RAFT Hands-On Education

Integrated Learning in the Classroom A few days ago I was talking to a friend about issues that he felt needed to be addressed in order to “fix education”, as he put it.  His background is in electronics and he knows little about the daily activities of most teachers so his perspective on teaching is somewhat limited. But even so, he did raise an interesting point when he mentioned that “teachers should spend less time compartmentalizing everything and more time tying the disciplines together, making them more real for students.”  My friend was talking about providing an integrated learning approach to education.  As he said this I began to think about my own teaching and the number of examples I provided my students to show relatedness between the content areas, which admittedly could have been higher. Most elementary teachers have ample opportunities to show an integrated view of learning to their students.  This becomes more difficult at the highly-compartmen...

Since I’m an enthusiastic swimmer, and since the summer London Olympic Games are rapidly approaching, I got to wondering which woman holds the fastest Olympic record in the 100 meter freestyle stroke. I discovered the current Olympic record in the women's 100 meter freestyle swimming event is held by Britta Steffen of Germany with a time of 53.12 seconds. The record was set at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. But really, how fast is that? To help me figure this out, all it took was knowing some simple mathematics!! It helps to keep in mind the following: • 1 meter = .001 kilometer = 0.000621 miles = 0 miles and 1.09 yards • 1 hour = 3600 seconds Now we’re all set to go: • The swimming pool is 50m long, 25m wide and 3m deep. • It takes 1 complete lap to swim 100 meters. • 100 meters = 0.10 kilometers = 0.062 miles. • Speed = distance divided by time in hours; so time in hours = 53.12 seconds ÷ 3600 seconds = 0.014755 hours. So, Steffen’s speed = 0.062 miles ÷ 0.01475...

Recycle your materials into origami picture frames or greeting cards! “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Repurpose.” – One can learn so much about the environment while doing creative art projects from repurposed materials and offerings from Mother Nature! Fabric swatches, newspapers, plastics and other materials can be saved from the dump yard and converted into innovative gifts like fabric swatch notepads and origami picture frames. Celebrating the National Environment week, Resource Area For Teaching (RAFT) Redwood City is conducting a ‘ Great Ideas for Creating Re-purposed Gifts ’ workshop this weekend. Instructors Monica Lee and Dorothy Yuki, share their passion of using recycled and repurposed materials to create art from colored paper, plaster, tile, shells, beads, wood and many others! Monica who teaches craft workshops all over the Bay Area reflects, “On a practical level the materials we use are usually low cost or free to everyone. It opens the students’ mind to seeing everyd...

What do you get when you put a variety of leftover tiles in front of preschoolers? A feast for curious minds and creative hands! One of my five year old students designed this house. Look at the clever use of a little, round tile to make a door knob on the front door! She also used cupcake paper liners, bought from RAFT, to decorate around the house. She used a pink bottle cap and was proud that she had a very unique, pink Sun! One Sunday morning, in my art school, the Dune School in Newark, CA , the project theme was “Tiles”. As always, instead of telling them what to paint or construct, this was an open-ended art activity with no preset instructions or rules. I do this to encourage creativity and critical thinking in my students. I kept a tray of tiles of all colors, shapes and sizes along with bottle caps, yarn, buttons, cupcake paper holders and other RAFT materials in front of 4 and 5 year olds. I said “Today, you get to be an Architect.” Immediately, one child asked “Wh...

When I first walked into my ' Perspectives in Assistive Technology ' class at Stanford , I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know much about assistive technology, except for what I’ve learned growing up with my younger autistic brother, and I didn’t have much experience designing in the field. However, what I did know was my goal for the class: to design a device that would allow children with autism, like my brother, to communicate. Through the RAFT project - to design an affordable, hands-on educational activity kit for children with disabilities - I was able to pursue that goal, while simultaneously gaining experience as a designer. At the end of the eight weeks, I came up with the ‘Spin a story’ Activity Kit, using RAFT materials, that provides several simple ways for students to express themselves. A mixture of three activities – sequencing, storyboarding and sorting – the kit encourages students to initiate their own thoughts with a variety of textual and visu...

3D Tessellation model A bespectacled 6th grader enthusiastically explains ‘efficiency of 3D space tessellations’ with myriad equations and handmade tessellation patterns to address the needs of the packaging, storing, shipping and construction industry. Another middle school student, was inspired by his little brother’s telescope and built a simple vacuum chamber using a PVC pipe with a microphone and a speaker on both ends to find out how sound travels on Mars! This 8th grader from Granada Islamic School used an oscilloscope his mother found at an auction to measure the sounds. “I poke around and find junk to build my projects. It’s fun.” Science projects today have become fun for many students as they use more hands on activities to experiment and understand concepts. These two middle school students were among 996 participants at the recent Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship , where RAFT was one of the special judges. Moenes Iskarous, President, S...

In today’s highly competitive world the top priority of every school district is to make education accessible to everyone, irrespective of their financial or cultural background.  For the recently hired Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools, Xavier De La Torre , one of the main jobs is ‘to provide leadership for improving education, especially for poor and Latino children…’ Hands-on education has long been recognized as a superior medium for improving education as it engages students in learning. Homeschoolers, students in classrooms and after school programs, as well as children with special needs benefit from hands on education. Says Gayle Mayekawa, a RAFT member & an early education specialist, “According to the brain research and studies, hands on activities are appealing and effective learning tools.” Gayle is one of the instructors at the upcoming Early Education Special Needs Strategies workshop held at RAFT Redwood City . The focus of the workshop is to h...