The Maker Playbook

A Guide to Creating Inclusive Learning Experiences

Caroline Haebig

• Publisher: ISTE
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781564849199
• eBook ISBN: 9781564848925
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación inclusiva

For School Leaders and K-12 Educators

Get concrete strategies for designing and implementing cultural and instructional supports for maker learning, and equipping makerspaces to model universal design for learning (UDL) in action.

School leaders and classroom teachers alike are looking for ways to integrate maker learning into their work in meaningful ways, but they simply don’t have the time, capacity or resources to review, synthesize or adapt existing models into their own school systems. The Maker Playbook offers a vision and the tools needed to streamline the process, including high-impact strategies you can put directly into action to foster an inclusive maker learning environment.

In these pages, you’ll find ready-to-use strategies and resources to guide learners in the design thinking maker learning process. With the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines as a basis, you’ll get ideas for helping all students learn, and guidance for developing the scaffolding to help all learners reach levels of higher-order thinking and engagement.

The book:

• Offers strategies that can be implemented on a personalized and systemic level to build a maker learning culture and program from the ground up.
• Highlights “Go Remote” tips with each strategy to assist you in implementing the ideas in a virtual environment.
• Includes recommendations for prioritizing and choosing from the strategies provided to help with planning and implementation.
• Offers resources for engagement, representation, action and expression to improve accessibility and boost students’ executive functioning skills.
• Includes QR codes and links to digital versions and templates for scaffolding learning to help you jump into action.

Whether your school system has begun this journey and is looking for ways to enhance established maker learning and makerspaces or is ready to start laying the foundation for providing maker learning experiences for all learners, this book is designed to help educators make maker learning more accessible for all.

Audience: K-12 educators and school leaders

By the end of this chapter, you will:

• Evaluate a variety of instructional strategies that can be used to scaffold the student design process.

• Gain multiple methods students can use at specific phases of the design process to self-assess the development of their skills, knowledge, and dispositions.

• Have access to strategies that increase cognitive engagement and metacognition during the design and maker learning process.

Strategies for Each Phase of the Design Process

Building on Chapter 3, this chapter provides educators a variety of strategies that support learners as they work through the stages of the design process. Specifically, the strategies within this chapter are intended to provide dynamic opportunities for students to engage with new learning and share their authentic outcomes at each phase of the design thinking process. Each strategy is aligned to the ISTE Standards for Students and can be used with any number of students via digital tools or low-tech methods. Remember, though, that leveraging digital tools and practices to implement these strategies creates more opportunities for students to maximize accessibility features and increases the strategies’ collaborative nature.

The duration of each activity can vary based on the unique needs of learners and the steps you choose to take in scaffolding the learning process. When evaluating how many strategies to employ, consider the unique needs of your learners and choose strategies that best scaffold and fit their needs as well as curriculum schedules. Downloadable graphic organizer templates are available for each of the chapter’s strategies; simply scan the Chapter 4 Resources QR code.

As you’ll see the strategies are organized into sections based on the stages of the design process (see the “Design Process Key Terms” sidebar). Each section provides you with multiple options and methods for addressing specific student skill development, for example:

UNPACKING THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: Strategies for building foundational knowledge and academic vocabulary, developing brainstorming skills, and preparing for research

IDENTIFYING A TARGET USER OR AUDIENCE: Strategies to sharpen observation and interview skills, as well as methods for collecting and visualizing data

RESEARCH AND DEFINE: Strategies focused on synthesizing information, identifying patterns and trends, and developing problem statements

DEFINING PROBLEMS AND IDEATING SOLUTIONS: Strategies to engage learners in using initial research to define a specific problem to focus on and then ideate possible solutions

SKETCHING: Strategies to support student sketching and prototype planning

PROTOTYPING: Strategies for assembling ideas into plausible solutions

EVALUATION: Strategies for testing solutions, improving concepts, and iterating to develop effective solutions

DESIGN THINKING PROCESS KEY TERMS

Any new endeavor is likely to have its own specialized terminology, and the design process (Figure 4.1) is no different. Not only do they describe the stages of a typical design challenge, but the following terms also represent common themes embedded throughout the ISTE Innovative Designer standard.

EMPATHIZE: Using the design challenge, and focusing on human need, find out as much information as possible associated with the challenge.

DEFINE: Synthesize that information into patterns and trends. Use these to develop a problem statement that guides action. This may be in the form of a “How might we…?” statement.

IDEATE: Generate ideas. These are the raw materials or digital tools for the development of the prototype.

PROTOTYPE: Assemble ideas into a plausible solution or solutions.

EVALUATE: Test the solution, improve, iterate, and retest (the gray arrows in Figure 4.1 represent this cycle). Continue to reach an effective solution.

Figure 4.1 While the design thinking...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About ISTE
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Build an Inclusive Maker Learning Culture
• Develop a Systems-Based Approach to Inclusive Maker Learning
• Integrate UDL Guidelines Into Maker Experiences
• Scaffolding the Student Design Process
• Expand Your Reach and Launch Maker Learning for All
• Continuous Improvement and Assessing Program Growth
• References
• Index
• Back Cover