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Makerspace entrepreneur challenge at The Commons

Pete Reynolds Blog, Up-Cycling , , ,

LD partners with Betty Brinn Children’s Museum.

In other metro areas around the country, non-profit organizations have formed to address this challenge. They solicit donations of excess materials from area firms and make them available to educators at low cost.  Better known among these are RAFT, with locations in California and Colorado, and the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse.

Teachers attending our monthly Collab Labs expressed concerns about the cost of materials. That got us wondering what options we have in Milwaukee for an organization doing something similar.  We brought the idea for a corporate challenge to The Commons (who provides space for our Collab Labs in Ward 4 and helps facilitate our break out groups). They agreed that this would make an interesting challenge for students. So earlier this month we got the green light to pursue that with a team in this semester’s cohort.

We partnered with Betty Brinn Children’s Museum to formulate this challenge over the past weeks.  We are challenging a team to create a pitch for a sustainable startup to provide surplus materials to the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum’s Maker Initiative as well as area school’s maker programs. We spent Sunday afternoon at Ward 4 with Carrie Wettstein and Mike Cook from Betty Brinn to introduce our challenge and meet prospective team members.

The project will kick off on the 21st when team rosters are announced.  Our team will work with Mike Cook and the makers at Betty Brinn to understand their needs. Joost and I will serve as the team’s coaches through the process. We’ll help connect them with area schools creating or running makerspaces/FabLabs so they can understand the K12 perspective as well.

We are thrilled to have the opportunity (Thanks, Joe!) and look forward to the work.  We’ll keep you posted on the team’s progress and opportunities to see what they come up with.

Makerspace/FabLab Workgroup: Discussion Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Workshops ,

The first meeting of our makerspace/FabLab workgroup was held Tuesday evening at Ward 4.
We did a quick review of concerns, captured a vision of where we would like to head in a lean canvas, and talked through some ideas for how we might help move things along.

Issues/Concerns

  • Physical space
  • Culture
  • Marketing the school
  • Process/problem solving
  • Impact is longer term
  • How do we sell [the idea of a maker space] to the community
  • Lack of tech-ed teachers
  • Distributed ownership of space– e.g. how do we get teachers to think of it as “theirs”
  • Who is coordinator/does this need to be an FTE?
  • Leadership support
  • Time commitment to coordinate use of space
  • Defining a clear purpose for the space
  • How to make the transition [from the current model of teaching]
  • How to capture evidence of learning
  • Resources — materials and equipment
  • Project Ideas
  • Lack of professional development opportunities [for teachers to become comfortable with space/projects.
  • Ability to respond to needs of business community
  • Community Access

 

School of the 21st Century

Problem

  • I don’t understand why school needs to change
  • I am afraid our current approach does not prepare kids for life in the future
  • My child is bored at school
  • I’m not seeing the return on my tax investment
  • I don’t know how to create a schedule to accommodate this change
 Solution

  • Clear vision
  • Curriculum
  • Makerspace/FabLab
  • Staff aligned with goals of school
 Value Proposition
Our solution enhances student engagement which results in [graduates] that are highly functional.

 

We develop our students to solve problems no one has considered yet.

 Unique Advantage

  • Connection to M7
  • Willingness to collaborate
  • Strong art & tech programs
  • Leadership
  • Unique DNA (culture)
 Customer

  • Students
  • Community
  • Business
  • Parents
  • Tax payer
  • School Leaders
Metrics

  • # people surveyed
  • Engagement measure
  • Program engagement
 Channels

  • Social media
  • Website
  • Parent night/events
  • Business/Community meeting
  • Showcase
  • Traditional Media
Cost Structure

  • Equipment
  • Remodeling
  • Teacher re-training
  • Staffing
  • Materials
  • Collaboration
 Value/Impact

  • Quality graduates
  • Engaged students
  • Improving community
  • Teacher fulfillment

 

Workgroup ideas to move towards vision

Makerspace/FabLab tours

  • After school
  • Show what I’m working on
  • Chance to ask for help/ideas
  • Visits to makerspaces in both schools and outside organizations

 

On-line Tools for Sharing

  • Ask for help
  • Share project ideas (Moodle)
  • Slack

 

Dream Lab Workshop

  • Weekend or during summer
  • Design your dream makerspace/FabLab

 

Build Curriculum Workshop

  • Summer bootcamp
  • Work as team to design makerspace/FabLab curriculum/projects
  • 2-4 days with coaching

New Berlin High School: Entrepreneurial Skills Accelerator

Pete Reynolds Blog, Celebrate , ,

The School District of New Berlin has partnered with UWM’s Lubar Center for Entrepreneurship and our friends at The Commons to give high school students a taste of the world of start-ups. Through a series of pop-up classes and guidance from outside mentors Students teams will take on challenges in one of four areas: Technology, Healthcare, Engineering, and Global.

You can view the full press release here:
iAIDLaunch

and coverage of the story in The Patch here:
http://patch.com/wisconsin/waukesha/collaboration-leads-high-school-entrepreneurial-skills-accelerator-new-berlin

Shorewood Visual Journalism Capstone Projects – wow!

Pete Reynolds Blog, Celebrate ,

visual-journalismA great approach drives engagement and high quality work.

Tuesday night Joost and I attended the presentation of capstone projects by Shorewood High School’s Visual Journalism class. We were blown away by the quality of work.

The class developed by Mike Halloran and Jeff Zimpel “combines the principles and practices of graphic design with those of modern broadcast and print journalism. Students in this class explored the notion of Face Value in their community and expressed their findings telling these stories through video, audio, and online media.”

What we saw and heard on display Tuesday exemplifies an approach to learning and engagement we’d like to see Milwaukee embrace.

  • A school administration that asked the teachers what they needed to make the class a success.
  • The freedom to send kids out into the community to understand and collect stories from people from very different walks of life.
  • Near-peer mentorship provided by MIAD students.
  • Student defined, collaborative projects which engendered such a sense of ownership and passion that students were surprised by how much energy and focus they brought to the work.
  • Presentation of high quality work to the wider community which was a delight to hear and see.

Hats off to Mike Halloran and Jeff Zimpel and their students!

The Projects

You can see the results of their here:

Find your Cloud

How do culturally isolated individuals construct a sense of self identity and purpose?

http://findyourcloud.wixsite.com/findyourcloud

 

Generational Stories

Told from a personal perspective, these stories feature three different people from three different generations.
3 Tales from 3 Generations

 

Changemakers

How does a changemaker see the world? How does that differ from the norm?

http://paigesimenz.wixsite.com/changemakers

 

America’s Vanishing Compass

A look at declining enrollment in Boy Scouts

https://americasvanishingcompass.tumblr.com/

 

One Mountain One Story

“One Mountain One Story was created because of our passion for climbing and love of the outdoors. The film documents the influence and impact climbing rock, ice, and mountains has had on a teacher from the flat lands of urban Wisconsin.”

https://jacobburnham10.wixsite.com/onemountainonestory

South Milwaukee’s Fab Lab featured on Lake Effect

Pete Reynolds Blog, Celebrate , ,

Monday’s Lake Effect show on WUWM features a piece on South Milwaukee High School’s Fab Lab. We connected Rachel Morello, WUWM’s education reporter with Erik Wolbach, who’s been the driving force behind the effort as part of our work to raise the visibility of the innovative work Milwaukee area schools are doing.

You can listen to the story here:  http://wuwm.com/post/high-school-students-learn-creating-south-milwaukee-fab-lab

Doing great work at your school you’d like others to know about? Let us know and we’ll help get the word out.

Collab Lab 6: Notes from our breakout groups

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops , ,

Thanks all for a great discussion last night at Collab Lab 6 (actually, a bunch of great discussions). To recap, we framed the conversation around three questions:

  • What can your makerspace/FabLab offer teachers?
  • What problems does this solve for them?
  • What keeps them from taking advantage of it/how might those issues be addressed?

Here’s what we noted:

What can your makerspace/FabLab offer teachers?

Group 1

  • “Blood in the mouth” how do you get teachers really excited about the possibilities?
  • Take content & make it physical
  • Get students to go beyond their textbook
  • Learning to play → playing to learn
  • Relevance, rigor, application
  • Practicing Failure
  • Space designed to fit needs
  • Can become epicenter – pivotal point
  • Authentic, relevant problems to solve
  • Bring content back to experiment

Group 2

  • Additional capacities to help kids express ideas
  • Expands the pallet of tools & opportunities for teachers
  • Limited understanding of what it is
    • Ideas → ideas II → ideas III
  • Safe place
  • Capture & share stories of success
  • Show different ways of learning
  • Develop and share culture of makerspace
  • Set up to enable students pursuing passion → no mandatory activities

Group 3

  • Tools for:
    • artists to make art;
    • business classes to make a product
    • community service projects to make something useful
  • Hands on professional development for PBL
  • Support for elementary school
    • South Milwaukee: elementary school students working on symmetry design snowflakes.  Students are then paired with high schooler who helps them 3D print their designs.
  • Ad hoc opportunities to put something together
  • Attractive for students
  • It acts as a “send kids here to do that” space/ a place that allows groups of students to take on work that isn’t done easily inside a classroom
  • Provides crafting opportunities for teachers (who are then better able to generate ideas for how they could leverage the space for student projects)
  • Real world relevance
  • Provides a platform to do different (from traditional lessons) things
  • Provides a chance for students and teachers to bump into something new/exposure
  • Helps produce a change in mindset/change of pace
  • Provides a way to engage kids in a different way
  • Provides opportunities for kids to interact with students that would interact with elsewhere in the school
  • Provides application/support to teachers
  • Is able to draw funding and resources to the school
  • Provides flexible space
  • Becomes the place to address 21st century skills development
  • Makerspace lead handles prep for projects (so teachers do not)
  • The equipment is maintained and ready to go
  • It a fun space
  • It produces engaged kids

What problems does that solve for them?

Group 1

  • Amature meets expert
    • Promotes mentorship
  • Redefines learning process
    • Who are the learning for?
    • Learning how to learn

Group 2

  • A way to develop empathy
  • Instill a mentality/culture
    • Ideation
    • inquiry
  • Invest in professional development
    • Teachers are professionals
    • Lifelong learning
  • Incrementalism

Group 3

  • A way to meet requirements for PBL/development of 21st century skills
  • A new point of entry/cheap way to start with PBL
  • Allows teachers to break out of silos
  • Can attract outside funding which reduces pressure from budget constraints
  • Costs of space can be shared across multiple departments
  • Remove overhead from teachers (makerspace lead puts together projects and materials)
  • Teachers aren’t sure what they could do, makerspace lead can help frame projects
  • Shows teachers a path into PBL
  • The teacher does not need to know everything– they can rely on tech staff/students to help with equipment
  • It’s a way into learning (as opposed to educating)
  • Test scores improve among kids engaged in problem solving
  • Produces engaged students
  • Provides a change of pace
  • Provides an opportunity to model creative thinking/problem solving
  • Provides both teachers and students a safe place to fail
  • Teaches teachers 21st skills
  • Having a tech lead that can set up projects reduces stress/risk for teachers that want to take on PBL

What keeps them from taking advantage of it?

Group 1

  • Must provide learning outcomes/goals/assessment
  • Needs continued reward
  • Broken 3D printers
  • Who started it???
  • Incorrect definition of “maker”
    • Creative Space
    • Genius Bar
  • Not knowing what can be done
  • Fear
  • Needs a facilitator
  • Permission from administration
  • Parents
What would help address these issues?
  • After school volunteer club for teachers
  • Customer discovery
  • Sleeper agents → referrals
  • Having an Idea person that helps connect teachers (Librarian)

Group 2

  • Competing priorities
  • Lack of culture to stimulate risk taking
    • What is “risk” taking
  • Lack of technical skills
  • Early vs late adopters
  • Lack of development of “grit”
  • System promotes end-point learning
  • Focus on experiences, not on “things”
  • If you can see it you will want to use it
  • Absence of design drivers (shared)
    • Visitation later in the design experience.

 

Group 3

  • Teachers need hands on professional development
  • Feels risky
  • Lack of control
  • Funding
  • ROI on time
  • Teachers aren’t sure what they can give up to fit something new into schedule
  • Change is seen as a threat
  • Change is seen as “We’ve seen new ideas before, this too will go just like the rest of them”
  • Focus on equipment
  • Mentors don’t know how to work with kids — kids have kid issues
  • Focus on learning to use the equipment (technical skills) rather than an opportunity to learn in a different way
  • Self selection to participate is missing from school makerspaces, which makes it more difficult for the space to become self regulating
  • I already have my lesson plans set and they work for me.  Why would I want to give that up to try something new.

 

What would help address these issues?
  • Visibility of student work
  • Visible credit given to donors of equipment (so it is not viewed as cutting into the school budget)
  • Shift resources from equipment acquisition to developing the mindset of teachers
  • Staffing — endowed mentor/tech position
  • Mentors — Lead off with small doses so they have time to figure how to work with kids
  • Figure out how to allow users of the space to come and go on an ad hoc basis (after school?)
  • Shift the mindset of funders from equipment to professional development

Makerspace/FabLabs Workgroup

Pete Reynolds Blog

We’re planning a working session for the end of January to talk through where collaborative efforts could be deployed to make it easier for schools to achieve the goals they have set out in developing their Makerspace/FabLab. Have some thoughts on where working with others would help most, or hurdles that could be more easily overcome with a group effort? We’d love to have you join us.


    During the school dayA weekday eveningA Saturday morningA Saturday afternoonA Sunday morning

    Collab Lab 5 Recap

    Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops

    Thanks!

    collablab5A warm thank you to the 20+ folks who braved the cold to join us last Thursday for a rather passionate discussion around engaging with community partners. As always, it is great to see the level of enthusiasm and thought attendees bring to the room and that so many of you were able to make new connections.

     

    Notes from the session:

    Why do you want to partner?
    Schools

    Real world validation of content and essential skills
    Students get authentic experience
    To teach what students can’t get from Google
    Showcase what K12 does
    Create a spark
    Develop career related skills
    Foster a symbiotic relationship with community
    Change perception within the community
    Establish an ongoing relationship
    Stop brain drain from Milwaukee
    Develop awareness of career options
    Learning gets replaced
    Offer a diverse set of experiences
    Facilitate learning adaptability
    Reconnect teachers with industry

    Industry/Organizations

    Synergy-community-establish makerspace community of practice
    Avoid training recruiting costs
    Offer real world problems to students
    Offer real world validation of kids’ work
    Stimulate re-thinking education

    What stands in your way?

    Timeline perspective of business
    Next quarter job needs
    Focus is too narrow – What is success measurement
    Focus on “doing” not “thinking”
    Legislation – political views
    School board control
    Parent perception of learning
    Knowledge of how to build relationships as a teacher
    Constraints on teacher time/skills

    How will you move forward?

    Sharing – Community
    Connect
    Open your mindset
    How do you redefine “Ready”
    Begin in your own social circle
    Building relationships
    Ask “the customer”
    Learning how to “let go”
    Create showcase events for community
    Have a plan for involvement
    Allow them to help you with the plan

    Pewaukee’s Insight program featured on WUWM’s Lake Effect

    Pete Reynolds Blog, Celebrate , ,

    This morning’s Lake Effect show on WUWM features a piece on Pewaukee High School’s Insight program. We connected Rachel Morello, WUWM’s education reporter with JJ Hesche, who runs the Insight program as part of our efforts to raise the visibility of the innovative work Milwaukee area schools are doing.

    You can listen to WUWM’s story here: http://wuwm.com/post/wednesday-lake-effect-suicide-awareness-insight-course-alices-tea-party-exhibit . The piece on Pewaukee starts at 16:00.

    Doing great work at your school you’d like others to know about? Let us know and we’ll help get the word out.

    Collab Lab 4 Report

    Joost Allard Blog, Collab Labs

    Excited Teachers

    We hosted over 30 excited education professionals from 10 Milwaukee area districts to connect during our fourth Collab Lab at Ward 4.

    We invited these teachers to discuss whether and how their school districts create space to innovate on existing teaching/learning approaches.

     

    Collab Lab Purpose

    Milwaukee is missing a vibrant teacher community that stimulates and engages teachers in exploring ‘what’s possible’ to continue to evolve schools to prepare students for 21st century life and work. We’re doing something about that and the starting point is getting those in education to share and hear what works.

    We hear that these gatherings are valued for several reasons:

    • Provides a chance for community building among innovation-hungry teachers
    • Provides an opportunity to develop a stronger innovation-oriented mindset and ‘can-do’ attitude
    • Offers participants a tangible, practical, start-this-tomorrow process for doing innovation in their schools

    What was the challenge?

    We thought we needed to give attendees an opportunity to learn from each other how they are finding ways to start innovating. And if those initiatives are not happening, what are teachers indicating that is standing in the way of that. We asked them to reflect on three simple questions:

    • What is your big innovation dream (What gets you excited in this regard)?
    • What are the things currently standing in your way?
    • How can you start anyway?

    To bring in some diverse perspectives on how professionals in other settings approach the challenge of innovation, we invited the following individuals:

    It turns out that many have the same challenge: It is easy to come up with 10 – 20 reasons why your project could fail, or not even get off the ground. It is much more difficult to imagine (and think through) how you could get started anyway.

    The challenge seems to be 2-fold: anticipation of not getting approval and inability to break the idea down into (much) smaller pieces that could get done ‘under the radar’.

    The numbers

    We assembled 30+ curious education professionals (teachers, administrators and others) for this second discussion evening of the 2016-2017 season. About 40 % of our attendees returned after a previous Collab Lab, the remainder were curious after speaking with colleagues that had attended.

    This is a unique opportunity for those teachers itching for an opportunity to connect with others in the Milwaukee area to share and learn what colleagues are doing.

    The districts and organizations represented in Collab Lab 4.

    Chart of attendance at CL 4 eventchart of attendee categories for CL4

     

    What’s next?

    We are hosting 5 more opportunities to connect with others and build new ties with likeminded teachers this school year. The next opportunity to share what you are up to, or what your dream innovation could look like, is on December 15. We’ll be especially focused on why (and why not) schools could embrace building closer relationships with both local companies as well as non-profits with a mission in education and youth.

    For a full schedule for this season and topic, please refer to our Connecting Calendar page.

    Curious about the ‘What’s next?’

    Once you and your colleagues have experienced the engagement of people attending our Collab Lab, you may want to see if a project is feasible at your school or district.

    Learn Deep provides coaching and professional development for teachers excited about tackling their own innovation project. Through our facilitation of the project, we introduce the latest processes used by startups and corporate innovation teams, based on systems thinking and design approaches. These focus on problem identification and solution development in a fast, incremental manner. Initiatives using this approach are much lower cost and lower risk, while methodically collecting evidence to obtain buying for scaling projects for a larger audience.

    2024-25 Collab Labs

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