I'm an educator and a lifelong learner.
After getting my bachelor's degree in physics from Rhode Island College, I went into teaching because I loved science and I wanted to help more students love science too. I had always believed that making things and doing experiments was the most effective way to learn, and my years of teaching, especially the last five at the South Shore Charter Public School only strengthened that belief.
I decided to go back to grad school after several years teaching a project-based electronics workshop at SSCPS (more on that here). Through my students' interest in programming and computer science, I found my way to the graphical programming language Scratch, its companion site for teachers, ScratchEd, and eventually to the work of Seymour Papert, especially Mindstorms. In this book, Papert put into words a lot of what I had been thinking about how powerful it can be to think in a "programmatic" way, to learn by making, and how technology can help put this power into the hands of kids.
So this year I have taken time away from the classroom to study in the Technology, Innovation, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and, this semester, at Fab Academy. My ultimate goal is to go back to SSCPS and give my students even more resources and expertise by setting up a school-based Fab Lab there.
week 3: computer-controlled cutting
week 4: electronics production
week 5: 3D scanning & printing
week 8: computer-controlled machining
week 13: networking & communications
week 14: interface & application programming
week 15: applications & implications
week 16: mechanical design & machine design
Jenny Kostka Fab Academy 2015
