As school budgets shrink, arts education is increasingly targeted as a place to cut funding. Yet as we prepare young people to join a workforce where creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking are essential to success, experiential learning that emphasizes imagination and design thinking has become more important than ever. Assemble picks up where schools leave off, offering free and open learning opportunities that integrate the arts, technology, and science in ways that blurs traditional boundaries between disciplines.

Part gallery, part art studio, part makerspace, Assemble offers a range of dynamic activities, from Saturday Crafternoons with make-and-take projects to monthly Learning Parties where kids can try their hand at art-making, conduct scientific and technological experiments, have conversations with experts, and more.

Assemble was founded in 2011 by Nina Barbuto, an architect and Pittsburgh native who returned home after working in Los Angeles, where she also participated in a research project focusing on arts and learning environments. Inspired by her West Coast experiences and committed to increasing access to arts and technology opportunities for girls and underserved youth, Nina established Assemble in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a community in transition whose residents are predominantly African-American.

Assemble also reaches kids across Pittsburgh through its many partnerships. Working with more than 20 organizations, Assemble takes its STEAM and Maker educational programs on the road, sharing programming with kids in all corners of the city. Still, Assemble stays firmly rooted in its community, offering a safe and nurturing space to hang out, get free afterschool homework help, or try something new at the monthly Youth Maker Nights.

In informal learning spaces like Assemble, imagination drives invention. If you can dream it, you can make it.

By teaching kids science and technology in hands-on—sometimes messy—ways, Assemble demystifies the creative process. Kids get their hands dirty while they learn, whether they’re gluing LED lights to a cardboard bridge or spinning a clay pot on a pottery wheel. Assemble maintains a low barrier to entry for its programs: most require no pre-registration, and nearly all are free. In this way, Assemble works as an “on-ramp” to deeper learning and provides more opportunities to develop skills.

The organization runs its workshops by hiring educators, technologists, and working artists on a contract basis, relying on Maker Corps VISTA and Board members for institutional support, and even enabling teenagers to teach younger students as peer-mentors.

These educators work with students like Daijah, Ashanti, and Cheyenne, middle school students from the neighborhood. Following a summertime shooting at a nearby playground, the girls found a safe and welcoming place at Assemble, where they’ve since become a fixture. The girls have yet to miss a Saturday Crafternoon event, and they recently built a prototype for an LED lighting system that could make their neighborhood parks safer places for kids.

by Adam Reger

Robotics, coding, and computer science are increasingly important to the future career prospects of today’s students. Yet classroom teachers and informal educators often face barriers in the cost of equipment and the perceived difficulty of the subject matter.

By providing flexible and affordable robotics products that are easy to use, Pittsburgh’s BirdBrain Technologies introduces students to programming and robotics and cultivates their ability to think and work creatively with these 21st century tools.

Founded in 2010 by Tom Lauwers, who had just completed a Ph.D. in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), BirdBrain Technologies originated from Lauwers’ work with CMU’s Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab, which promotes technological fluency through education.

BirdBrain’s first product was a tool to motivate computer science students by giving them a tangible representation of their coding. The Finch is a durable, two-wheeled plastic robot that accepts computer science commands in a number of programming languages and gives students instant visual feedback. Shortly thereafter, Lauwers designed the Hummingbird Robotics Kit, which contains the basic components needed for a wide array of robotics, kinetics, and animatronics projects across disciplines.

The strength of educational products like Finch and Hummingbird lies in their ability to make learning something you can see and touch. For many students, these tools represent their first exposure to project-based learning. In particular, Lauwers says, “It’s about doing something as a project that requires creativity and thinking?—?and it probably doesn’t work the first time. Students have to do some engineering and some programming and some testing before they get it right.”

The approach fits well with the demands of the project-based workplace of the future, which will demand employees with creativity and problem-solving skills.

“I would much rather see a student write a program that makes a multiplication table and autofills it than memorize a multiplication table,” Lauwers says.

The Finch helped me understand objects and their methods in a way that the textbook never could.

Lauwers partnered with educators in Pittsburgh-area middle schools, high schools, and community colleges to co-design and test products, integrating feedback to develop instructional resources that work both in- and out-of-school.

Supplementing these in-person collaborations are online forums where teachers post lesson plans for using BirdBrain products and share tips for engaging students.

Through these partnerships, Lauwers has built a regional “cluster” of Finch and Hummingbird users in the Pittsburgh region. It’s a strategy that has built a market for BirdBrain products and enriched the community of educators and students using the Finch and Hummingbird Kit to expand opportunities for robotics and computer science learning.

by Adam Reger

Universities are engines of exploration, discovery, and innovation. Still, too often, research universities with deep wells of intellectual capital miss opportunities to deliver meaningful solutions to the communities around them. When educators and community members are able to tap into these extraordinary resources, students gain exposure to some of today’s most cutting edge technologies.

That’s why Carnegie Mellon University ( CMU), one of the most highly regarded private research universities in the world, has connected with a network of regional educators to co-develop innovative, effective education solutions that work in the Pittsburgh region.

The Community Robotics, Education, and Technology Empowerment ( CREATE) Lab and the Entertainment Technology Center ( ETC) are two examples of CMU’s commitment to putting innovation to work in the Pittsburgh region.

Ideas and inspirations for the way the world should be and how we can design the future with technology is sourced from the communities and the people and the experiences we have.

Established in 1997 by roboticist Illah Nourbakhsh, the CREATE Lab explores socially meaningful innovation and deploys robotic technologies to address community challenges ranging from air pollution to the achievement gap.

“The CREATE Lab was born out of a desire to change the way the university relates to its community,” says Nourbakhsh. “If we start with education, we can empower students to think about technology as a tool that they can use for social change.”

By partnering with schools, museums, libraries, and child-serving organizations, researchers in the CREATE Lab develop tools and programs to empower a technologically fluent generation through experiential learning. Together with the Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children ( PAEYC), CREATE Lab developed Message From Me, kid-friendly kiosks that enable young children to record their daily experiences through pictures and speech and send them to their parents’ cell phones or email. Now in more than 100 early childhood classrooms throughout the Pittsburgh region, Message From Me enhances parent-child conversations and involves families in the day-to-day educational experience of their children.

To expand its impact in the region, CREATE Lab established a Satellite Network in partnership with Marshall University, West Liberty University, Carlow University, West Virginia University, and Penn State New Kensington. These institutions connect CREATE Lab technologies with pre-service teachers who develop pedagogical uses while also offering critical user feedback on potential products. This process of iterative design ultimately produces tools that are optimized for effectiveness in a diverse array of learning environments.

Started by computer scientist Randy Pausch and drama professor Don Marinelli in 1999, the ETC is a two-year graduate program offering a master’s degree in entertainment technology that combines technical courses in digital technology and game development with art courses in storytelling and design.

To earn their degree, students must work with community representatives to co-develop games for good—from schools to hospitals to museums and beyond. These partnerships often produce compelling results. In 2010, Elizabeth Forward School District built a SMALLab (Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Laboratory), an immersive environment that uses games to enable students to learn kinesthetically. By partnering with a team of students from the ETC, educators at Elizabeth Forward created their own learning games that fit within their curriculum and appealed to students.

ETC director Drew Davidson, a leading member of the Remake Learning Network since its earliest days, encourages students to consider the educational potential of new technology whenever possible. “We believe that all of this great entertainment technology can have positive social impact,” he says. “We’re always looking for great projects in general, but we’re also trying to do something more—to make the world a better place.”

by Ashlee Green

The Children’s Innovation Project began in 2010 when CREATE Lab resident artist, Jeremy Boyle and Kindergarten teacher, Melissa Butler partnered to explore the question: “What might meaningful technology learning look like for young children?” Working together at Pittsburgh Allegheny K-5, the pair began co-creating a learning progression of language-logic opportunities for children to deeply explore the material of technology.

With the Children’s Innovation Project, children explore and learn about electricity and simple circuits through hands-on engagement with Circuit Blocks and other raw materials, developing habits of mind to notice—wonder—persist. Children make connections to objects in their world—specifically through imagining about the insides of electronic toys, opening them to notice carefully, identifying components, and then repurposing and reconfiguring their internal components into new circuits and new ideas. Approaching technology as raw material allows technology to be a means to learning, not an end.

The pair began collaborating on various arts-integration projects back in 2003, when Boyle was Resident Artist at the Mattress Factory. Since 2010, they have focused on what they see as ’depth of possibility in broader interdisciplinary learning’ for children to develop precision of language, collaboration, and flexibility and fearlessness in problem solving.

Learning with the Children’s Innovation Project is for all children, not for enrichment groups or special pull-out programs.

Circuit Blocks have been iteratively designed locally in Boyle’s studio as part of the teaching and learning work of the Children’s Innovation Project since 2010. The production process mirrors the learning of the project through its slow and careful method of crafting these materials.

I think everybody should know... how to make mistakes. If you don’t know how to make mistakes, it will be hard to work on a breadboard. I always make mistakes while on the breadboard.

The Children’s Innovation Project shifts the focus of innovation from making some thing, to a focus on “finding something new inside something known.” This shift allows children opportunities to slow down and make their own authentic discoveries with materials and ideas. It is through this process of discovery that children are able to dig into struggles of not-knowing and find and follow their own internally-motivated curiosities. And as children think about themselves in relation to the process of their own learning, they begin to internalize sensibilities that support their growth as innovators.

In various classroom settings from Kindergarten through Grade 4, children practice what it means to notice: slow down, there is always more to see, wonder: follow questions to find new questions, and persist: love and stay with your struggles.

Children look at small screws and compare the patterns on the heads, the shapes of the tips and details of the threads. Across the hall, children wonder about the newly discovered and unknown components on the circuit boards in their opened electronic toys. Upstairs, children use magnifying glasses and read the color bands on resistors to decode their value in Ohms. Kindergarteners imagine the insides of their electronic toys for months before starting to open them slowly with screwdrivers. First graders try and fail and fail some more while inventing switches. Second graders struggle for weeks to find a way to make 3 lights glow brightly with one battery block (discovering parallel circuits). Fourth graders work on breadboards for months learning slowly and in layers how to create pathways from +3V to ground using LEDs, push-buttons and resistors. In all of these classrooms, teachers notice and wonder about how children are learning in order to support children’s metacognition.

by Katy Rank-Lev

Learning doesn’t begin—or end—in the classroom. Yet much that’s gained in afterschool programs, community centers, and summer camp goes unrecognized, left out of a learner’s educational record and unseen by admissions officers and potential employers.

Digital badges are a new tool to recognize and celebrate a learner’s mastery of competencies. Within a framework of knowledge, skills, and dispositions, badges store in-depth information about learning experiences. A few clicks can reveal where the learning happened, what it took to earn the badge, and, in some cases, the evidence and learning artifacts behind the badge.

Badges emerged in the early 2010s through deep investments from the MacArthur Foundation and close work with Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit behind the Firefox web browser. More recently, Pittsburgh joined Chicago, Dallas, and Washington, D.C., as “Cities of Learning” in a national campaign focused on keeping students engaged in meaningful learning opportunities over the summer.

The Sprout Fund created opportunities for dozens of Remake Learning Network partners to explore the potential for digital badges and reward learning happening outside the classroom, from museums and libraries to corporate offices and basketball courts.

During training workshops, educators and program leaders learned how to identify competencies based on their programs’ learning outcomes and highlight “badge-able moments” during their summer programming. Participants based their badge criteria on a shared set of learning competencies created through a working group process that included input from educators, subject matter experts, and practitioners in a variety of professional fields. This way, City of Learning partners could be sure the badges they designed had real value in the broader community.

A technology platform enabled badges to be awarded and cataloged available learning experiences across the city. This discovery platform was also used by program staff and mentors to identify and recommend new activities for learners to pursue interests and build on their personal strengths—to create their own personal learning pathway.

In the real world, you’re never asked a question that someone else already knows the answer to. On the job, it’s all about finding new solutions.

Three major partnerships were forged that complemented the broader summer efforts. Pittsburgh Public Schools offered badges as part of morning academic classes and afternoon enrichment activities at its Summer Dreamers Academy. Meanwhile, the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board assured that career readiness badges were available to youth participating in the Learn & Earn summer youth employment program. Badges awarded by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh incentivized teens to engage with its learning labs and stick with its summer reading program.

Finally, at a mid-summer forum of regional employers, program partners made the case that badges can be used to help identify job prospects with the attributes needed in today’s rapidly changing workplace.

“Anything that allows a candidate to demonstrate their passions, what they’re into, their hard skill set—as well as their soft skills—is very important for any employer that thrives on a mixture of creativity, artistic sensibility, and collaboration,” said Chris Arnold, general counsel and director of human resources at Pittsburgh-based video game design studio Schell Games.

Whether it’s through self-directed online experiences, peer-supported learning at a safe neighborhood space, or classroom instruction during those important school hours, badges are rapidly becoming the tool to connect these learning experiences together for academic achievement, for employment, and for an engaged citizenry.

The effects of the digital age are sweeping across the globe, transforming industries, and changing how people interact with the world around them. Kids engage with games, apps, and social networks all day long, and most of them are eager to learn more about what goes into that technology. Still, despite the ubiquity of computing and the need to prepare children for tomorrow’s workforce, most K-12 schools in the United States don’t teach computer science, and most out-of-school programs lack the capacity to teach digital literacy skills effectively.

In response to this digital literacy gap, The Sprout Fund, the steward of the Remake Learning Network in Pittsburgh, partnered with Allegheny Partners for Out-of-School Time ( APOST), a United Way agency supporting out-of-school educators, to launch the Digital Corps. The program recruits and trains mentors in digital literacy and matches them with out-of-school learning sites throughout the city and county.

We all have a role to play ensuring all our students are equipped with the digital literacy skills they’ll need for their future.

The Sprout Fund recruits a wide range of professionals from a variety of fields including formal education, robotics and engineering, and the fine arts. Once they join the program, Corps members enter a training program to help familiarize them with the digital tools. But, more importantly, the program allows the group at large to collaborate on best teaching practices so they can deliver more effective learning experiences and support positive youth development. The training sessions employ hands-on, “learn by doing” instruction activities that embody the spirit of the Corps.

In partnership with APOST, Sprout seeks host sites that are trusted members of their community and attract a steady afterschool population of tweens and teens. Ranging from established organizations like YMCAs, libraries, and churches to smaller neighborhood organizations, the Digital Corps provides everything needed for a successful session: the tech tools, the mobile Wi-Fi, even the snacks.

During each 90-minute Digital Corps session, participating youth can pursue learning tracks in Creative Computing, Webmaking, and Mobile Media. Through Creative Computing projects, students use Scratch, MaKey MaKey, and Hummingbird Robotics Kits to explore conductivity, engineering, and design. When focusing on Webmaking, students use Mozilla Webmaker to learn HTML structure, web design, and storytelling. And when making Mobile Media, students use Mozilla App Maker and MIT’s App Inventor to learn mobile design techniques, grid-math, and programming languages.

Digital Corps curricula not only teach technical skills, but also foster 21st century skills-development, teaching kids how critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity are interconnected. Youth learn to ask questions (of each other and of instructors) and delve into support resources online to find and fix bugs in their own projects.

Each Digital Corps session is taught “studio” style, so teens are creating something tangible every week. “Learning by doing is a great method to get students asking questions, troubleshooting, and figuring things out together,” says Ani Martinez, Digital Corps program associate at The Sprout Fund.

To help track the progress made by participating youth, Martinez and Digital Corps members have developed 20 digital badges that students can earn in recognition of the knowledge they gain and the new skills they develop through the Digital Corps.

by Katy Rank-Lev

Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, might be considered an unlikely place to find the cutting edge of technology and innovation. In an old river town fighting to recover from recession, and in a public education environment marked by increasing standards and decreasing budgets, Elizabeth Forward stands out as one of the most innovative school districts in America.

When Superintendent Bart Rocco and Assistant Superintendent Todd Keruskin started at Elizabeth Forward, the district was hardly a hotbed of education innovation. Students were dropping out at alarming rates and opting for charter or cyber schools. The school was stuck in the middle of the pack on state standardized test scores, and teachers were struggling to keep students engaged.

Still, there was opportunity for the district, located just 30 minutes from Pittsburgh’s research universities, education technology companies, cultural institutions, philanthropies, and civic leaders. Tapping into the Remake Learning Network, Rocco and Keruskin began transforming their district—one space, one program, one teacher, and one student at a time.

Elizabeth Forward is a living example of the triumph of opportunity over challenge in American education.

Early in their tenure at Elizabeth Forward, Rocco and Keruskin attended an event at the Allegheny Intermedia Unit to hear a speech by Don Marinelli, then-executive director of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center ( ETC). Intrigued, they followed up with Marinelli, who suggested they partner with ETC and local education technology company Zulama to transform a space in their district. With guidance from these partners, district leaders, teachers, students, and facilities staff came together to create the Entertainment Technology Academy, a classroom that does away with the rows of desk and chalk board in favor of a flexible and collaborative learning space. Teachers use game design theory to offer engaging, effective English, math, art, design, and computer science curriculum. Encouraged, Elizabeth Forward’s leadership didn’t stop there.

Next came the EF Media Center, which transformed the static school library into an attractive high school hangout space with comfortable seating, gaming consoles, a stage, and state-of-the-art audio and video production studios. Then came the SMALLab, an interactive digital media space that used gaming to provide fun, kinesthetic educational opportunities for middle school students. Next came the Dream Factory, combining the middle school’s art studio, shop class, and computer science lab into one integrated innovation space. In 2013, Elizabeth Forward launched a district-wide 1:1 technology learning initiative for every student K-12. In 2015, they partnered with Chevron and the ETC to build an interactive Energy Lab for middle school students to learn about Earth, space, and energy concepts.

Rocco and Keruskin formed strategic partnerships with regional and national education innovators to advance their work, but they consistently remained grounded in the district, working closely with their school board, teachers, and students to develop, adapt, and improve spaces and programs.

Today, the district is one of more than 70 members of Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools. More importantly, though, student test scores are up, their dropout rates are down, and the transition from “frontierland” to “futureland,” as Superintendent Rocco likes to say, is well under way.

by Liberty Ferda

Some teens are naturally drawn to libraries. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, teens are the biggest library user group in the United States. The Labs @ CLP is part of a growing nationwide effort to enhance traditional library services by creating new offerings that meet the needs of today’s digital teens.

The Labs is Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh ’s teen-only creative technology program. By integrating innovative 21st century learning opportunities into the library setting, The Labs enables teens to immerse themselves in filmmaking, photography, music composition, art, and even video game design. These offerings not only engage teens, they represent opportunities that may not exist in school or at home. Sometimes, the programming involves workshops with specific training and tutorials. Sometimes, the library offers “Open Labs,” where teens can simply explore available resources to spark their curiosity. Either way, teens are opting-in to valuable learning experiences in community spaces around the corner from where they live.

Led by Digital Learning Librarian Corey Wittig, The Labs is helping CLP redefine its role in the digital age. “The future of the library isn’t one patron coming in and working in isolation,” Wittig says. “It’s going to be a more networked experience, more hands-on, and with more tools available. That’s the experience teens today have in The Labs.”

Programs like The Labs @ CLP don’t just benefit students—they benefit libraries. These are community institutions charged with cultivating and nourishing intellectual curiosity, cultural exchange, and lifelong learning. Today, those goals are increasingly achieved through new technologies. Libraries that take advantage of tools and techniques of the digital age can both advance their mission and boost participation. In the future, libraries may look less like static sanctuaries of arcane knowledge and more like active laboratories of learning.

The Labs @ CLP is a wonderful example of libraries adapting themselves for a new generation.

The Labs includes permanent, dedicated digital teen spaces at three of the Carnegie Library’s 19 neighborhood locations where teenagers have free access to creative, informal project-based activities using digital and traditional technologies.

A typical open session might include a music station with a microphone and recording software, an electric guitar, a digital pad that renders drawings into graphic designs, and a tablet with a stop-motion animation app. Workshops are more structured, allowing teen specialists and mentors to present planned activities focusing on building digital literacies.

To make sure teens can participate in the program no matter which branch library they call home, The Labs developed “Labs on Location” kits containing tools, materials, and instruction manuals for bringing digital learning to life across the city. Each week, a mentor visits a different CLP location to guide the local teen specialist through the software and technology integral to that day’s lesson before co-facilitating that day’s session.

The programs are often light and fun, but they still have significant impact on the lives of many teenagers. One teen uses The Labs to pursue his interest in technology. Captivated by the game Minecraft, he was encouraged by mentors at The Labs to explore more deeply, so he began doing research before sharing new Minecraft skins he created. Eventually, he gave the library staff tutorials on the game, before moving on to musical composition, robotics construction, and video game creation.

Above it all, The Labs creates a safe space where teens can learn while they unwind. At the end of a costume-making workshop one teen said, “This was really fun. I was having a bad day, and now I feel better.”

by Weenta Girmay

How do you make learning an exciting and fun part of life for kids who’d rather be doing anything but? Part science fair and part arts festival, Maker Parties offer a wide sampling of arts- and technology-based activities that turn learning into a party for children, youth, and families.

Globally, Mozilla, the nonprofit working to keep the Web open and accessible to all, organizes and promotes Maker Parties as a way to introduce hundreds of thousands of people to new digital learning opportunities. Maker Parties bring together local organizations, educators, community members, and skilled mentors to host a free hands-on, pop-up learning event for teens and tweens.

The impact of a Maker Party is two-fold. First, it creates a unique exposure opportunity for learners to engage in web literacy learning—many, for the first time. Second, it expands the reach of local service organizations, which can engage new students and parents with compelling programming.

In Pittsburgh, Maker Parties are one of several public showcase events hosted by members of the Remake Learning Network to create anywhere, anytime learning opportunities. The Sprout Fund organized Pittsburgh’s first Maker Party in 2013 when it launched a local Hive Learning Network. And, in 2014, four additional Maker Parties popped up in neighborhoods throughout the city.

Maker Party joins thousands of people across the globe to make something amazing, teach each other new skills, and have a great time doing it.

Maker Parties can be any size, with small parties ranging from 2 to 5 participants, medium parties ranging from 5 to 50 people, and large events involving 50 or more. Larger Maker Parties include stations where learners can make physical and digital projects like animations, web apps, and games. In order to keep the crowd moving among stations, activities are simple enough that they can be explored in as little as 5 minutes, but deep enough to last longer if they capture a young person’s interest.

At the big Pittsburgh Maker Party in 2014, arts education organizations from the Remake Learning Network offered traditional activities like the Andy Warhol Museum’s screen-printing station and the Society for Contemporary Craft’s papermaking workshop, while Assemble and TechShop offered maker learning experiences that bridged art and technology. The Digital Corps led sessions on webmaking and programming, while Steeltown Entertainment helped kids make short films and animations.

And of course, free music and food truck delicacies helped make the event a complete experience.

“I worked on the Thimble coding,” said one teenager at the 2013 Pittsburgh Maker Party. “What we did was we placed pictures in boxes and we put captions there. So, I wrote an online story about pancakes and dancing. It was really cool.”

The Maker Party campaign builds on a long history of learning pop-ups that happen in neighborhoods, at summer festivals, and holiday events all over. To update these age-old events for the digital age, Mozilla has collected resources at teach.mozilla.org, including step-by-step guidance on event execution, promotional materials, and low-fi teaching kits for use when there’s not Wi-Fi on-site.

by Weenta Girmay

In 2010, Children’s Museum director Jane Werner and Drew Davidson from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center ( ETC), got to chatting at a network event. They started discussing the Maker Movement and the ways in which increasing access to physical and digital tools and techniques may enable children and youth to express their interests and make almost anything. They wondered what would happen if they developed a space in the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh where visitors could explore, imagine, and create through making as a learning process. Not only would it enhance the educational value of the Museum’s offerings, it would bring more children and families through the doors and encourage them to stay for longer.

In partnership with the ETC and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments ( UPCLOSE), the Children’s Museum began prototyping programs in electronics, sewing, woodworking, and digital media and studying how children and families engaged in hands-on maker learning.

Dr. Lisa Brahms is the Director of Learning and Research at the Museum. Dr. Brahms began her work in the Museum as an UPCLOSE research fellow studying the development of MAKESHOP from its earliest stage to its current status as a permanent exhibit for hands-on learning. She now leads the effort to understand and develop the Museum as a place of informal learning.

Four years later, MAKESHOP is a fully-staffed, permanent exhibit offering ongoing programs for children, youth, adults, and educators. Tailoring the visitors’ experiences to their interests, MAKESHOP encourages exploration, creativity, and play by offering access to the materials, tools, and processes of making.

MAKESHOP has really made us think differently about what it means to be a museum and the role of museums in people’s lives.

The purpose of MAKESHOP is to challenge and nurture creativity by offering experiences with real materials and real tools that match visitors’ interests. The people, or educators, are key to the ongoing success of MAKESHOP, and identifying educators who are also skilled makers has proved essential. MAKESHOP educators continue to work hard to prototype how access to various tools, materials, process, and ideas affect the design of visitor learning experiences and facilitation.

The results of MAKESHOP’s careful process have been significant. At the Children’s Museum, attendance is up since MAKESHOP’s inception, and the average age of child-visitors has increased. Families’ engagement is noticeably deeper and prolonged. Through partnerships and outreach with schools, libraries, and out-of-school learning sites, the Children’s Museum has helped these organizations grow educator capacity and integrate making in meaningful ways. Through its annual Maker Educator Boot Camp, the Museum has provided educators with maker-based professional development opportunities that can be put to use in the classroom. MAKESHOP has also partnered with the Maker Education Initiative to host and train Maker Corps members who can facilitate making experiences across the region.

Now MAKESHOP is reaching beyond the walls of the Museum, working with schools and out-of-school educators to develop engaging, effective, and evidence-based maker learning opportunities for a diverse array of the region’s kids.

by Liberty Ferda

Traditionally, professional development for educators has been in the form of lectures and presentations in a dimmed auditorium on mandatory in-service days. The sessions can feel perfunctory and not entirely relevant. In a word, they can be boring.

Responding to a call from teachers for more meaningful professional development, the Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU), a local education service agency, created transformED, and in the process flipped professional development on its head. Through engaging, interactive, and creative sessions, teachers learn innovative instructional practices, explore these new teaching methods, play with new products, software, and tools they might use in their classrooms, and understand curricula. It’s a space where teachers can engage with one another to learn how they might integrate novel teaching approaches into their classroom practice.

“We’re not sitting people in rows. We really want to engage them in a fun, hands-on way,” says Rosanne Javorsky, Assistant Executive Director of Teaching & Learning at the AIU. “It’s OK to make mistakes in here. It’s OK to say, ’Hey, I don’t know how to do this.’ We want teachers to step outside their comfort zone. And we want to help them work through it.”

Without motivated teachers, no technology breakthrough can deeply affect the academic journey of students in school. transformED is the space for teachers to have the kind of professional development experience that ignites passion and curiosity, instead of stifling it.

How do we create thinkers and learners, not just smart kids? We need a professional development space where teachers can keep pushing education forward.

transformED offers teachers opportunities to work with ed-tech tools like MaKey MaKey, Gigapan, 3-D Printers, and Hummingbird Robotics Kits. Session facilitators are not only professional development consultants; rather they are technologists, scientists, artists, designers, makers, teachers, and even students.

The boundaries between presenters and teachers quickly dissolve during interactive sessions.

“It just happens,” says Megan Cicconi, AIU’s Director of Instructional Innovation, who works closely with teachers and trainers in transformED. “It’s just a very collaborative space that lends itself to exploratory learning.”

During one workshop on “squishy circuits,” participants took turns playing an interactive video game to cement circuitry principles. Then, they donned aprons and followed a recipe to make two types of Play-Doh: conductive and resistant, and eventually hooked their Play-Doh sculptures up to a battery pack and LED lights. The teachers discussed how students could use the salty, conductive Play-Doh to turn on the LEDs to learn how electricity flows.

Teachers leave transformED sessions more excited to use tech tools in their classrooms, and a community of practice—teachers, technologists, and administrators—to nurture that excitement.

by Ashlee Green