Sunday, March 26, 2023

maker education resources update

Technology, Tools ... Curriculum. You might be sold on the technologies (for example, the micro:bit) and have purchased the tools you need for maker education (servos, glue guns etc.) but you haven’t got time to develop a comprehensive curriculum which makes the most of those tools.

Not to worry, a very smart person has probably developed the curriculum you need. This blog is an update and reiteration of some of those curriculum resources

1) Micro:bit curriculum
A new Micro:bit book published by the Invent to Learn group
Maas, Pauline & Heldens, Peter. The Invent to Learn Guide to the micro:bit.(2023) is all you need to get the most out of the micro:bit. It is written by teachers for teachers and deals with all the issues involved there. I plan to use it next term with a Year 8 Digital Technology class.
2) Circuit Playground Express (CPX) curriculum
Maker Course for the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express I’ve written about this one before. Rob Morrill has written a great course based on the CPX technology. We have been running this for a few years for Year 7s now at one of my schools and the course is very popular.

I'm now working part time in an all aboriginal student school and this has encouraged me to search out maker activities without using a computer at all.

3) Darrell Wakelam has a wonderful website and very generously has made many of his materials available for free online, here
#ArtJumpStart is a collection of easy art projects to try at home using materials from your recycling. Download the full collection as a PDF or browse the images below

His book, Art Shaped: 50 sustainable art projects to kickstart children's creativity, can be preordered through Bloomsbury (available in May this year)

4) Rob Ives books

Rob Ives has published large collection of books and the details are available on his website

I have bought one, Build It! Make It! Become a Super Engineer (2020)

First impression – some of the designs require complicated materials but others are simple and good.

ANOTHER USEFUL RESOURCES
5) Jason Erdreich Projects

This has roughly 100 projects of all sorts, I'm still checking these out.