At the beginning of the school year I was lucky enough to attend the New York Maker Fair with a cohort of fellow teachers. We were given the opportunity to interact with teachers, students, and makers from all over the world. People were finding new and innovative ways to engage students with technology.
My big take away from our trip to NYC was LED paper circuits. I came back “fired-up” to get my hands on some copper tape and start making. After playing around with the materials for a while I created a tutorial on how to make a basic LED card. My class quickly started to apply their knowledge of circuits to Makerspace projects; we added LED lights to cardboard creations like helmets and cars.
About halfway through the year I got to meet up with the cohort that went to New York. We shared some of the projects we had been working on since the trip. An educator from Massachusetts (Alisha Panjwani) presented on the power of Maker Education. She shared a project that incorporated LED circuits with a deep learning project on issues relating to clean water. I was inspired to apply my students LED skills to a more meaningful project.
My class started an inquiry-based project on food. They investigated how food is produced and where it comes from. They collected food labels and then plotted pins on a map to represent the different countries they buy food from. We decided to use LEDs to create interactive maps to showcase the results of our research. The students did an amazing job. The maps are on display in the hallway and the whole school is interacting with the maps and learning about food/geography.
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