Giveaway: Smudge Studios gift certificate

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It’s Day 5 of our week of giveaways in honor of Alt Ed Austin’s second anniversary, and those notorious instigators of creativity over at Smudge Studios are helping us celebrate! They’ve offered up a $45 workshop gift certificate to one of our readers. They have lots of awesome art workshops for kids and adults to choose from, including some with winter holiday themes coming right up.

Smudge Studios after-school and homeschool students’ recent work with watercolors, salt, glue, wax, alcohol, and pushpins

Smudge founders Heather and Jaclyn both come from teaching backgrounds with an emphasis in art. They firmly believe that “everyone has a creative soul waiting to be unleashed”—and they are experts at that tricky unleashing part. In addition to workshops, they offer after-school and homeschool classes, weekend workshops, camps, adult studio time, parties, and other events for all ages.

Don’t miss the Smudge Studios Holiday Bazaar on Saturday, December 14, featuring handmade gifts from local artists. And if you need to get the kids out of the house on December 23 for some creative hands-on fun, sign them up for the Smudge Studios half-day winter camp for ages 4–13.

Back to the giveaway: You can enter the randomized drawing in various ways below. Be sure to do so by midnight on Thursday, December 12; we’ll announce the winners of all of the week’s special giveaways on Friday. Good luck!

 

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Giveaway: Set of 3 Tinkering Challenge Boxes

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I love a good mystery, so I’m excited to the point of goosebumps that our friends at the Austin Tinkering School have donated a set of three mysterious Tinkering Challenge Boxes in honor of our Anniversary Giveaway Week. Here are the clues provided on the outside of the boxes:

Each box contains 1 (one) random assortment of odds and ends, and 1 (one) building challenge designed to test your mettle, creativity, and ingenuity. ALL ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.  You may use tape or glue (not provided). HAPPY TINKERING.

These would make excellent holiday gifts for the young inquiring minds in your life. Each is different, and you could win them all! Pick one or more ways to enter below.

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This drawing closes at midnight on Thursday, Dec. 12; we’ll announce the winner on Friday the 13th. If you’ve missed our other 2nd Anniversary Week giveaways, you have through Thursday to enter those, too. Thanks for your support!

Giveaway: Toybrary Austin pass

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One of the best things to happen this year for Austin families was the opening of Toybrary Austin. It truly is a marvelous concept and green business model; as owner and longtime educator Liza Wilson explains on the website:

A toy library operates much like a book library, only the items available for loan are toys, making it possible for parents to offer their children age-appropriate toys at each developmental stage without having to spend a lot of money or have a ton of storage space. We have over 850 toys available for checkout, so come check it out!

But the Toybrary is about much more than toys. Drop in during any given week, and you might find language immersion classes for toddlers, art labs for older kids, parenting workshops, concerts by popular children’s performers like Staci Gray and Laura Freeman, puppet shows, Heartsong music classes, yoga, Lego birthday parties, and even date night child care. There’s also plenty of quiet time when you can sip a cup of tea and read or chat while your child explores the beautiful, clean, developmentally stimulating indoor play area.

Can you tell how much I love this place? Then you can imagine my delight when Liza contributed a six-day Stay & Play pass for Alt Ed Austin’s Anniversary Giveaway Week. This would be a great holiday gift for a friend—or yourself! You have several ways to enter, with up to eight chances to win. We’ll keep the entry box (below) open through Thursday and announce the winner on lucky Friday the 13th.

Toybrary Austin, located at 7817 Rockwood Lane in north central Austin near Anderson Lane, is open from 10am to 6pm Tuesday through Saturday.

 

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The future is STEAMy

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Maggie Duval wears many hats comfortably: event producer, web developer, futurist, alt educator, mom. In her guest post for Alt Ed Austin she shares the news about her latest project, STEAM3, the conference and “Interactive Playground” that is shaping up to be one of the most interesting events of 2014.

GIVEAWAY: As part of Alt Ed Austin’s 2nd anniversary celebration, we have two pairs of Interactive Playground passes to give away—each good for one adult and one student. There are lots of ways to enter the drawing; you’ll find the entry form at the end of the post, along with a special discount code for all Alt Ed Austin readers who want to attend the whole shebang. Thanks, Maggie!


 

I’m very excited about a new project I’m working on that weaves together my four great loves:  alternative approaches to education (including STEM/STEAM), mining the brilliance that lives at the intersection of art and technology, futures studies, and emerging technology. Called STEAM3 (Science + Tech + Engineering + Arts + Math “cubed”), it will take place in early March and is the first public event of its kind to present a comprehensive look into the future of experiential learning. It will provide an interactive stage for the exploration and demonstration of the emerging approaches, formats, technologies, and learning models that will redefine education over the next decade.

The buzz is huge around STEM in education, which focuses on bringing kids up to speed on science, technology, engineering, and math skills by masterfully blending holistic and cross-disciplinary approaches to teaching and engagement. However, many are finally acknowledging the importance of the arts in that equation, hence the “A” in STEAM. The “cubed” part comes from our desire to address the whole child, explore alternative approaches to education (which as a mom I’ve been passionate about since my own childhood), as well as engendering a positive, empowered approach to what’s coming toward us in the future.

I have developed the event with professional futurist Derek Woodgate of The Futures Lab, who is also Consultant in Residence at the Digital Arts and Entertainment Lab (DAEL) at Georgia State University. I serve as CEO for two divisions of The Futures Lab, Inc., Learning Innovations in Future Education (LIFE) and the Future Entertainment and Events Lab (FEEL). The latter was formerly known as Plutopia Productions, Inc., which I also headed up, and we produced numerous “sense events” at SXSW Interactive and beyond.

For this unique two-day event held in Austin, Texas, we’ve assembled some of the world’s foremost experts in the field of future education as well as the most innovative and immersive demonstrations and exhibits of emerging educational technologies in what we’re terming our “Interactive Playground,” featuring such areas as the Living Classroom, Make Magic, Interactive Storytelling, and the Game of Learning. Special panels and demos will address topics such as alternative approaches to education, avatars for learning, “education is art, art is education,” girls in engineering, and more.

The family-friendly event is for parents, kids, and educators certainly, but also for artists, instructional designers, “makers,” instructors/trainers, content creators, mobile development designers, researchers, and more! And this is only the beginning of our journey. It will continue through a number of similar events that we are planning for Atlanta, Georgia; Belo Horizonte, Brazil; and Manchester, UK, as well as through an online post-event portal and virtual and in-person salons.

Our Keynote Speakers include:

There will also be talks and demos from MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group, Nano Art by Cris Orfescu, Experimental Geography by Nato Thompson, and Algorithmic Art from Joel Kahn. And don’t miss Art, Technology, and Augmented Reality from Marvin Neibuhr and Dr. Bruce Niebuhr, Gamification for Learning by Billy Joe Cain, and Makerspace, a space for young children to learn about STEAM-oriented topics with Joseph Lopez, Head of Faculty of Convergent Media at the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio.

STEAM3
Conference and Interactive Playground
March 1 & 2, 2014
UT Commons Learning Center
JJ Pickle Research Campus, University of Texas
10100 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78758

VIP Party for conference ticket holders
and special guests only
Saturday, March 1, at ATX Hackerspace
9701 Dessau Road, Suite 304, Austin, TX 78754

More information and tickets are available at steam3.com. Full Conference + Interactive Playground + VIP party tickets are priced at $99.95 until December 31—and Alt Ed Austin readers get an extra $10 off this special rate! Just use the coupon code ALTEDATX at checkout. Feel free to share with your friends. On January 1, the price goes up to $124.95. Interactive Playground–only tickets range from $7.50 to $25.

This event is sponsored in part by The Futures Lab, Inc., Learning Innovations in Future Education (LIFE), Skybridge Academy, and ATX Hackerspace.

See you there!

Maggie Duval

 

Enter below to win one of two pairs of adult + student passes to the STEAM3 Interactive Playground on either day!

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When what you’re doing isn’t really working

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Joey Hajda holds a doctorate in veterinary science and a master’s degree in secondary and higher education curriculum and instruction. He has taught science courses at the middle and high school levels for more than 20 years as well as at the community college level. He and his wife, Lisa Hajda, MEd, are homeschooling parents and coauthors of the innovative and popular Friendly Chemistry curriculum. In this refreshingly honest guest post, Joey shares his bumpy journey to becoming a creative, highly effective educator.

GIVEAWAY: Joey and Lisa have kindly offered a complete set of Friendly Chemistry (a $120 value) to one lucky reader in honor of Alt Ed Austin’s 2nd anniversary. Read on to find out all the ways you can enter to win!


My first teaching job was in a rural public school in Northeast Texas. I was assigned the whole science department (grades 7–12), which was great for developing continuity between subject areas but rather exhausting when it came to lesson preparation. But I managed, and I grew to enjoy it.

Teaching the life sciences came easily due to my veterinary training, but for chemistry I had to rely more heavily upon the text. My chemistry course was good, though—or so I thought. After about two years, I began to receive feedback that the students to whom I had taught chemistry were failing their freshman chemistry course at the nearby junior college. Yikes! Could that be true? What was going on?

I went to the junior college to find out what was being expected of freshman chemistry students and to determine what was wrong with what I was doing. Something needed to change because not only were these kids failing this course, but they were also getting the idea that pursuing a college degree was now unattainable. Things were going sour for these kids, and I needed to do some serious thinking about what we were doing in my classroom.

After looking closely at the college’s freshman chemistry course syllabus, I readily saw that the course was really just a repeat of the concepts I had been presenting to students in my course, but it all came at a much faster pace in a single semester rather than a year-long course. I dissected the syllabus in greater detail to determine exactly what concepts my students needed to fully understand in order to be successful in this course. I made the decision to focus only upon these basic chemistry concepts and forget about the rest. While we had been “covering” most of the text, my students had really not had the time to fully understand these basic concepts. In my class, they were scoring well on tests and final grades were stellar, but in reality they were only excelling at memorizing a multitude of tiny facts and not understanding the “big picture” of chemistry whatsoever. Things had to change.

I went to my chemistry text, all 15 pounds of it, and set about locating those basic concepts that I felt matched those required in the college course. When I compared them to what the district (and state) required, we were well within the prescribed scope of the course. Next, I thought long and hard about the sequence in which these concepts were being presented within my text. The sequence that the text followed wasn’t making the best sense, so I experimented with rearranging them and came up with a plan that I hoped would be a more logical approach for my students.

This was all good, but then the thought came to me: if I pared away 70 percent of the text material, would I have enough for a year of teaching? And then a second thought came to me: maybe part of my earlier problem, in addition to covering way too many concepts, was the fact that maybe I wasn’t giving my students enough practice at the concepts I was presenting to them. Maybe we were moving along too fast. And again, maybe it was just good memorization on the part of the kids that was allowing them to keep afloat. Maybe, we just needed to slow down and spend more time with each concept and then practice more of what we learned.

But more practice only meant more worksheets. Or did it? As a church youth group leader and middle school camp counselor, I’d always loved group games. I enjoyed the combination of physical play with intense application of some sort of concept. I began developing classroom games—both running-around-the-room-type games and board games—that could allow for practice of the chemistry concepts we were learning. We were now enjoying ourselves with the fun and challenge and “physicalness” of the game.

Together, my students and I modified the games, which gave them ownership of the process and resulted in greater effectiveness. They always wanted to make the rules more challenging. What was once drudgery turned into my having to limit “practice” time in order to move on to new concepts. I think one of the best things to come from this experience was the fact that the students could see that I, too, really enjoyed play. We had fun—lots of good fun.

Smores and Stoichiometry: One of many fun and effective activities in Friendly Chemistry

And the learning came. My students were no longer experiencing failure as they entered their freshman chemistry courses, whether at the local junior college or at universities others were attending. Things were better, they really were. In this case, some of my classroom teaching had not been as effective as I had hoped. It took some time to evaluate the whole situation and more time to remedy it, as well as taking risks to get things fixed. But, in the end, those efforts paid off.

Joey Hajda

 

And here’s your payoff: Enter here for your chance (or several chances) to get a complete set of Friendly Chemistry. This includes:

1 Student Textbook
1 Volume 1 Teacher’s Edition
1 Volume 2 Teacher’s Edition
1 Manipulative Set
1 Annotated Solutions Manual

Total Retail Value: $120.00. Bonus: Everyone who enters the giveaway will receive a discount coupon on one purchase at friendlychemistry.com.

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Thanks to Joey and Lisa for helping mark Alt Ed Austin’s two-year milestone. Stay tuned all week for more great giveaways!

Austin Mini Maker Faire 2013!

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Today’s guest post comes from one of Austin’s most beloved educators: Kami Wilt, director of the Austin Tinkering School. She is currently reprising her role as producer of the Austin Mini Maker Faire, and here she shares the latest news about my favorite event of the year. Read to the end to find out how you can enter to win a family pack of tickets!


We’re super excited to be putting on our second annual Austin Mini Maker Faire on May 5, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the Palmer Events Center. 

Last year our first Austin Mini Maker Faire had over 2,000 attendees, more than twice as many as expected. It was a DIY extravaganza of hands-on projects, robots, electric vehicles, glassblowing, and so much more. This year we have over 100 Makers signed up, and we expect 5,000 attendees. (Not so mini, you might say!)

The Faire will feature:

  • A Robot Petting Zoo
  • Steampunk Village
  • Mega Swap-o-rama of clothes-hacking and fabric arts
  • FIRST robotics stage with robot battles and more
  • Tinkering: Open Shop
  • Eco makers of all sorts in our Sustainable Village
  • Young Makers and Education area
  • 2 stages, each with a full schedule of performers and speakers with a Maker element
  • A 30' x 30' inflatable Planetarium
  • Austin Bike Zoo, premiering their Interactive Carnival and Bike Wonderland
  • 3-D printers, weaving, soldering workshops, homemade telescopes, and much much more!

 

In the years to come, we look forward to the cross-pollination and inspiration that will happen as our Faire grows and as schools and the community learn to utilize the event as a learning tool. Already, educators have begun to gear projects of all kinds toward the opportunities our Faire provides to “show and tell” in extraordinary ways. 

Can’t wait to see you all at the Faire!

Kami Wilt

Enter our drawing to win a family pack of tickets to the Austin Mini Maker Faire! Just leave a comment below telling us which area of the Faire most interests you or another member of your family. For another chance to win, share this post on your Facebook timeline before noon on Thursday, April 18, 2013. The winner will be randomly selected and will receive 2 adult and 2 child passes, a $34 value.