Week 10: Technovation Families

 

Bitmoji of Ms. B riding in a paper airplane

This week I looked at the website Technovation Families. Technovation Families is a tool to help families build their technology skills, particularly using AI, while also providing opportunities to improve their communities. This is a free resource that can be used by families at home, but can also be used in a classroom. I think this would work great to provide some guidance for a makerspace activity in the library. 

For the AI unit, there are a series of 10 lessons that explain how AI can help solve problems in fields like health care, space exploration, and even self driving cars! The lessons are designed to be engaging with interaction and activities throughout. I love that the AI series encourages families (or even groups or teams of students) to think of a problem in their community that they want to solve. They offer an Inventor Notebook that can be downloaded and printed for free that follows along with the lessons and provides space for brainstorming and designing their solution.

Image of the Inventor Notebook

The AI lesson series is long and would definitely require some tweaking to use in the classroom, but it is a great starting point for librarians who are looking to introduce some of these ideas to students. I also think it could be a great opportunity to create a program for families to participate in the series over the course of 10 weeks. This would probably require extra funding to provide dinner and other incentives to families to maintain participation, but this could really create an opportunity to meaningfully connect with caregivers and provide some useful instruction about technology!

In addition to the AI series, there is also a ton of STEM activities that could be adapted to the makerspace! There are many different categories from which you can choose an activity. The activities include a short video that explains a problem and how folks are working to solve the problem. Then it's up to the students to create their own version of the design challenge. 

Image of Design Challenge Categories

I think the design challenges could allow for some collaboration with classroom teachers. It's hard to imagine they wouldn't be on board with an activity that someone else organizes that reinforces the concepts being taught in class! Once completed in class, it could also be a small station in the makerspace and could allow for the new experts to teach other students about the activity. 

There are a lot of possibilities for Technovation Families! From simply introducing the site to families to implementing design challenges in the makerspace or classroom, I definitely think this is a useful tool that I hope to use to connect with the classroom learning and collaborate with teachers.