For this post, I am going to go from the end to the beginning of how this happened. I wanted to start out with the interviews that the mentors recorded of the young designers with their completed bubble wands. Please click below to be able to hear different young designers sharing what they learned. Today was the culmination of several weeks of collaborative learning where both 7th and 8th grade designers helped their kinder partners create both their first 3D printed bubble wand as well as an Infusible Ink Bag for each young designer. It was an adventure of learning together.
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Using Cricut Design Space to create an infusible ink bag designed for their kinder buddy to hold their 3D printed bubble wands, designers shared the first Morphi designed bubble wands that have been printed. They also created together using the Micro:Bit. Fridays rock with mentoring!
Next Week's Plan
Flip MixtapeComing Next Week
In this mentoring, mentors were paired together and then worked as a team with 2-3 kindergartners. This has helped with the anxiety that many of my mentors experience at first when starting to work with a younger buddy. Coming next week.....
Designer FeedbackFinal Video Games
It was so exciting to see my designers reconnect and the pride they have in what they are designing. Listening to the feedback and questions that are being asked and shared reinforces the need for an authentic audience who not only influences a design but also experiences that design. My Designers Reflections
Next week my designers will be creating a video game for their mentee based on feedback through their creation process about the main character, the setting, the challenge and more.
Student ReflectionsAt the end of the quarter, designers chose between creating their own STEM story or a recap slideshow. I wanted to publish this slideshow because it makes my heart full. I am thankful for the opportunity to get to do what I do but also it means so much to be able to share these experiences with new designers.
Partnership 1Partnership 2Partnership 3Partnership 4Week 3 was an opportunity for designers to test their Morphi bubble wands and start to design their Makers Empire bubble wand. Designer 1Designer 2Designer 3Too many times, we only blog what is working.... but today is a blog about pivoting in the midst of collaborating. This week 7th graders were tasked with being the designer for their client, their kinder buddy. It was an activity to help focus on communication, shapes, and size. I chose to have my 7th graders use Morphi as it allows designers to physically draw their designs.
So the snafu came when I realized that instead of my designers having access to the Morphi EDU version of the app, they had access to the free app which prevents us from printing the designs.
Stay tuned to find out how we proceed as we get the designers access to the EDU version. Designers then mentored their buddy with the training lab or challenge central to prepare for next week's design in Makers Empire. As the school year starts to wrap up and the crazy of a concurrent classroom poses its own challenges, I noticed that many of my designers lack purpose in what they are designing. So I reached out to one of my favorite teacher teams - Reed and Scanlon at our neighboring elementary school to pose an idea. Would you be interested in collaborating around a 3D bubble wand design experience?Now I should reveal that both Reed and Scanlon have in the past trusted me with some pretty crazy ideas and been prepared to help make it happen with their kinder learners. So of course they agreed to meet and listen to what I was thinking. So this is Week 1 of our next few weeks of working together.... and boy is everyone is excited! Our first step was making sure that our kinders had access to Makers Empire which is a 3D design program that I absolutely love using with young designers. It has an amazing training lab that really engages the designer in understanding how the software works as well as powerful tutorials to support the novice designer. Day 1In our 40 minute collaboration time, buddies introduced themselves, used commercially designed bubble wands, and introduced Makers Empire training lab. Extension for Middle School DesignersI have been using stories in my middle school content because I feel that it is an important way that concepts are shared so besides our day of meeting and working with the kinders, my designers had a STEM story that I have included. |
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