FETC Featured Sessions and Workshops – Orlando

Learn how to design powerful hands-on project-based experiences in the classroom for your students. Explore the practical aspects of project design and deep dive into project based learning concepts. You will learn about new research on assessment for projects and real classroom practices with students using modern technology and materials. Learn how to design engaging prompts with helpful (but not TOO helpful) scaffolding and build lessons that create curious learners. Discover how to manage the project process when students are using cutting edge technology integrated with iterative design. You will learn the methods and discover the strategies must useful for implementing project based learning immediately. Additionally, in this workshop, you will see how leadership can support this shift in classroom practice and collaboration can inspire global connections. Experience the power of technology embedded pedagogy! BYOD. Beginners welcome.

Get started with “making” in the classroom! Join the author of Invent To Learn to discover the steps for successful making at your school. This hands-on workshop will showcase the power of making, tinkering, and engineering. Explore learning by doing with a wide range of new materials and technologies that support all content subjects. Experience the use of design thinking, genius hour, PBL, and other classroom frameworks that support hands-on, minds-on learning for all grade levels. Discover how making asks the maker to create something outside of themselves that expresses their own thoughts and ideas. See how the technological game-changers of 3D printing and computer science require and fuel transformations in the learning environment. Gain knowledge of the options and ideas for the best starter purchases, makerspace design, and where to find free and low cost supplies. BYOD. Beginners Welcome.

Are there ways that work to interest more girls in STEM, and keep them interested? This session will explore research, resources, and best practices to involve girls of all ages in STEM. Research shows that girls remain interested in STEM activities that are real and relevant, yet teachers feel that they are both underprepared and discouraged by leadership to deliver this kind of curriculum. Administrators, however, report that they support and encourage these activities. Where is the disconnect? What is reality and how is it affecting students? What is really happening in classrooms despite the rhetoric of STEM/STEAM? Participants will learn about the potential to bring new tools and technology to K-12 classrooms to support hands-on learning across all grades and curriculum – plus areas that are of particular interest to girls, such as inventions that help people, sewable electronics, e-textiles, bio-materials, citizen science, and community projects. Hands-on projects and tools can engage girls (and all learners) in STEM activities that matter. We will explore how the collaborative, tinkering nature of global revolutions like the maker movement, open source, and project-based learning dovetails with girls ability to work collaboratively and in a connected way. Creating a culture and climate of inclusion and equity, goes well beyond the lessons in a classroom or buying the right tools and technology. Culture, both in schools and organizations, must be co-created and supported in multiple ways and over the long term. It is not just a once a year training, or special opportunities for girls.

The Maker Movement is a revolutionary global collaboration of people learning to solve problems with modern tools and technology. Adults and children are combining new technologies and timeless craft traditions to create exciting projects and control their world. The implications are profound for schools and districts concerned with engaging students, maintaining relevance, and preparing children to solve problems unanticipated by the curriculum. The technological game-changers of 3D printing, physical computing and computer science require and fuel transformations in the learning environment. K-12 educators can adapt the powerful technology and “can do” maker ethos to revitalize learner-centered teaching and learning in all subject areas.