Sicamous

Published on Apr 2, 2014

The Sicamous School District, in partnership with UBC’s Innovative Learning Centre (ILC), held the first Maker Day with students in B.C. on March 13, 2014. Over 80 students from five different schools came together to engage in design thinking and hands on trades activities. The ITA and UBC’s ILC are supporting Maker Days through-out BC to ‘take making into schools’. For more information on Maker Days, visit http://www.itabc.ca/events/maker-day.

Maker Day Video #2

https://www.enewsletters.gov.bc.ca/Education/Focus_on_Skills_April2014_newsletter/edition

“Maker Days” in the Okanagan

The University of British Columbia, in partnership with The Industry Training Authority, piloted 5 “Maker Days” as a way of introducing trades and technology and experiential learning opportunities from Kindergarten to Grade 12. At Maker Days, students and educators are introduced to “making” through small group design challenges that encourage invention, prototyping, and experimenting. Educators are asked to take “making” back to their schools and share it with their colleagues and students.

Here’s what happened at two of these recent Maker Days:

School District 23 (Central Okanagan) held a Maker Day on March 11. 72 educators, representing 40 of the 42 elementary, middle, and secondary schools in the district, attended. 37 schools have since signed up to run their own Maker Day type event with their students.
On March 13, 2014, the ITA and UBC held the first Maker Day with students in Sicamous. Over 80 youth took part in design thinking and a variety of hands-on trades activities. Check out the YouTube video of this event at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qfSG7yPJ0Y&feature=youtu.be.

Maker Day Tool Kit – Revised July 2014

Epublication:

To download a pdf of Maker DayToolKit (as of Mar.27/2014)

Thanks to excellent collaboration and support from Erin Johnson and her team at Industry Training Authority (ITA – http://www.itabc.ca/ ) and Nancy Darling and her team from the Women in Trades program at Okanagan College, the ILC hosted Maker Day 2013.

Educators, Ministry of Education folks, ITA folks all came together to design, tinker and create.  The following resources were development to help others create their own Maker Day events.  Use and enjoy!!!

If you downloaded this resource earlier – this is a new version as of July 7, 2014
Creative Commons License
Maker Day Tool Kit by Dr. Susan Crichton and Deb Carter, PhD (C) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

From the ePub

What is a Maker Day? (pp. 4-5)

1. Making a Case for Making (pp. 6-10)

2. Background to Design Thinking (pp. 11-13)

3. Annotated Reference List (pp. 14-17)

4. Globe and Mail: “Where did all our skilled workers go?” (pp. 18-19)

How to plan and host a Maker Day

5. Checklist for planning a Maker Day (pp.20-21)

6. Draft Agenda (p. 22-23)

7. Group Facilitators’ Roles and Responsibilities (pp. 24-29)

8. Designing a problem Sketch (pp. 30-33)

9. Problem Sketch (pp. 34-36)

What is needed to host a Maker Day?

10. Facilitator Guide (p. 37)

11. Facilitator Checklist (pp. 37-38)

12. Participant Guide (p. 39)

13. Design Thinking Resources (p. 39)

14. Reflection Panel (p. 40)

15. Participant Groups’ Kit Contents (p. 41)

16. Maker Day Tool Crib (p. 41)

Resources to Support Your Maker Day

17. Hatch: Maker Movement Manifesto (p. 43)

18. What Makes a Good Project? (p. 44)

19. Ice Breaker (p. 45) 

We did the low-tech social networking activity.  It worked well.  We invited participants to make their initial contributions during the registration process and before the event actually started.  We encouraged them to revisit the activity during the day to make additional connections.  Make sure to use paper that is more SQUARE than linear to encourage a range of connections.  unfortunately, we used a long piece of paper and the connections were harder to make.

Appendix

20. Required Materials (pp. 46-49)

Word documents are provided in #15 and #16 above.

Additional Resources

These resources (not in ePub or printed Maker Day Toolkit) have been gathered during multiple formal and informal discussions of Maker Day Toolkit

IDEO Human-Centred Design (HCD) Kit

Note: To download free resource (bottom left hand corner), you are asked to join  HCD Connect (free)

IDEO Design Thinking for Educators

From the website: This toolkit contains the process and methods of design along with the Designer’s Workbook, adapted specifically for the context of K-12 education.

Stanford d.school Wallet Project

Links on this page includes Gift Giving Project, the Wallet Project pdf and Design Process Mini Guide

Suggested by teachers in EDST 498O class during Summer Institute in Education 2014

Buck Institute for Education (BIE) Problem Based Learning (PBL)

 All about PBL including a Project Search curated by BiE. From the website: At the Buck Institute for Education (BIE), our highest priority is to help teachers prepare students for successful lives … As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, BIE creates, gathers, and shares high-quality PBL instructional practices and products and provides highly effective services to teachers, schools, and districts.

Catalyst for Science

From the website: Catalyst for Science provides an online collection of science-based resources primarily for BC teachers, and shares these resources with non-formal educators, parents and students … Example: Easy Squeasy Circuits