The Day of the Magical Moment
About a week ago, my latest group of students (who come to me daily for 30 minutes
on for three weeks), was about half way through their time in the Maker Lab. We are
all new to this format this year and I am continually working to refine the experience.
Only a few days before I was running around trying to help students who still had
questions or wanted me to help with a process. I was checking on a few groups who
had been working but did not seem to be making progress. But on this particular day,
we hit what I like to think of as the “sweet spot” or that magical moment where I look
around and every single student is engaged in their creation process. Some of them,
who I helped a few days prior were helping other students learn the process of Cricut
design or using the green screen software, or designing on Tinkercad.
I had to capture a picture of the different busy groups as I often forget the little bit of
struggle each group goes through before the day of the “sweet spot”. Below are a few
from that moment.
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| This group of boys made several green screen and stop motion videos. One friend created original music with SoundTrap. |
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| And this little group was out in the hall making stop motion magic using an old IPod and StopMotion Studio. |
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| Did you know that designs in Tinkercad can be converted into Lego Brick designs? |
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| Putting the finishing touches on her 3D design using Tinkercad. She later printed it using the Prinrbot. |
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| Seeing if a 3D pen can fill in some gaps of a not-so-perfect 3D print. |
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| This pair used Circut Design Space to design custom vinyl clings for their laptops. Details made all the difference for them. |
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| The Cricut workspace. Where the designs come to life. |
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| A finished Cricut design. She used a metallic marker to get more details. |
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| After finishing other creations, some asked if they could try the Spirograph. It was sitting on a little book shelf hoping to be discovered. |
Today as I was reading from the book The Kickstart Guide to Making Great
Makerspaces by Laura Fleming, there were so many ideas spinning through
my head about how I could improve this process and continue evolving. One
of them is making sure to have each student reflect after each of their “makes”.
Some spend the entire three weeks perfecting on project, while some jump in
and end up with vinyl clings they have created and cut from Cricut, 3D designed
and printed pieces, and stop motion movies.
As I begin this next week with a new group, one new procedure I will add is student
reflection. I verbally interview children as they finish, but I am not always getting to
each of them. I’m going to create a Google Form as well as a Flip Grid response
option for students to share their reflections. I am sure they will think of other ways
to share their thoughts too--and that will make it even better!
