Updates from Innovation Fellows

The Collaborative’s Innovation Fellows are top STEAM teachers and administrators who are chosen nationally, based on their excellence in moving the STEAM field forward. Kimberly Olson is the Art Specialist at Centre School in Hampson, NH.  Kathleen Sweet is a Computer Science Teacher in Starmont Community School District, IA. Kristin Taylor, EdD, is an Associate Professor of Art Education at California State, Northridge.

collaborative ​Rubrics Impact Whole Child Learning

Kimberly Olson

Beyond my ever-evolving STEAM-based learning rooted in problem solving, collaboration, and persistence, I have realized the deep connections, overlaps, and prevalence of culturally responsive and social emotional learning throughout STEAM, the National Visual Arts Standards, and other applicable standards I employ. Through my work as a Teacher Leader with the National Art Education Association’s (NAEA) Connected Arts Network (CAN) I have been able to leverage these connections, developing impactful learning experiences for my students that engage them through their own schema and identity and that develop self and social awareness. ​

Most recently, I have been refining a collaborative lesson I co-authored with my CAN colleagues combining student identity and a unit of study based in architecture. (The Innovation Collaborative rubrics have been an invaluable resource in identifying transdisciplinary thinking and learning in this lesson.) Through this unit, students first explore aspects of themselves and their identity (I am…) that cannot be seen physically, such as musical inclinations, interest in sports, dance, baking, theatre, etc. They then apply these aspects to creating a self-reflective building, based on our recent study of a vast (and culturally inclusive) survey of architecture around the world and through time and place. Students envision themselves as a building, plan and sketch their use of architectural elements, materials, colors, and ultimately develop their ideas into a tactile and textural collage. They complete their thinking with a written artist statement which includes explanation and reasoning that prompted each of their I am-inspired choices and where they would want to be built, creating lots of opportunities for synthesis, transformation and bisociation.

Through this lesson students pushed the boundaries of engineering and math in their designed spaces, utilizing shapes and capabilities reflecting aspects of their original I am list. Many of my students serendipitously experimented with dimension in collage constructions, developing three dimensional aspects which added another level of ingenuity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. In response to this emergent aspect of this lesson, I shared the work of Congolese sculptor Bodys Isek Kingelez and Caine’s Arcade as motivation. 
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Currently, my students are all working to develop mini 3D models of their identity buildings. Their choice, manipulation, and application of materials—as well as design thinking—to demonstrate their original vision has been inspiring to witness! Lots of design thinking, persistence, and revising is happening as students rework their ideas to realize their vision. Reflecting on the success of this lesson has prompted me to access my summer training with Chibitronics and to add a paper circuit element for students that will allow them to illuminate part of their design. Incorporating a broad expanse of the myriad viable overlaps of standards and Thinking Skills has elevated my STEAM-based curriculum to new heights, encompassing the whole child and thinking so important to our 21st-century students.

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new Makerspace Inspires myriad designs

Kathleen Sweet

The April 8, 2024, solar eclipse

I have been teaching for 27 years, 9 years in Colorado and 18 in Iowa. Most of my career has been in K-5 visual arts education, however, in the last two years I have transitioned to a 2nd-5th grade computer science teacher. Since participating as an Innovation Collaborative Fellow, I have received a $30,000 STEM BEST grant and created a Makerspace for my K-12 district. (We converted an old science room into this space. All the furniture is modular and has options for flexible seating.) All students have access to this room and rotate through the Makerspace with a teacher guiding creative and innovative projects, 3D printing, robots, circuits, and many more critical thinking activities. I provided professional development for our district teachers to engage in the Makerspace, so that they would understand the learning that happens when students are in the space. Teachers are now sending whole classrooms to participate. Teachers also come to me for STEAM lesson ideas to incorporate as extensions in their classrooms. Overall, our district is moving forward and embracing STEAM as part of everyday learning. 

​During the recent eclipse, I took my computer science students outside to view the eclipse. Unfortunately, in Iowa, we did not see the totality of it. But I did create a pinhole viewing projector out of a cereal box, as well as having glasses to view with. The students were more interested in the box I made than looking through their glasses. Sometimes simplicity is best.

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Student STEAM Projects: A Visual Tour

Ashley Lupfer

I recently was tasked to teach an innovation and design class. Among other things, I conducted a light painting lesson with students using coding and Sphero, teamed with our music teacher to create Tono scopes that visualize sound, and used Tinkercad to design playgrounds. Sometimes photos explain lessons best—check them out.

5th Grade Innovation and Design students collaboratively created stop motion animation films that teach a fraction concept. They paid close attention to the FPS, or frames per second, and edited their work in iMovie by adding sound and text to further express their ideas.

5th Grade Innovation and Design students reviewed the concept of matter and experimented with paint rockets! Students combined a liquid (water and paint) and a solid (aka-seltzer) to create a gas. This gas built up pressure in our film canisters and created a fun “explosion” of paint which was documented with these awesome paintings (right).

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Our 5th grade students started off the year with a 3D modeling unit designing playground structures for our school. We used the Design Thinking Process, TinkerCad, Augmented Reality, and some top-notch photo editing skills to present our ideas to scale.

Our proposals were an exciting way to envision how we could improve our school community while considering elements of design, safety, and overall impact.

5th Grade Innovation and Design students enjoyed learning about autonomous vehicles and the complex programs that enable them to function. We discussed how these vehicles use Artificial Intelligence and asked Chat GPT to program our Sphero for us. We collaboratively analyzed why the JavaScript code did not work and used impressive problem-solving skills to help our robot roll and introduce itself! Next we programmed our Spheros to respond to different lux values, or levels of light created by flashlights in the classroom. Many students programmed them to spin, make sounds, or show an animation on the light matrix. Finally, we discussed the use of GPS, where students plotted different places in our community in the hallway, wrote partner directions, and then programmed our Sphero using these steps! This was challenging but super fun to run their programs with the paper “taxis” students designed.

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book chapter describes kinetic sculpture design

Kristin Vanderslip Taylor

I wanted to share that I have a chapter titled "How might we make this work? Using design thinking to engineer kinetic sculptures in the art room" in the newly-published book: STEAM Education: An Interdisciplinary Look at Art in the Curriculum. The chapter is about one of the STEAM visual art lessons that another Collaborative Innovation Fellow, Kerry Buchman, and I shared with the Innovation Collaborative and tested in multiple classrooms. 

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