Northfield Community Middle School, Northfield Township, Northfield, NJ

Project Goal:  Develop a student learning manifesto that would support the development of a new maker/design program at the school.

Description:  I helped Northfield Middle develop a student learning manifesto for making by working with a group of committed educators, taking them through a variety of design charettes to get them to the place they needed to be.

What's Interesting?  How do you take a computer lab and recreate the space into a program that can literally transform the mindset of a school and how education can take place.  How do you shift to a design approach that casts students as solution-seekers and that begin to develop how they serve each other, their school community and beyond?  What can a single day of work accomplish to set the stage and invitation into learning that can become the DNA of the student learning experience?  Read Kevin Jarrett's exceptional account of the year on Edutopia.