My third grade daughter and I watched Big Hero 6 a lot over the snow days and in today's interview for our district IT videocast,  I compared the headset our students use in our media center MakerSpace (photo above) to a similar controller on Hiro in the movie.

It got me thinking about how Big Hero Six is a perfect maker movie to capture our students' imaginations and inspire them to create their own projects in school maker spaces.  The boy Hiro and his brother Tadashi are both makers. Sure, the "nerdlab" is pretty futuristic, but watching Hiro invent, have false starts, use a 3D printer and scanner, use a  controller, hack existing designs, code, and, above all, decide to love school instead of reject what it has to offer, sends the perfect message to budding makers in schools everywhere.

The movie illustrates maker concepts such as design thinking, critical thinking, growth mindset, positive hacking to create a better world, and above all a maker attitude and ethos. 

If you haven't done so yet, consider how to infuse maker ed into your class or school today. Here are 5 easy steps to start a makerspace from scratch in any school 
and 
Here is how to introduce a maker-friendly project in your classroom.  You can always start with a clip from Big Hero Six to set the stage.

Recommended Reading:
Gizmodo article showing the real life scientific inspiration for the movie
and 
IO9 article about the show's science and artistic inspiration to connnect to your STEM plus arts or STEAM curricula 

Recommended Viewing:

RELATED POST- Genius Hour lends itself well to schools that have maker spaces: Here is ours called Love of Learning
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/love-of-learning-at-piedmont

My last post was all about GAFE ---I introduced how to log into google classroom and announced the Google Slides app here http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/news-and-thoughts/google-classroom-omg _

This post is a bit more about Google Apps - I just did a great training. First with Jake Standish and today with Heather Nussbaum of CMS

I took lots of photos of what I found most useful for teachers or students using Google Docs for Research and Translation and Google Classroom for Sharing files and assignments:

Links worth checking out and/or Passing on:

Personalized Learning Myths-
Stop The False Generalizations About Personalized Learning http://onforb.es/1nREQiN

Digital Citizenship-
https://magic.piktochart.com/output/1328944-nycdoe_create-the-digital-image-
If you don't have time tomorrow to talk to your students about their digital footprints (in preparation for summer), you can post this to your summer reading site or just teach it next year. Links at the bottom go to other Digital Citizenship topics like cyberbulling

Deeper Thinking-
Every time we review for standardized testing we reinforce the one correct answer shallow thinking model. This is necessary for some tasks but not all and not worth the weight we give it in education. Not sure what that means as long as we judge students, teachers and schools based on standardized scores but I do know that once the child leaves academia, it will be of little use to him or her. pic.twitter.com/b8uYjwxLAj

Resources for inquiry lessons (PBL) -

• PBL Projects and explorations https://docs.google.com/a/cms.k12.nc.us/document/d/1F64ITXnUPNLKCh0Y-gMvdWkCpijtt0wzmEQM19jSsYk/mobilebasic

• Creating a board game in mathematics PBL-

http://mrkempreflects.blogspot.sg/2014/06/pbl-in-mathematics-creating-board-game.html?m=1&utm_content=buffer58661&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 Using Urban Resources for Education (Museums, Libraries, etc)

"In 10 years, I’m hoping our cities are our classrooms." - Amy Eshleman
http://t.co/PVAEFcHhfS - (I didn't listen to the podcast but reading the link alone is a good idea)
This experiential learning model and reminds me of Piedmont's walking field trips:

You may have heard of Net Neutrality and know that it will affect your entertainment, but do you know that net neutrality is an important education issue in a democratic society and is even more important to our students and children than it is to us as teachers and parents? 

The FCC's servers recently crashed under the weight of the volume of comments. However, your voice is still needed. 

Here is why teachers and students and parents should:

We are on in the midst of an age as monumental as any in human history. The free and open internet is creating entrepreneurial and educational opportunities for our children.  If net neutrality had not existed, Khan Academy may never have become a thing. Your child may be the next Sal Khan, or you child may NEED the next Sal Khan. Either way, we cannot afford to slow this change and close down these opportunities.  

If you think the printing press was big, you have no idea where we are headed thanks to the internet. If net neutrality is stopped, that will jeaopardize the gains we are making and have made toward open educational and entrepreneurial opportunites such as described here in this recent speech at the Harvard Business School Graduation (Skip to minute 6:00 for the heart of the talk as it relates to this issue:  
http://youtu.be/ac0Kq3jSsp4 )

Click here to submit your comments on Net Neutrality (14-28)  

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=cjsqt

If the link does not open to an Express page where you can submit a comment into a text box under your name and address, then select the words ECFS express at the top then select 14-28

Here is a ready-made comment you can take or adjust to your situation and beliefs:
As an educator who believes in the power of an open internet for both the current education and future entrepreneurship opportunities of our students, I support net neutrality.  Thank you. 

Here is the  humorous but factual explanation (somewhat crude, but bleeped) that inspired the FCC server crash: (even though I highly disagree with him about the value of Caillou)

FCC link courtesy of http://consumerist.com/2014/05/15/how-to-tell-the-fcc-exactly-what-you-think-about-the-proposed-net-neutrality-rule/

Here are some links if you want to think big thoughts about education.

Big thoughts about Grading
-What do your grades represent? Here are the latest in teh conversation raging about standards based, mastery, the failure of averages and percents.

How Did You Learn How to Learn
-Howard Garnder, multiple intelligences (not learning styles) and the failures of intuition.

Big Thoughts about Privilege
Goes to a short Google Doc with resources for thinking about and discussing race as it relates to education. really interesting quotes. Conversation welcome. More on race here.