Thank you for watching our video! Our research examines how K-12 schools can intergrate student-driven inquiry, design, and making into the regular curriculum. What approaches and specific strategies have you found successful in making STEAM and making more inclusive and accessible to all students?

Thank you for taking on the task of integrating making and design thinking in a school library context.  As you point out, this is an unusual approach, as many projects that are investigating making in libraries are doing so outside of the school day.  I suspect that working within the school curriculum adds additional challenges to your development work.  Can you provide some examples of how you've experienced -- and dealt with -- the constraints that a school context and curriculum present?  I would also be interested in hearing about some of the social justice projects that students have embarked upon.  I believe that making and design do have the potential of engaging students in such projects, but the fulfillment of that potential depends on many factors, so examples of how you have achieved this would be helpful to the rest of the field.

Hi Andee, thank you so much for watching our video and posting a question. During the grant, we have encountered some schedule changes that have impacted our work. Through these we have learned a lot about being flexible and staying true to the iterative nature of the Guided Inquiry Design and Making processes. For example, we shifted the way we design rubrics from focusing on product to focusing on process instead. The social justice projects were done in an English Language Arts course and varied tremendously, ranging from hand-drawn manga comics about gender fluidity to a pair of shoes altered in color and covered in words and thoughts to engage peers in discussion about civil rights. 

Our project is all about finding out how Making adds value to students' inquiry journeys, and so we are still searching for answers about how to best achieve student engagement through Making. What we know so far is this: the more educators can stay true to the inquiry process, the better Making can be integrated and the more effective it can be. 

Hi Andee, one of the challenges in implementing maker learning in a school context is probably the standard curriculum needs, while making is in nature based on students’ own interests. By integrating the maker approach to GID (Guided Inquiry Design), a framework for inquiry learning within school curriculum, we’ve been able to make connections to the curriculum. Making can take many different approaches, and I think this inquiry-based making approach fits very nicely in the school system.

I really like the approach you are taking with making -- I think it fits really nicely with guided inquiry! I also think it's great that you are looking across three settings (elementary classrooms, middle school classrooms, and high school classrooms). What are the similarities and differences you are seeing across those three settings?

Thanks for sharing your video!  I appreciate your efforts to design for integrating making and learning in the context of a real school. The maker movement has flourished in out of school contexts, and it is good to see how you are thinking about bridging the worlds of in and out-of school learning.

I have a couple of questions about your project:

1) You described a key research question as how making adds value to guided inquiry. What can you learn if you reverse this question - how does guided inquiry add value to making? 

2) A related question...making has thrived as an authentic pathway to interest-based learning. A central tension in schools might be that making is now designed as a means to standards-based learning. How have you dealt with this potential tension in your design?

3) How does your team assess the quality of the making process, and of the products that students make? Does peer evaluation play a role in assessment?

Thank you again for sharing your thought-provoking work!

- Erica 

Thank you for sharing about your research project.  I am interested in learning more about your findings.  Currently, my school librarian holds Makerspace Mondays.  It is not coordinated with the classroom as of yet.  As I watched your video, I began to think about the powerful learning that could take place if we could take what he is doing on Mondays into the classroom.  Since I teach kindergarten,  I was curious if you had any examples of what librarians were doing with our younger students.   Further, examples of how the collaboration between the librarian and teacher works would also be  helpful to see.  Fortunately, my school librarian would be very interested in trying something like this.   I do believe that if we changed library instruction in this way we would see an increase in engagement and self-regulation of our students.  I also think this is a great way to transition from a more traditional library program to one that is more innovative and beneficial to students now.  Thank you again for sharing your research!

Sabrina, the librarians in our district are teacher librarians who co-teach regularly with classroom teachers.  We have used Guided Inquiry Design with learners from PreK-12.  We have also used Making with students at all levels.  The Guided Inquiry Process provides scaffolding throughout the process that supports learner success. It has been amazing to hear the high level questions that these young learners are asking about the curricular concept they are studding.  I think you will find co-teaching with your librarian to be a very powerful experience and especially beneficial for your learners. 

I am very interested in your project and want to know if you plan to fully integrate the project into your district?  Is making and inquiry showing success within the classes you are studying and if so how are you seeing the growth?  Also, what part of your programs seems to be the most successful?