What a mind-blowing day!! My Collaborative PD Day involved tours of three makerspaces in Calgary. Two with the Calgary Board of Education and one with the Calgary Catholic School District. A day spent with three incredible educators is nothing short of amazing.
The morning started at Midsun Junior High School in the southwest of Calgary. They are reworking their library to operate as a Learning Commons and Makerspace. I met with the amazing Amber Mazur and we discussed coding and the Raspberry Pi – and using the book Adventures in Raspberry Pi as a guided reading endeavour. (What a brilliant idea by Amber!). We discussed furniture choices and space reallocation within the library. We looked at the inquiry-based learning taking place throughout the school. And we debated the question “what is the difference between design-based learning and makerspaces?”
Midday took me to Calgary Catholic Board’s St. Augustine School school. I spent time chatting with brilliant Marylee about the maker movement in CCSD and the #MakerMarch design challenge she has issued for any schools in their board to participate in. We talked about the logistics of makerspaces, the re-envisioning of the library space, and teacher reactions to the changes.
The day finished up at Nose Creek School learning from the remarkable Steve Clark. We looked specifically at robotics and 3D printing. We discussed the positives (there are many) of 3D printing in schools as well as the challenges (they do exist).
Many thanks to Amber, Marylee and Steve for making my PD day so rich with information and learning!