The group of 2-10 year olds who visited the Lesley Makerspace this past Friday had a big task at hand: to teach their parents, professors in the Lesley Language and Literacy Division, how to create their own eBook. Through this special gathering, we witnessed the unique flow of teaching and learning between child and parent.
Amanda Wager, Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education, was eager to share the makerspace with her Sheltered English Immersion class. The makerspace team developed an evening designed to immerse students in language and literacy through making.
Three third and fourth grade students from the Kennedy-Longfellow School spent a Saturday in early June participating in the Boston Public Schools (BPS) Robotics Olympics. Not only were they amongst the youngest students there, they were also honored to be the only team representing the Cambridge Public Schools.
Continue reading K-Lo team competes at BPS Robotics Olympics
On May 21st, over 150 Cambridge Public Schools (CPS) families and students converged in the Kennedy-Longfellow School (K-Lo) dining hall for an evening of creative robotics, prizes, and pizza. K-Lo hosted the first ever CPSD “Robotics Playground” with the idea of sharing out classroom robotics and engineering curricula. K-Lo was in good company — with teacher and student teams from the high school, Amigos, Fletcher Maynard, King Open, Tobin, 8 middle school volunteers from Putnam Ave, and Ingrid Gustafson, who represents all of the middle schools.
We had a host of special guests, including Superintendent Young and Assistant Superintend MaryAnn MacDonald, two school committee representatives, Fred Fantini and Patty Nolan, Terry Gist, President of the Cambridge Education Association, a representative from the City Councilor Nadeem Mazen’s office, reps from the Best Practices group in the STEAM initiative being coordinated through City Hall, a representative from the Cambridge Expanded Learning STEAM Network, the director of the Elementary Education program at Lesley University, and 4 parent representatives from the KLO Site Council.
The Cambridge Expanded Learning (EL) STEAM Network hosted an evening full of rockets, robots and race cars; providing an open space for students of all ages to engage in maker-minded activities. Families and students gathered at the Peabody School on Wednesday, June 17th to enjoy hands-on activity tables including: making their own “edible” race car, an interactive splatter paint pendulum, creating music with the MaKey MaKey, and pressure powered rockets.
July, 2015
 |
|
| Makerspace Math | |
Sue Cusack, Keynote
The Maker Movement and Math Practice Standards – A Perfect Fit
The buzz was palpable as Lesley faculty, staff, community members and friends wove their way through the newly launched makerspace. Housed on the second floor of University Hall at Lesley, the makerspace features a wide variety of teaching and learning tools rooted in the maker mentality.
Continue reading Lesley makerspace launch ignites hearts & minds
Last Monday, one of Amy Moylan’s first grade parents came into her classroom to share her daughter’s excitement that “her teacher is going to robot school” and that the little girl couldn’t wait to use the robots in her classroom. Ms. Moylan, who teaches at the Amigos School, was one of 20 Cambridge Public School District (CPSD) teachers and specialists taking the “Make It Take It” robotics course facilitated by the Lesley team and CPSD Instructional Technology Specialist guru Ingrid Gustafson. The idea behind the class is that each Cambridge school was offered robotics kits with the intent of bringing robotics and programming into the classrooms. The workshop was taught in the Kennedy-Longfellow School (K-Lo) makerspace over the course of several days.
Above: a 5th grade coder mentors a 1st grader using Scratch Jr.
A group of nine Kennedy-Longfellow students spent a weekend in November coding as part of the first ever Boston-based “Girls Who Make Games” workshops at MIT. These students immersed themselves in game design, art, and programming using software called Stencyl.
Not only did they get to network with other local girls who code, they were mentored by local professional developers. We sat down with these students and asked them to share their thoughts on what makes them tick as programmers at K-Lo, and beyond. To view the video, click here.
This fall, K-Lo launched robotics in the primary grades in partnership with Tufts University’s Eliot Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. The school piloted the KIBO, a robot designed with support from the National Science Foundation, with one kindergarten, first, and second grade class. During the seven week project, students learned about programming, sensors, and the engineering design process with ties to readers theatre in the kindergarten, and earth science in the first and second grades.
The Lesley team will continue to support the other primary classrooms in learning about the KIBO and how it can be used to deepen understanding and engagement in other curricular activities. To see more about the KIBO, you can see the company discussion of this innovation, and stay tuned to hear more from K-Lo students about their own experiences with robotics!
Check out a couple videos of students presenting their final projects: