Mar 25, 2015
Maker Units 3D printed keyring for the gate lock which holds everything in place. It's barely finished so it can be used as an example of Making alongside other parts of the Unit.
seen from Taiwan
seen from United States
seen from Albania
seen from Indonesia
seen from Italy
seen from United Arab Emirates
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from Türkiye
seen from Mexico
seen from China
seen from India
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from Mexico
seen from China
Maker Units 3D printed keyring for the gate lock which holds everything in place. It's barely finished so it can be used as an example of Making alongside other parts of the Unit.
Next step for Maker Units. The Lego unit shows how the same frame and components can be changed to suit different Maker technologies and projects.
Classrooms and Maker Units
Another challenge to address is the size of classes and the workload for each Maker Unit. Ideally, classes should be small and the Maker Unit should have few bottleneck activities which require students to wait for their turn. Any bottlenecks that do exist should be brief, interesting to watch, or dispersed by staggering the projects.
In 2012, the Education Act changed the class sizes for Ontario schools. The maximum average is a slightly misleading restriction because it allows for far larger classes if the majority of classes are smaller.
Kindergarten: a maximum average of 26 students
Other primary: an absolute maximum of 23, and at least 90% of classes must have 20 or less.
Elementary grades 4-8: varies according to a list of school boards, unlisted school boards including the OCDSB have a maximum average of 24.5
Secondary school: Maximum average 22
These numbers are very low, which is good news for Maker Units! To really understand how class size affects the success of a Maker Unit is not possible at this time due to the strict ethics clearance needed, but testing Units on classes would be a good way to ensure their success and to handle any bottlenecks.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be talking to a few different Makers and creating prototype Maker Units around a project. We will discuss activities which the entire class can do at the same time, such as the design stage, and activities where only 1 or 2 students can work at the same time.
One of the challenges for teachers using Maker Units is the amount of knowledge needed to operate and teach the wide range of topics. This booklet aims to take some of the pressure off the teacher. The aim is to bring a non-designer through a simple but fairly complete design process that results in an object that can be fabricated on the Maker Unit. Follow the link to take a look at the 3D design prototype that I will be testing - if it results in objects that could be built easily in TinkerCAD and printed on a Makerbot, it will be a success. One of the responsibilities of the Maker Units company will be to work with Makers and crafters to create new Units with lesson plans and booklets like this. That actually sounds like a fun job!
If you're interested in filling in the 13 page booklet please let me know so I can send you the ethics paperwork that allows me to use your results. Advice about the book language and format itself would also be useful.