“Teachers as Makers” – O’Reilly Radar
"Making" can lead to informative writing...
Teachers as Makers - O'Reilly Radar
"When I began talking with folks from the National Writing Project last year, we hit on the idea that getting teachers to see themselves as makers was a great way to encourage making in schools. Thus, the goal of this workshop was to provide a gentle introduction to making for about 50 teachers. There were about eight stations with a variety of projects. Without too much in the way of preliminaries, the teachers sat down and started making. They talked to each other while working (or playing, as I might prefer to call it) and they helped each other. The projects were not simple but they were fun. The teachers were making drawbots and brushbots, flickering mood lights, stop-frame animation, bottlecap jewelry, and bracelets that functioned as snap-circuits."
Once "making" is finished...
"They participated in a writing exercise, documenting the process that they followed to make something. This exercise in technical writing is also a good way to reflect on your own learning process and think about how others might benefit from what you had learned. As I said to them, Tim O'Reilly and I were technical writers and this is what we did that helped us start a publishing company. We wrote about what we learned to do ourselves."