The best makerspace

This is a report from one of the participants at a two-day Invent To Learn workshop in Alberta, Canada…

“Last week ETCATA hosted an Invent to Learn workshop with Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez. This experience provided Alberta educators with two full days of learning about making, tinkering and engineering in the classroom. Attendees were all provided with a copy of their book, Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. It is an excellent read filled with resources. I  cannot recommend it enough for those interested in MakerEd.

If you were not able to attend you may be interested in checking out the collaborative notes started and shared by Janet Bell.  They contain resources from Gary and Sylvia as well as some bonus material provided by other note taking collaborators. Sharing is caring!

IMG_3642Day one was focused on learning and ended with some time to check out different materials and tools. I chose to work with the wearable tech materials. I have been trying to get a light up bracelet to work with no luck so I was determined to try again and this time I was able to get it to light up! After some tips from Sylvia I realized I needed to wrap the conductive thread quite a few times, very tightly at the connection points.

Hands down, my favourite part of the workshop was being immersed in a maker challenge. Our challenge was simple: make a bird – if it sings and dances, great. We were given a hummingbird robotics kit, access to a bunch of materials, shown a clip from the Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room and put in small groups of 4-5 people.”

Read more about this workshop and the fun Tiki Bird challenge!