Tinkering & MakING

1. Get Started with Activities Tinkering & MakING

2. Today’s Exploration - Overview of Today • Understand What Tinkering and Making Is. • Experience A Tinker.Make.Innovate. Activity • Discuss how you can incorporate Tinkering and Making into the classroom

3. What is Tinkering?

4. Tinkering is to engage with materials, tools and ideas to construct knowledge of their possibilities.

5. Tinkering is open-ended and encourages self-motivated engagement in learning

6. What is Making?

7. Making is learning by DOING. Making develops the capacity for innovative problem solving by engaging students in hands on and creative skill building projects that incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math subjects.

8. Making is social. Making provides opportunity to collaborate and develop effective communication skills.

9. Making develops a growth mindset that demonstrates how grit, flexible thinking, perspective-taking, perseverance and embracing failure leads to achievement and success.

10. Learning environments that are rich in tinkering and making require students to develop the dispositions of designers and innovators and build in them the confidence and competence to solve real world problems.

11. Tinker.Make.Innovate. is a three-step process developed by The Exploratory that combines tinkering, making and design thinking to provide students the opportunity to build the skills they need to propose and devise innovative solutions to complex challenges.

13. Tinker Phase : Developing Engagement

14. Make: Building Skills and Knowledge

15. Innovate Phase: Demonstrate skills and knowledge by inventing a solution to a problem

16. Electric Comics R³ • 

17. Tinker : Electric Comics R³ • Time: 10 Minutes • Goal: To establish a baseline of knowledge on environmental issues and to develop a list of problems related to not recycling. • Brainstorm: What are some reasons to recycle, reuse and reduce? What happens to e-waste in 3rd world countries. Use Post-Its to put any and all ideas onto a large board.

18. Make: Circuits Blocks/Squishy Circuits • Time: 30 Minutes • Goal: Construct a fundamental understanding of simple circuits and parallel circuits • Provocation: Use Squishy Circuits to add 2 LED lights to a sculpture of trash!

20. Make: Make a simple paper circuit • Time: 30 Minutes • Goal: Construct a fundamental understanding of simple and parallel circuits using paper, copper tape, LED lights and a paper switch. • Activity: Use the following templates to construct your understanding of simple circuits with 1 LED light and a parallel circuit for 2 or more lights.

21. Diagrams - From Chibitronics Circuit Sticker Sketchbook.

22. Innovate: Electric Comics R³ • Time: 90 minutes • Goal: Utilize the comic strip narrative to encourage the public to reduce, recycle and reuse - particularly e-waste. • In this phase, you will use the design thinking process to design a message that will draw attention to the benefits of recycling e-waste.

23. Brainstorm • Time: 5 minutes • Remind yourself of the environmental problems you brainstormed in the Tinker phase. Add any new situations that have come to you during the Make phase. • Time: 15 minutes • Pick 2-3 people to work as a group. As a group, combine your post-its of problems and sort them into clusters of ideas. Pick a problem, your group would like to focus on. • Time: Brainstorm possible solutions for the problem you and your group want to work on.

24. Ideate/Design • Time: 10 minutes • Do several quick sketches of your solution on paper. Pick your favorite 2 and your craziest 2. • Time: 10 minutes • Switch groups. Share your 4 ideas with new people. • Time: 10 minutes • Make design revisions and pick one design.

25. Prototyping • Time: 45 Minutes • Goal: Create a comic book that uses LED lights, copper tape and a battery to will encourage people to reduce, reuse and recycle e-waste. • Things to consider: • Notice that the 3 types of comic strip format. Which appeals to you the most? Which helps you to organize your ideas the best?

26. Comic Strip Formats • You can use either • of these formats or • make your own. • These are intended • to be inspiration.

27. Plussing Session • Time: 20 Minutes • Goal: Share Ideas, Get Ideas, Get Support, Give Support • During the plussing session, you will come together as the whole group to: • Share your ideas and plan • Receive ideas and suggestions

28. Revise • Time: 20 Minutes • Goal: To take the plusses received to make revisions to your design. • Notice: How did you feel about receiving plusses? How does this differ from constructive criticism.

29. Showcase • Time: 20 Minutes • Goal: Share your process and demonstrate what you learned • Include in your presentation: • - The problem • - Your solution • - Your prototyping process • - How you used circuitry in your solution

30. Reflect on Project • Time: 20 Minutes • What other provocations/themes might you use the activities from this project? • What did you notice or wonder about while you were doing the project?

31. Common Core and NGSS • TIME: 20 Minutes • What connections do you see between tinkering and making and the skills identified in the Common Core standards? • Which Next Generation Science Standard could you see fulfilled by the circuit blocks, squishy circuits and e-textiles?