeling unsure of myself (no coding experience here), so I spent time trying to talk myself into believing "I am a rock star, I can do anything I want to do", and of course living by the ideal of "fake it 'til you make it". As time went on I was able to see my growth, became interested, started reading and watching videos (absorbing all information I could find). Since, this course is so short time was not on my side, and much of my research was cut short. To finish off the thought: The goal was to notice growth. There was emotional growth as I learned even more patience, and discovered a frighteningly low tolerance for frustration. Now that I know there is a problem it can be fixed.

From a teacher's viewpoint the biggest problem that I faced (and this is pretty typical) a lack of time to complete a job as thoroughly as I would like to.

What now? Where do we go from here?

My goal is to continue playing with my microcontroller, and since I have enjoyed building and tinkering so much, and I also going too take up woodworking. I love to build, and I love to make beautiful things that are also functional. Learning new things is fun, interesting and develops people's growth mindset and grit. It's my desire to impart these same qualities to the students in my future maker space. And very important: make time for students to evaluate themselves and celebrate their progress and wins.