Since 2012, Don Buckley has taught or co-taught Managing Educational Technology Resources at Teachers College Columbia University (Course number MSTU4029). For his first year teaching the course, I was a student in his class and helped him brainstorm possible topics and projects. I also came up with the useful-yet-unoriginal hashtag #MSTU4029 to gather tweets for class participants. For many of his class sessions, Don taps folks from his huge network of professionals, teachers, experts, and creatives to join as guest lecturers and offer real world examples his students, and he has been kind to include me almost every year as a panelist or presenter. Don also goes on site visits around the city rather than always having his class meet on Teachers College’s campus.
Since last night’s class took place in Dwight School’s Spark Lab on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Lesa Wang (who is Dwight’s Global Spark Programs Director and Head of Design — and designed the space!) and Matthew Moran (who teaches Computer Science in the Spark Lab) hosted and presented their work and sample projects. Don asked me to also share some of the projects and initiatives I launched at The Brearley School. I was equally delighted to accept his invitation and to see the Spark Lab — I love visiting schools and makerspaces! The Spark Lab is Lisa’s most recently designed makerspace, and (since she is an artist and innovator) the lofty areas are thoughtfully organized, outfitted, useful, purposeful, and colorful! See photos below…
Karen Blumberg 