Sunday, 10/27
Educator Panel 1
Monday, 10/28
Research Panel
Educator Panel 2
“Scaling Up Making” Panel
Educator Panel 1
Christa Flores is the coordinator of the iLab for Making at the Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, California and teaches 5th and 6th grade Problem based Science in a classroom designed for analog and digital making. She will be sharing her three year process of blending the lines between teacher, researcher and designer in hopes of generating more interest in this more inquiry and design based approach to learning and making in the classroom. Christa has blogged and written articles about her experiences in the iLab and has presented her questions and observations about the link between progressive education and the Maker Movement at conferences. Christa graduated from the University of California San Diego with a degree in Biological Anthropology, has done graduate level work in primatology research through the New York Consortium of Evolutionary Primatology and obtained a masters in Secondary Science Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is passionate about making, and research and design in the PreK-8 learning environment.
Kenneth Y.T. Lim is a Research Scientist at the Office of Educational Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore. Prior to his appointment, he taught Geography and Social Studies in several schools in Singapore, as well as served as a Curriculum Designer in the Ministry of Education. His doctoral research was on adolescent spatial cognition, and his present research interests lie in maker movements and the affordances for learning of fictive worlds and immersive environments. His work is undergirded by a theory of learning known as disciplinary intuitions, for which he is editing a book to be published in 2014. At FabLearn 2013, Kenneth will share his experiences interacting with students at one school in Singapore, who have – of their own accord, and working within existing structures of the formal curriculum – planted the seeds of a student-driven maker culture around aeromodelling, through which they have been able to find opportunities to ground their classroom-based STEM learning in more authentic experiences.
Heather Allen Pang teaches 8th grade US history at Castilleja School in Palo Alto where she has worked since 1999. Heather has brought several projects to the history curriculum, including movie making and participation in National History Day. Since Castilleja built a FabLab, Heather has developed a project that brings together women’s history, ideas about historical memory, math, and making to culminate the year. She will be speaking about her students experiences constructing prototypes of their own proposed monuments to American women for the National Mall. Previously Heather has taught at UC Davis, Santa Rosa Junior College, and American River College. She also worked as an editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica’s web guide. In addition to her teaching duties, Heather is the coordinator for the Castilleja School Archives and is co-author of Castilleja: Celebrating a Century a school history produced to celebrate Castilleja’s Centennial.
Susanna Tesconi (PHD candidate UAB) is a Barcelona based researcher and educational designer. She collaborates with Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, Asturias, Spain and with several educational centers and institutions. Inspired by the interaction between kids and technology, she explores the integration of low technology and digital fabrication with the goal of engaging groups of young students and teachers in developing their own devices working together in a cooperative way and using invention skills to become creators rather than just users/customers. She will present the project Aulab, an education program at fabLAB Asturias, a project involving digital fabrication against early school dropout.
Lucía Arias is the Head of Education programs at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón. From 2002 to 2004, she collaborated as a teacher in a Dual Language Program in US in which she worked with immigrant students in risk. She has also collaborated with the non-profit organization Museums with No Frontiers; MWNF’s goal is to promote cooperation in the fields of cultural heritage, tourism and education. She has been working at LABoral since its opening in 2007, coordinating and producing education and divulgation activities and in charge of the education area since 2012. Aware of the huge potential of a production center as an educational tool, LABoral`s education program encourages encounters for theoretical reflection and practical application in the fields of technological art and industrial creation. In the case of the Early Drop out prevention program at fabLAB Asturias, we designed an educational experience that would change students’ relation with their everyday learning environment and also give their educators the opportunity to improve their methodologies with new tools and resources. At the conference, we will be explaining some of the students and teachers´ achievements and conclusions
Research Panel
Victor Lee is assistant professor at Utah State University and co-directs (with Deborah Fields) the newly established Computational Craft Lab and the VITAL Collaborative (http://vital.usu.edu). His research currently focuses on (1) designing and studying learning experiences that involve wearable technologies that obtain personalized data about physical activities in order to support deveopment of STEM understanding and (2) in understanding the development and educational implications of the Maker movement and the Quantified Self movement. Past research has involved study of K-12 science teaching and learning as well as curriculum development. At FABLEARN 2013, he will discus some early and in-progress collaborative work with Dr. Fields to design an interview that can help ascertain what students learn by participating in a semester long college course on craft technologies. Lee completed his doctorate in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University and has been previously honored with an NSF CAREER award and with the AERA Jan Hawkins Early Career Award. He and Dr. Fields are also actively recruiting prospective individuals for a new, fully funded four-year doctoral fellowship for someone interested in research and development in the area of digital fabrication and education.
Shirin Vossoughi received her PhD in Education from UCLA in 2011, and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the San Francisco Exploratorium and Stanford University. In this position, she leads a team of educators and researchers interested in studying the development of scientific dispositions through tinkering activities that blend STEM learning and the arts. She will be presenting on this research at FabLearn, focusing on the pedagogical design of equity-oriented tinkering environments. More broadly, her work centers on the anthropology of learning, equity and social change. Focal constructs include: apprenticeship; play and creativity; language and literacy; the genesis of collaboration and intellectual safety; the development of scientific, social analytic and artistic practices; and the nature of shifts in participation over time. Shirin currently teaches a course on culture, learning and poverty at Stanford. As an educator and 2nd generation Iranian immigrant, she is also personally invested in developing intellectually rich educational contexts for youth from immigrant and diasporic backgrounds.
Sean Justice is an Instructor and Doctoral Candidate in the Art and Art Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. In addition to teaching and advising students and faculty on the use of digital technologies in art education, Sean coordinates the Myers Media Art Studio, a digital fabrication studio that focuses on hybrid technologies such as 3D designing and printing, creative programming, animation, and photography, among others. His research looks at how teachers and schools learn (and learn to teach with) digital technologies. As an artist and art educator he wants to see contemporary technology as a material for play, much like finger paint, or clay. He makes stuff with photography, language, and the Internet. He’s interested in culture, history, art, and the social and educational implications of new and emerging technologies. For a number of years he was a commercial photographer focused on family lifestyle imagery for advertising, but now he concentrates on making art, teaching and research. His teaching practice includes courses in photography and photographic technology, fine art printing, creative coding, and academic writing. His current art practice spans still and moving lens-based and lens-less pictures, interactive code poetry, and jokes. He loves conversation.
Janet Read is a Professor in Child Computer Interaction and is the Director of the Child Computer Interaction (ChiCI) research group at UCLan. Internationally known for her work on designing and evaluating technologies for children as well as for her work on text input with digital ink, Prof. Read manages research grants and research students, teaches research methods and advanced HCI and contributes to SET activities in local schools. Prof. Read joined the University in the late 1990s having previously worked as a Maths teacher in the secondary school sector. With her change of career she undertook a PhD in handwriting recognition, children and the writing process, and this led her into the research areas that she now populates; namely interaction design for children and general HCI in the area of writing and novel technologies. Her work with children as users of interactive technology helped to define a new research field and she has authored over 70 articles in the area of child computer interaction. She is chair of the International IFIP TC13 SIG on Interaction Design and Children and the Child Computer Interaction Community Chair for the prestigious ACM CHI Conference series. She has co-authored a key Elsevier text on Evaluating Children’s Technologies.
Educator Panel 2
Juliet Wanyiri is an electrical engineer part of the team behind BRCK. She is one of the founding members of Nairobi FabLab Robotics Outreach Program which she has lead collaboratively for the last four years. She is also an alumni of the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) 2012- an annual design and innovation summit organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) D-Lab. Juliet is passionate about leveraging both engineering and design to collaboratively build solutions for emerging markets. Juliet will be discussing the impact teaching robotics and engineering, though hands-on learning programs in slum areas, has on increasing the uptake of science and technology by less privileged teenagers.
Aaron Vanderwerff is currently the Creativity Lab Coordinator and Science Coach at Lighthouse Community Charter School, a K-12 public charter school in Oakland, California. He is passionate about engaging students in making and independent inquiry in the classroom, particularly students underrepresented in STEM fields. His presentation will discuss the different models used to integrate Making into multiple aspects of Lighthouse’s K-12 program. Over the past three years, Vanderwerff has integrated making into an elective class that culminates in students exhibiting their independent projects at the Maker Faire. This summer, he was named PG&E Inspirational Teacher of the Year in recognition of his work, particularly related to alternative energy. Vanderwerff has taught high school science in the Bay Area for the past ten years. At Lighthouse, he has taught Chemistry, Physics, and Robotics. Before coming to Lighthouse, he taught ninth-grade physics, was science department chair, and coordinated ninth-grade interventions at San Lorenzo High School; and taught math in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and a MA in Education from Mills College. Vanderwerff lives in Oakland with his wife and four-year-old daughter, who loves to make things.
Nalin Tutiyaphuengprasert (Tukta) is the current Senior Vice Provost and the head of research development and training department of Darunsikkhalai School for Innovative Learning (DSIL) of King Monkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication (Cinematography and Photography) from Thammasat University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration for Executive (EMBA) from Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University. She has been on the team that established DSIL since its opening in 2001. She is involved with the current educational reform in Thailand, helping to develop the school model that is aimed to promote project based and learner-centered learning philosophy, which started with the learning philosophy of Constructionism. As a project manager of the FabLab@School program at DSIL, she is looking forward to building a network with DSIL and other schools under the FabLab@School projects, which supports students from different parts of the world to learn and share learning experiences together.
Monika Mayer is the director of Ingenuity Programs at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science where she oversees the development and implementation of design-based programs and exhibits for visitors of all ages. She also manages the Ingenuity Lab, a science and engineering design tinkering studio that seeks to inspire the next generation of innovators. Monika brings an extensive background of more than 20 years of designing, directing and teaching educational programs for K-12 with a focus on creating immersive learning environments that foster collaboration, creativity and deep engagement. Her interests include design thinking, engineering education, DIY digital technologies, and the maker movement.
Emilyn Green was on track to becoming a high school math teacher when the Community Science Workshops offered an opportunity to do fun, wacky, hands-on informal STEM education in a rough-and tumble environment. Hired in 2008 as Interim Director of the Watsonville ESW, she has been teaching in, and helping to coordinate, various programs at the organization ever since. She developed the Mobile Science Workshop program in 2010, bringing hands-on science and making activities to low-income housing projects around Watsonville, and in 2012 helped the Watsonville ESW to transition between directors. Emilyn is now the Coordinator of the Community Science Workshop Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and strengthening Community Science Workshops throughout California, including sites in Watsonville, Fresno, San Francisco, and the Salinas valley. In the past three years at the CSW Network, she has worked to increase funding for the CSWs, to develop long-term strategies for maintaining strong programs, and to document the hands-on and making curricula in use at the CSWs.
“Scaling Up Making” Panel
Paloma Garcia-Lopez is the Executive Director of the Maker Education Initiative. She has more than ten years’ experience as a nonprofit manager and development officer. She has a master’s degree in Education and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Stanford University. In 2002, she coauthored, Learning to Teach For Social Justice, Teachers College Press-Columbia University, along with Dr. Linda Darling- Hammond of Stanford University, and Jennifer French. Paloma Garcia-Lopez comes to Maker Education Initiative after serving as director of the Posse Foundation site in Washington, D.C., a national college access and leadership development organization recognized by President Obama and the Catalogue for Philanthropy. Prior to working at Posse, Paloma consulted nonprofit organizations and schools to better meet the needs of special populations. Paloma started her career as a high school social studies teacher in the Silicon Valley, and entered the nonprofit world as a Development Officer and Associate Executive Director of Future Leaders of America, Inc., a Latino youth leadership organization in 2002.
Sherry Hsi is the Research Director for the Center for Technology Innovation at the University of California’s Lawrence Hall of Science. Working at the intersection of learning, design, and technology, her work focuses on how to effectively design contexts for science learning, facilitation, and deeper reflection mediated by new media, online environments, and networked technologies. At the Hall, she oversees the technology research program, co-leads several NSF-funded projects including Howtosmile.org, an online library of inquiry-based activities; and the TechHive, a new design studio and teen program for engineering design and new media arts for students ages 14-17. Dr. Hsi is on the editorial board for the Journal of the Learning Sciences and the International Journal of Science Education. Dr. Hsi received her B.S. and M.S. in engineering design, and a Ph.D. in science education at U.C. Berkeley. With Professor Marcia C. Linn, she is the co-author of Computers, Teachers, Peers: Science Learning Partners
Non-presenting Co-authors:
Yuen Ming De (Co-author with Kenneth Y.T. Lim) is a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. He is presently pursuing his Masters from the Department of Philosophy, at the National University of Singapore. He is interested in exploring the thoughts of early Chinese philosophers, specifically thinkers from pre-Qin period, commonly referred to retrospectively as Confucians, Mohists, Daoist and Yangists. Ming De holds the assumption that “ethical thinking” existed in early China, and that the early thinkers put forth and defended their individual theories on the ideal life. His first set of concerns is understanding how the early philosophisers defended their theories, and what arguments or persuasive methods were employed. His second set of concerns is to investigate and elaborate on the underlying assumptions that implicate the differences and disagreements between these various thinkers.
Deborah Fields (Co-author with Victor Lee) is an assistant professor of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University whose research focuses on children, teens, and young adults in virtual worlds, social networking sites, and tech clubs. She earned a doctorate Psychological Studies in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Deborah loves to make things – from knitted sweaters to animated music videos to electronic, blinking garments. Thus she is especially interested in things kids make with digital media and the social sharing that surrounds it. She is always on the lookout for hybrid technologies like electronic textiles that disrupt people’s stereotypes about who can create what with computers and that value local, everyday knowledge that people have from families, friends, and hobbies. Her new book, Connected Play: Tween Life in a Virtual World has just been released with MIT Press.
Meg Escudé (Co-author with Shirin Vossoughi) directs the Afterschool Tinkering program at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. There she works to blend STEM and art with youth development and equity-driven pedagogical practices. Meg received a BFA in photography from CCAC, Oakland before moving to her father’s native Argentina in 2004. While traveling from Patagonia to Brazil with an Italian-Brazilian circus, she completed a photo essay about that nomadic. Once settled in Córdoba, Argentina, she became one of four photographers conducting a photography workshop in the province´s women´s prison. The workshop was given for four consecutive years and the prisoners´ work has been published 16 countries and 12 languages. Back in the US since 2008, she continued teaching in out-of-school settings with Southern Exposure including a weekly art workshop at San Francisco Juvenile Hall in partnership with The Beat Within. She has a parallel life in audio as one of the co-directors of the Mission District’s community radio station, Mutiny Radio.
Marta Cabral (Co-author with Sean Justice) has taught for over 15 years—in America, Europe, and Asia; including classroom teaching, coordinating early childhood programs in art for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners, and consulting and training art educators. Her wide experience enables her to relate to teachers in diverse contexts and from different grade levels. At Columbia University’s Teachers College, Marta teaches and supervises future educators (both preK-12 art teachers and general education early childhood teachers), teaches classes in the Arts and Humanities Department, and provides professional development workshops that integrate art into the core curriculum. Marta holds Masters degrees in Art and Art Education from Teachers College Columbia University, and in Adult Education from the University of Lisbon. She also holds other degrees in Early Childhood, Elementary Education, and in Adult Education. Marta is currently a doctoral student at Teachers College in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program, grounded in the Art and Art Education Program and the Early Childhood Education Program. As a research fellow, she conducts research and runs the Art Program at the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center at Teachers College Columbia University. Marta regularly presents her work at national and international conferences and publishes in the field of education.
Roy Ombatti (Co-author with Juliet Wanyiri) is in his final year of his undergraduate degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Nairobi. He has a passion for technology and development with a particular interest in helping children in need. He is a critical thinker and social innovator looking for new challenges in all aspects of life. As an avid sportsman with a great love for rugby, he currently plays for the varsity side club, Mean Machine RFC. As an avenue to reach out to the less fortunate, he co-founded and lead the Nairobi FabLab Robotics Outreach Program which avails university students with a platform to teach young kids about science, basic engineering and technology as well as facilitates a platform for mentorship. This program has been running for over four years now with a special focus on the less privileged female child. They will be presenting a Kenyan perspective on our experiences and challenges as well as all we have learnt through the program.