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Dian Schaffhauser, Content Editor writes, This robotics teacher has found creative ways to continue STEAM lessons with her students virtually, even when they don't have robots.
Think about how many uses besides the obvious ones you can come up with for these objects: a sheet of paper, a marble and a straw. How about these applications? Using the straw to suck air out of a food bag before freezing, or converting marbles into wheels and a sheet of paper into a paper boat. During a recent ISTE 20 Live session, Colleen Larionoff explained that she likes to give students divergent thinking exercises like this one, sharing responses via Padlet, to show them how there are many different ways they can answer a question and solve a problem.
Larionoff is an innovation coordinator and robotics coach for Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey. During a brief ISTE "snapshot" session, she shared what she has learned about helping her students develop critical thinking skills and develop their social-emotional skills with the remote robotics classes she teaches...
On the other hand, students may just copy the example, thereby limiting their creative thinking and student agency. Also, she suggested, teacher examples can "promote frustration" when the student tries to recreate it but can't make their version look like the teacher's version.
As an antidote, Larionoff offered a few ideas:
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Show a student example;
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Share an example she's made that's "flawed or unfinished in some way" and then point out what she'd do differently the next time, "to make them think critically and realize that what I'm doing isn't necessarily perfect"; or
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Model the engineering process, by making an example in front of the students and then disassembling it again "so they can't copy it."
Source: T.H.E. Journal
