Teaching to Teach: Inventing and Making in the Classroom Dr. Gerald Ardito Pace University, New York

Or What Do We Do in the Second Hour?

Research Questions What happens when teachers are immersed in inventing and making technologies? Do they reconceptualize themselves as teachers? Does Constructionism work as a pedagogy for teacher education?

Conceptual Framework Constructionism (Papert) Situated Constructionism (Resnick and Kafai) Design Based Learning (Schunn)

Some Background Considerable Experience with Technology-Rich Initiatives with Elementary and Middle School Students Managed a One Laptop Per Child deployment for 5th grade teachers and students Taught Scratch and Python to 7th and 8th graders Inventing and taught curriculum that incorporated Arduino projects

Working with Students

"I invented Physics for myself" The Ripple "I invented Physics for myself"

Working with Teachers

What we did We created a graduate course for teachers called "Inventing and Making in the Classroom. The course was taught in an immersive and Constructionist manner. The teachers learned Scratch, LEGO Mindstorms, MIT App Inventor, Arduino They developed projects for use with students.

"I invented Physics for myself" The Ripple "I invented Physics for myself"

What We Learned "The Ripple" applies to both students and teachers Learning by building (Constructionism) is a powerful development for teacher education

Next Steps Deepening the "Inventing and Making" curriculum to include game design and more computer programming Developing a summer program that will have a STEM summer camp for kids in parallel with PD for teachers

Thank you gerald.ardito@pace.edu @geraldardito