Larbi at LAB

"Reflections on my experience as a Teach For America Summer Startup Intern with Wynnwood Maker Camp at The LAB Miami." ~ Joan Larbi

[jylarbi]

Rocking the 3D Printed Glasses designed by one of our campers.

[jylarbi]

When I showed up for work at the LAB today, Nelson and two of the students were flying the drones that the kids had assembled. As you will see, one of the challenges I faced this week was nearly getting hit by a drone. The goal of the game was to land the drone safely on the chair--a very difficult task. But we have a pilot/aeronautical engineer in the making, which is a lot more than I can say for myself. When I tried to fly the drone it literally fell out of the air. Let's just say, for the time being I will be sticking to paper planes.

[jylarbi]

It's Not Finished Yet...And It May Never Be

One of my first impressions when I walked into the LAB Miami space five weeks ago was that in Ghana and Nigeria, some people, contractors and civilians alike, might consider this an uncompleted building. Some of the interior walls are not painted, the lighting wires are visible and the air-conditioning tubing is exposed. Spaces like that are far and few between in Ghana. Not because air conditioning is a luxury, but because they would be considered incomplete, lacking the necessary finishing. Usually, if a building is left unfinished, we assume it is because the owner is yet to come up with the money to finish it.

 So why the cultural commentary? I think it highlights one of the things I've been learning about vision, strategy, team, and leadership throughout my internship experience. It’s simple, really. Almost none of these are fixed, rather they are always morphing in order to move the organization forward. Consider the example of the camp's team.

A quick glance at the Wynwood Maker Camp website reveals head-shots of the six core team members of the organization. However, students and recent graduates with an interest in technology and education are inherently attracted to the agenda of the camp. Up to four interns, myself included, are currently working on promotional videos, article writing, lesson planning, curriculum design, monitoring and evaluation, and general camp counseling. This arrangement has benefited the organization well, adding valuable human capital at little cost. This is a point that Blake Mycoskie emphasizes several times in his book Start Something That Matters.

In addition, two Maker Ed Americorps Vista members recently started working at the LAB. They are here to support the growth of MIAMADE, the parent organization of the Wynwood Maker Camp. Specifically, they will be focusing on community outreach and funding sources. The timing is perfect. This week, we were visited by the principal of Gibson Public Charter School in Overtown. Partnership with Gibson could be an opportunity to continue bringing maker education to the community beyond summer.

 I don’t know if the LAB’s interior is “finished” or not, but from the outside it appears so with the vibrant street-facing mural on its exterior. For my purposes, this makes for a great extended metaphor because startups are similar. I’ve learnt that not everything is really deemed “finished,” and this can be a good thing. Labelling something as “finished” implies that there is absolutely no opportunity to expand upon it and a startup cannot afford to operate on this assumption.. 

[jylarbi]

Evolving Responsibilities

In my opinion, the best internships offer evolving responsibilities so that the intern has the opportunity to build different skills. That said, one of the things I appreciate most about my internship at Wynwood Maker Camp is the flexibility that Nelson and Willie have given me with my assignment. The core of my project is to codify learning experiences into actual lesson plans that culminate into a “curriculum” that is easy to implement (Read Curriculum is like Coke, if you haven’t already). However, after having several talks with Nelson about the vision for the camp, I thought it might be more useful to the young organization if I expanded this project somewhat.

In my internships, I have collaborated with other interns to submit more formal documents. When I worked with the Penn International Business Volunteer team we wrote a non-profit plan (a business plan for a non-profit organization) for the Abusua Foundations Civil Society Incubator. At ILC Africa, I worked with another Penn student to draft portions of a Monitoring and Evaluation report that was later submitted to USAID. Both of these internships were great learning experiences for me and stirred my interest in international development and non-profits, especially since they were in Ghana.

Well, this week I decided that I would challenge myself a little more. I think if I take the monitoring and evaluation report/business plan approach, the final document will be undeniably more comprehensive. Am I saying I’m going to produce the near 100 pages that made up the final USAID report? Far from it. Instead, my goal is to identify current best practices and identify areas for improvement in addition to writing lesson plans. I’m hoping I will be done by the end of next week so that some of the recommendations can be “piloted” in the next two-week session.  

As I worked on my report, I was surrounded by campers collaborating to defeat witches, mine for diamonds, and build houses on the new MineCraft server one of them had set up through Linux. Although you can’t see all of them, I’m sure their laptop screens were slightly more captivating than the sections of the report I was writing at the time. As for the floating head, what can I say? Kids like to move.

[jylarbi]

Those who would judge us merely by the heights we achieved would do well to remember the depths from which we started.

Kwame Nkrumah, First President of Ghana, In 1968, reflecting on the struggles of developing Ghana after it gained independence in 1957. 

[jylarbi]

Week 3 - The Struggle is Real

In the last few days, we’ve had a few outside organizations bring their students to the LAB Miami to learn about the Maker Movement. On the first day, we hosted students from the BizNovator Camp. Then, eight graders from the Overtown Youth Center visited us. During both of these visits, the team asked me to lead a short session. The idea was to introduce the students to the Maker Movement by having them collaboratively construct something. I chose to run the Marshmallow Challenge as it is an activity I have done with my own 5th grade students in the past. The challenge is to build the tallest free-standing structure in 18 minutes using 20 sticks of spaghetti, a yard of masking tape, a yard of string, and a marshmallow. The catch is the marshmallow must be on top.

In both sessions, only one or two of all the teams ended up with a tower that actually stood. This can be frustrating for participants, but lends itself to several lessons. In the Marshmallow Challenge TED talk, Tom Wujec encourages people to be wary of the underlying assumptions of any project. In the activity, the false assumption is that marshmallows are light and fluffy. Instead, you’re advised to build prototypes to get to the final version. And so, the premise of the activity, I believe, is that the process is as important (if not, more) as the product.

I’ve been reflecting on this recently and can confidently say that this concept definitely applies to startups. Yes, it’s true, that ideally a startup will shed its “startup” skin blossom into a strong, solid company (product). However, a startup is intrinsically about starting something to get to that point (process). When you are looking at a start up from the outside in, you want to know “what” the big idea is, “what” makes it different. On the other hand, when you’re on the inside your focus is on “how” to make the idea reality. In my time with the Wynwood Maker Camp team, I have learnt a lot about the vision for the organization. However, underlying each of these conversations has been the growth trajectory. I am learning that startups only succeed when entrepreneurs are striving, strategizing, and literally sweating towards their goal. In other words, the startup struggle is real. 

[jylarbi]

A great synopsis of Miami's blossoming maker culture.

[jylarbi]

Week 2 – Curriculum is like Coke

Last week, I wrote that I would be “working with the Maker Camp team to codify some of the learning experiences of the camp into a curriculum.” As I kicked off this assignment, I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was doing. I decided to conduct some research online on how to design a curriculum. I read a few short papers on everything from developing a physical education curriculum to curriculum development for “turning around” failing middle schools. It gave me a lot insight into the elementary school curriculum on math and science that is used at my school and most Florida public schools.

However, as I learnt more, I came to realize that for the purposes of my internship project, a curriculum is too broad in scope. It turns out the word “curriculum,” is similar to brand names that were so successful that they are now often used to define entire products. Think Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, Ziploc and apparently, Tupperware and Popsicle, too. Curriculum is commonly used to describe learning goals for a few days, months, or even years. Yet, curriculum should define the planned learning goals in the broadest sense. See below.

Retrieved from page 36, The Process of Designing the Curriculum.  http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/dl/free/0767410084/581879/Rink_ch03.pdf

The document I was asked to develop could be considered more of a unit plan/implementation guide—procedures, schedules, lesson plans, etc. I say, implementation guide because the idea is that, given all the materials, someone else should be able come into the LAB and use said document to run the Maker Camp.

So was all my research in vain? I think not. On the contrary, I am confident I will be able to apply my findings in the short term and long-term.  In the short-term, I plan to incorporate some of the components of a curriculum into the guide that I am writing to ensure the educational value of the camp is captured and reflected. A few of these are themes, essential questions, learning goals, and assessment.

“What about the long-term application?” you wonder. Simple. I am a teacher. More than anything, my stint of research forced me to reflect on my own leadership in my classroom. One of the things that stuck with me was expanding learning goals into content knowledge, skill sets, and mindsets. This is an ongoing discussion at my school. It pleases me to have had the opportunity to briefly explore what goes into the making of a curriculum. It is one thing to be told to do something; it is another to see for one's self the rationale behind it explained.

[jylarbi]

I forgot that I had recorded this little snippet yesterday. Today, I had a conversation with one of the students who printed it. He is 14 and loves to draw anime characters. The 3D print is supposed to be of a Dragon Ball Z character called Trunks pictured below.

Picture retrieved from http://www.templeotrunks.com/images/screencaps/movie9_1.html 

Unfortunately, the printer botched his arms. But it was a teachable moment. Quick physics lesson. Because the printer builds from the bottom up, any part of the model that doesn't touch the platform would need some sort of scaffolding to support it. Gravity doesn't like it when you try to print something floating in the air. 

If you haven't guessed by now, I am in awe of this 3D printer! I find it even more fascinating that it is here, now, for the kids to use. So allow me to have a "when I was a child" moment. I know, I know, some things are still the same. We had Dragon Ball Z too. But, back in the day 3D modeling meant playing with Lego and Play-Doh. Remember?

[jylarbi]

Week 1 - Make It

Wynwood Maker Camp is a two-week camp for elementary and middle school students. It is designed to introduce students to computer science and cutting-edge technology in order to encourage them to become “makers.” It is an initiative of MIA Made, a non-profit organization that aims to foster a maker culture in Miami. “Sounds Great. But what exactly is a maker?” I wondered.

When I was in middle school in Syria, I had an English teacher who always encouraged us to replace general words such as “happy” with more descriptive synonyms such as “joyous,” “ecstatic,” or “grateful.” I imagined “make” would fall in the former category and decided to engage in this quick mental exercise and brainstorm some synonyms. Create. Design. Invent.  Innovate. Build. Mold. Construct. Maker Education empowers people to do all these things by equipping them with the skill-sets and technology to craft something that was not there before. 

This is exactly what is happening at Maker Camp. At first glance, it may look like a bunch of students doing whatever they want to. Don’t fret yet. This is a good thing. On further inspection, I realized that that nine-year old is actually a virtual architect. He is interested in designing and building houses on Minecraft. Similarly, one of the middle school students had designed a 3D model of a boat using Tinker Cad software and I had the pleasure of watching his creation literally come to life in a 3D Printer.

  As a teacher, what excites me most about Maker Camp is that the learning is student-driven. This is so critical for STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). In the first week of the camp, the students are taught mini-lessons on all of the technology available to them. In the second week, they decide what they want to explore further and it becomes their maker project.

For the next six weeks, I will be working with the Maker Camp team to codify some of the learning experiences of the camp into a curriculum. The goal is to make it easy to implement so that, even with limited resources, students can be taught and can explore the basics of computational thinking and maker culture.

 As with every great thing, there are some challenges to designing this kind of framework. Consider two. First of all, technology is not a given factor for everyone. This is a reality that I am hyper-aware of. I will need to work with the team to develop a way to expose students to computing, programming, and modeling without the micro-computers, 3D printers, or even internet access. Secondly, we will face the difficulty of how to codify essentially what is a fluid and organic exploratory learning process. It may seem like a tall order, but maker education will have the greatest positive impact if it remains student-led and is accessible to all.