All posts by Angie Kalthoff

EAGER: MAKER: Studying the Role of Failure in Design and Making

February 1, 2020STEM, Video Showcase, Written by: Angie KalthoffAngie Kalthoff

by Angie Kalthoff

One of the videos in the STEM for All Video Showcase covered learning what failure means. In the video, Alice Anderson says, “we really heard from educators that they wanted their learners to struggle and persist through struggle and problem solve.” I connected with what Alice described in the video, it made me think “This is it! This is what I want too!” This blog post shows my reflections on this video. I recommend watching the video to better think with me about the role of failure in learning.

As an educator, I value growth mindset–being able to say to myself, I don’t know it yet but I can work towards it and try my best. I work to instill this mindset in my students at the early childhood, elementary, and university levels. When reviewing this STEM for All project, I connected with a comment made by Adam Maltese “My sense is that the best way to achieve this is to create a culture where iteration toward improvement is a core ideal.”

There’s often not time nor the correct culture for iteration in schools. With my students, I use the word FAIL as an acronym: First Attempt In Learning; I tell my students that I expect them to fail, I fail too. I know it can be frustrating to fail and I try to support them with read-alouds of books to show how the characters have dealt with failure. (Side note, for inspiration and to show grit, Rosie Revere, Engineer books are great to share with students.) I will share more from the video about projects and findings around failure and some ideas for the classroom.

Overview of the program featured in the video

Over the last few years, the research team that created the video explored how kids (9-15 years of age) engage in making in both formal and informal contexts to see how they respond when things do not go as planned. They looked at how youth reacted to moments of failure and what role adults play in these experiences in hopes of finding a way to help kids persist when they experience frustration. Their goal was to help kids keep coming back and understand how they define failure.

Kids in this study were from three locations: a museum-based maker program, middle school classrooms, and an after-school making and tinkering program.

Around persistence, the team considered was if the attitude displayed by students was related to how familiar a learner was with the tools and materials. Could their familiarity have influenced their persistence? For example, if a student was engaging with new material and they gave up after only a few attempts but persisted much longer on another project, was there any correlation between having experience with a tool and the amount of time spent problem solving.

How to use in practice

If you’re interested in thinking more about failure, this project gave some practical tips teachers can implement in their classrooms. To illustrate, I make connections from their suggestions to similar things I’ve done in classrooms.

They suggest: Save failures to learn from.

After attending DevTech professional development and working with students in the Early Childhood Technology (ECT) Graduate Certificate Program at Tufts University (where I currently work), I was inspired to keep a Kibo (a robot created for young children available through Kinderlab Robotics) hospital of broken parts. Instead of throwing away parts that no longer work, we keep them for kids to see and explore. They now get to explore broken motors to understand why it’s important for them to use them appropriately. By keeping things that don’t go right, or are a fail, they get to learn from the experience. In this STEM for ALL research project, researchers explain how at one summer camp, they created a Museum of Bent Nails. They took the experience of being frustrated when learning how to use nails and the failure one might feel when one becomes bent and turned it into a learning experience. Fellow CIRCL Educator, Sarah Hampton also loves how it turns all the hard work and learning into a badge of honor — it’s such a tangible way to value failure as a necessary part of the process!

They suggest: Facilitate learning, don’t fix things that aren’t working.

When I was first attempting to facilitate learning with kids and programming, I attended a Code.org workshop. In the workshop, I heard a suggestion about pretending to hold a teacup or actually holding something in my hands like a cup or a book to stop me from taking control of a device to fix broken programs. By doing this, as I walk around as an educator, I am not tempted to touch student projects and fix things for students. Instead, I ask questions to help when students are stuck. (It’s really easy to not realize you do things FOR students!)

Some tips from educators in the video:

Keeping your hands behind your back while talking with learners (so you don’t handle their project)
Ask for permission to touch student projects
Suggest that learners ask two other people before a teacher

They suggest: Take time to reflect on your own behaviors

Related to facilitating learning and not doing it for the students, Co-Presenter Amber Simpson shared what she did: “I decided to wear a GoPro camera to capture my interactions with upper elementary students engaging in making activities. It is alarming what you learn in watching yourself on video as I was not necessarily modeling appropriate behavior for the undergraduate students I was working with in the space. I found myself not allowing the elementary students to experience failure as much as I thought (or hoped for). However, being on this project has made me aware of such instances and trying to be mindful of my response (or not) to failures not only in making contexts but other contexts such as an academic setting.”

If you have the resources, it is great to watch yourself on video. Okay, it might be a little painful, but the insights are so important.

They suggest: Think about how the word FAILURE is used.

The researchers discussed the reticence they saw in educators to use the term failure. For K12 classroom educators, it can be hard for us to embrace because of the need to assign grades. For informal educators, who are often bound by the need to make the experience fun, they may find the word failure antithetical to their purposes. Also, a teacher’s background relates to how they use the word failure. For example, educators with an engineering background are very familiar with iteration in a design cycle and bring that in. Educators with an artistic background also talk about the process of creating and not ever reaching “the end.” That notion can either be daunting — to think one is never done, or it can be comforting to know that you can always continue to improve.

As an educator, I am still curious about a few other things related to practice:

Mindset around failure. What were people already thinking about and how did past experiences influence their experience?

I know some of my students are more ready to think about and handle failure. How can I help all of them?

Working through struggles. How can adults help kids redefine failure as a chance to try something new?

I have some new ideas, but I’m going to keep thinking about this.

Developing practical experiences around struggle. Can a particular experience be designed to help all kids and adults become comfortable with struggle?

Again, no easy answer, I’ll keep thinking here.

Practical note: I discussed this project and the idea of failure with Sarah Hampton. She and I agree that it is important to instill the iteration/design process into lessons and yet we find it hard to take the time with current academic expectations and demands in the school day. If you have suggestions for us, please share via Twitter at @circleducators and #CIRCLedu

Presenters’ Choice Award Winning Project:Hero Elementary

January 7, 2020Science, STEM, Student-driven Learning, Video ShowcaseAngie Kalthoff

By Angie Kalthoff

When I saw that Joan Freese was the lead presenter for Hero Elementary, I knew I had to check it out! I have long followed her work at TPT Twin Cities with SciGirls, a separate project. The project I’ve been most interested in is SciGirls Code: A National Connected Learning Model to Integrate Computing in STEM Learning with Middle School Girls, supported by the National Science Foundation’s STEM + Computing Partnerships Program. You may have read my post from last year on the STEM For ALL Video Showcase Featuring SciGirls Code. I knew I wanted to review this Presenters’ Choice award winning project called Hero Elementary.

Overview of the program
The video gives an introduction to Hero Elementary. Go watch it if you haven’t. Hero Elementary is described as an equity driven educational media initiative focused on improving school readiness on science and literacy in grades K-2. The design of the program includes aspects on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and equity strategies. Kids engage in activities to promote a growth mindset and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in a blended approach. They have real world hands-on learning plus digital and multimedia learning. It has 25 science-themed educational media collections, called “playlists,” which are ”aligned to NGSS. Resources provided to educators include:

Animated stories
Digital and analog games
Non-fiction ebooks
Hands-on science activities
Digital Science Power Notebook

Hero Elementary has a target audience of kids in Latinx communities, English Language Learners, children with disabilities, and children from low-income households.The program “ignites children’s natural curiosity, broadens their understanding of how the world works, and empowers them to make a positive difference in their communities.” Their approach is child centered, equity focused, and asset based. As a constructivist inspired program, kids build their knowledge through active learning and reflection, which helps them make sense of their new learning experiences.

The goal of the program
Using formative research to aid in development, the project is working to transform learning and track progress with embedded learning analytics. Hero Elementary’s resources integrate science and literacy. The team identified similarities in the following English and science standards strands:

Science and Engineering Practices: Utilize the skills, thinking, and language of Scientific Inquiry and Engineering Design.
Literacy & English Language arts: Produce and receive communication in a variety of forms.

Through playful characters, kids learn about the “Superpowers of Science” by engaging in activities that encourage them to investigate, collect information, look for patterns, name the problem, make sense, explain, ask questions, compare, show what they know, and figure out a solution. Science educators will recognize these superpowers as the Science and Engineering practices, part of the NGSS. The program has a focus on literacy as well that appeals to many of the educators who have been involved in the development of this program. The program will debut for all this coming summer.

Educators involved with this program receive professional development training and free resources. Hero Elementary uses a train-the-trainer model with support from child-serving partners across the country, all of whom have a strong commitment to equity, interest in science education, and experience working with targeted student groups.

Using in practice
If you work in elementary education, you have probably experienced that the school day is full and planned out to the minute. I think the approach Hero School has taken – alignment to standards that schools are already implementing – is great.
Hero Elementary is broken into playlists. A playlist is a collection of content about a topic to inspire, empower, and deepen children’s science learning. Each playlist consists of the following resources: ebooks, hands on-activities, notebooks, videos, and digital games. While there are 25 playlists, educators can pick what works best in their classroom.

Through the research done on this project, the Hero Elementary team has found that kids are paying attention to the extent to which a character is relatable. CIRCL Educators feel that this topic deserves its own blog post. Watch for an upcoming post to read more about how kids are paying attention to character relatableness and why this matters for learning. In the meantime, check out how Hero Elementary can help bring fun science content and NGSS into your classroom.

Career Connections: Bridging the gaps through STEM Explorations and Community Partnerships

September 16, 2019Uncategorized, Video Showcase, Written by: Angie KalthoffAngie Kalthoff

By Angie Kalthoff

I’ll be doing a series of blog posts around videos I from the NSF 2019 Video Showcase. The Bridging the gaps video caught my attention because I worked with underserved and underrepresented students for many years. As a technology integrationist, I was constantly thinking about how I could connect students and their families with careers they may not know about–maybe even careers in our own community. Based on our goal of connecting with the community, during the Hour of Code celebration in December, we created Community Code. Community Code was a way to bring people from our community into our classrooms to share their jobs and how technology is used in their workplace.

In addition, some local businesses and universities hosted family nights and offered a variety of activities for families to engage with. The goal was to connect our community with our classrooms from kindergarten through senior high school. As I watched the video, I became interested in learning more about this project because of the segment where students and community members shared their experiences.

Overview of the Program
i3STEM is a project focusing on “inquiry based extended learning opportunities for underserved and under-represented middle school student populations.” This program includes hands on STEM explorations and collaborative events with community partners for college and career connections. Researchers on this project are working to increase an interest in STEM through the events that are offered to the underserved and under-represented students in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. Their goal is to grow academic achievement in science and math and increase STEM awareness with the outcome of more students going into STEM careers. “STEMgineers”, students in the program, shared experiences about field trips, activities, and how they are now inspired to be future computer scientists, geologists, and science teachers! Kids who have faced challenges in the traditional classroom have now been able to participate in an experience that made them feel empowered and successful. Students were excited about the experiences they had with their community partners. The video shows how connections that were once difficult to make were turned into real life learning opportunities. Researchers close the video with a statement sharing how the experiences the students had are helpful for the whole child and not just for academics.

The Goal of the Program
Career Connections: Bridging the gaps through STEM Explorations and Community Partnerships offers extended learning opportunities to underrepresented schools. Their goal is to improve academic achievement in science in math, increase awareness and interest in stem in hopes that their students will pursue STEM related careers.

Outcome of the Program
A few of the main points researched include:

Attendance and participation in learning opportunities
Student views and interests in STEM or pursuing a STEM career
Student scores in math and science
Academic/observation scores for teachers in the program

They shared positive results in the Stem For All Showcase discussion; those included:

73% of the students entering high school chosea STEM academy
75% of students expressed an interest in pursuing a STEM related career
Academic gains for students in both math and science doubled from one year to the next
73% of the teachers in the program have maintained or increased state standardized testing scores based on their students’ performance.

My thoughts on how this could be used in practice
After viewing their i3STEM website, I was able to see numerous activities that were implemented in their classes. Some of the activities were similar to what I’ve done in classrooms while some were brand new to me. For example, the Mystery Bag STEM pdf, includes cards that you can print off and add to a bag with resources for students to complete a project. Other projects include:

“As part of the Homestead Act, you are required to cultivate your many acres of land. Using only the items in your bag, engineer a technology to help with that task.”
“Production costs for your “Fancy Fidget” have gone up. Using the items in your bag, engineer an interesting fidget toy that costs less than .75 to build.”

The way the website is organized makes it easy for viewers to find what they are looking for based on the following categories:

Teacher Resources

– Here you can find lesson plans, links to helpful videos, and a teacher guide.

Student Resources (which were used for their project, probably less helpful for you)

– Student survey links, links to resources for local issues, help for choosing topics, and resources for projects.

About Us

– Shares contact information for the project, information about the schools and sponsors, and an over of the project evaluation.

I found their resources and thinking really helpful. I think this is a great way to create a bridge between community and education.

We’d love to hear from you — Tweet to @CIRCLEducators or use #CIRCLEdu.

STEM for All Video Showcase Featuring SciGirls Code

October 2, 2018Computational Thinking, Computer Science, STEM, Video Showcase, Written by: Angie KalthoffAngie Kalthoff

By Angie Kalthoff

The STEM for ALL Video Showcase is an online film festival of 3-minute videos about educational projects that are really interesting to watch. It includes projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other organizations with a goal to highlight projects that are transforming Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science education. In 2018, there were 214 video projects shared that highlighted the work of 713 presenters and co-presenters. The showcase project brought people from over 174 countries to the site to learn and discuss.

The showcase is an interactive event. Viewers were invited to ask questions and have discussions with the people doing the research and with other viewers, right on the site in a discussion thread. You can still go read the conversations that happened on the site during the event. Conversations were also carried over to social media. To follow along the Twitter conversation, you can visit #STEMvideohall.

An additional element making this an interactive project is the awards. Projects were recognized through the following awards:

Facilitator Choice
Presenter Choice
Public Choice

All projects fell into one of the following themes which revolve around

Transforming the Educational Landscape:

Partnerships that advance education
Broadening participation & access to high quality STEM experiences
Innovative practices transforming education
Research informing STEM learning and teaching

As a facilitator for the STEM for ALL Videoshow case, my job was to review projects and facilitate conversations with presenters and visitors. I facilitated discussions on projects around Computer Science (CS) and Computational Thinking (CT) in education. For me, this was an incredibly exciting experience. I am a public school educator, more specifically a Technology Integrationist. I began my teaching career in an elementary English Learner (EL) classroom before transitioning to my current position. I am constantly thinking about ways to incorporate CS and CT into elementary classrooms while creating a culture where classroom teachers confidently deliver the lessons. In my job, I have conversations on a daily basis with educators, families, administrators, our community, and students about the importance of CS and CT in education. This showcase gave me insight into projects that are currently being worked on to make CS and CT education accessible for all students in a variety of different ways.

The video project I would like to highlight in this post is SciGirls Code: A National Connected Learning CS Model. It was the winner of Presenters Choice and Public Choice awards!

As described on the site, “SciGirls Code,” a pilot program funded by the National Science Foundation STEM + C program, uses principles of connected learning with 16 STEM outreach partners to provide 160 girls and their 32 leaders with computational thinking and coding skills. To reach this goal, SciGirls developed:

a nine-month curriculum centering on three tracks—mobile apps, robotics, and e-textiles;
role model training for female technology professionals;
professional development for STEM educators; and
a research component that investigates the ways in which computational learning experiences impact the development of computational thinking as well as interest and attitudes toward computer science (CS.)”

Girls in the program participate in projects around apps, robotics, and e-textiles all while sharing their learning with other girls in the program across the nation. Using Flipgrid, a Minnesota startup, girls create quick videos in which they share their thoughts and experiences. Through their experience they understand that coding isn’t an individual venture, it is connected.

SciGirls Code is trying to understand the following three questions:

How do computational learning experiences impact the development of computational thinking? [learning]
How does engaging in computational learning experiences impact interest in and attitudes towards computer science? [interest]
How does engaging in computational participation practices impact learners’ perspectives of self and world? [participation]

What they have seen so far from girls who participate in SciGirlsCode:

Increased confidence with coding in girls
Increased interest in pursuing CS careers
Excitement around CS, CT, and coding in general

I loved learning more about SciGirls because prior to the showcase I had been using and sharing resources from SciGirls Code. One of my favorite ways to talk with kids about STEM+C careers (which is STEM with Computing) and why we learn about computer science, is through personal stories. I have found many of SciGirls Code profiles helpful when introducing a coding or robotics activity. I like to start my lessons in classrooms by connecting how what we are doing could relate to the world around them. It could connect to a future career or real life examples they have experienced. While many of the activities have a focus towards girls in middle school, I am able to be selective in resources and adapt them to meet the needs for kids in kindergarten or while working with students of any age.

When you have time, visit their website so you can explore the many different resources they have. They have so much in addition to coding resources. Here are a few of my favorite:

Profiles – Featuring a variety of young and diverse women in STEM careers through short videos that showcase their careers and experiences.
Educator Resources – Providing a variety of resources for classroom use, access to training, and scholarships.
Kid Resources – A site for kids to explore videos, games, and create their own profile.

How do you connect classroom activities on STEM+C with real world stories? Who are the female role models you look to when encouraging a more inclusive culture? How could you use SciGirlsCode resources with kids you know (in and out of the classroom)?

The STEM for All Video Showcase is funded by (Award #1642187) and done in collaboration with the following NSF-funded resource centers: MSPnet, CADRE, CIRCL, CAISE, STELAR, and CS for All Teachers.

Visit the following links to see additional projects Facilitator Choice , Presenter Choice , Public Choice

Visit the following link to view additional facilitators.