The MIT Teaching Systems Lab, in collaboration with nonprofit maker education training and resources organization Maker Ed, is working on just that—how to embed assessment into maker activities to quantify what the students are learning, while not destroying the pedagogy in the process. Beyond Rubrics: Assessment in Making is a two-year grant project funded by the National Science Foundation. Research scientists, maker experts, and schools in San Mateo, CA, and Charlottesville, VA, are working together to create a way to evaluate making. Robert Pronovost—San Mateo district lead for this project and innovative learning and technology integration coordinator for the California county with 23 school districts—sees establishing assessments as key to maker sustainability.
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
