Let’s Work Together to Make Young Makers
Last month at CES, I met Dale Dougherty; a very smart publisher who co-founded O’Reilly Media. He’s one of the driving forces behind both MAKE magazine and the Makerfaire shows. Here’s his talk at Kid’s at Play youtu.be/FQ8my2HNgzc. Dale reminded us all that children are born to take things apart and put them together again; a notion that lies at the heart of constructivism — and our evaluation instrument. That’s why we picked “Children as Makers” as our topic for this month’s LittleClickers column on page 3. You can find a wonderful set of videos (don’t miss the singing fish car) and links to help us all “Make Makers.” You can also learn more about one of the first relatively low cost 3D printers, the Replicator, on page 19.
iPads in Kindergarten
We just finished a short series of videos with “The iPad Teacher” at www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDE5C25B50EF55422. His real name is Chris Crowell, CTR’s Contributing Editor, and he earned his moniker from the children of Desmares Elementary School, where he has been a kindergarten teacher, sans iPad, for 14 years. This last year — his 15th — he’s been experimenting with an iPad 2, thanks to a training project we’ve been working on with the Acelaro Head Start, and an upcoming trip to North Dakota. Perhaps his biggest message is this: young children today are growing up with touch screens. They don’t need to be subjected to a series of lessons about how to use one. Instead, let them experiment with a collection of carefully selected apps and use guided exploration to introduce features, such as the camera and/or the microphone. Model the behaviors you want. “The great thing about the iPad is that it promotes exploration.”
Here are the video topics:
1. Introducing the iPad for the first time. How to charge it, how to store it, and most importantly, what not do.
2. Using the camera.
3. Care and feeding of the iPad.
4. Do things ever go wrong?
5. How to introduce a new app.
Take a closer look at our prototype iPad, on page 4.
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