Steve 'The Educator' Allan

I just love the way generating images can enhance your ability to tell a story with your lessons (and boy do I love to tell a story!).

Today our Year 2 students started a unit on Homes by going on a real estate tour (with the help of Gemini image creator and a little imagination) to look at some of the possible plots of land available for them to build on.

They had to weigh up the pros and cons and take into account differences of opinion and perspective.

We then asked them to sketch out an artists impression as well as a simple birds eye plan for the builders to start work next week.

Despite the best efforts of the health and safety exec we managed to have fun today at Jungle (adjacent) school with an entertaining 'Hapa-Zome' art activity which we learned is Japanese for 'Smash it with a Hammer'.

Think I just found my preferred art medium.

Just had my request turned down to buy THE MOST AMAZING tables for the summer refit of The Shed.

Help cheer me up by posting some pictures of your best Maker Space tables please.

Bonus points if they have electrical hookups and can be moved easily to clear space to do robotics on the floor.

The next stage in our Year 5 inquiry into how energy supports our everyday lives we look at how electrical energy is actually produced.

Students learn about how chemical energy stored in fossil fuels is converted to heat energy which in turn is used to boil water and create steam which drives a turbines mechanical energy. This in turn spins magnets inside a wire coil which converts into electrical energy.

They also look at more eco friendly and renewable energy sources.

We wrap it all up by creating their own solar powered fan hats.

Now we just need the Sun to come out so we can test them.

Feeling very frustrated!
Just had our Jungle School site closed by Health and Safety as a slope supposed to be maintained by govt. hasn't been maintained and they are claiming there could be a landslide. Cannot reopen until we clarify if and when the govt. last inspected it.

Any ideas for playground based activities that still allow for child led activities and exploration? Students are 9 and 10.

Don't want it to just be like normal school break time.

New Project Alert: Space Exploration meets AI and Maker skills! 🚀🤖

This week in the Shed, our Year 1s levelled up their problem-solving skills! We’ve been piloting a simplified Design Thinking Process to help our youngest inventors bring their ideas to life.

We kicked things off with 'ZOOM!' by Sam Usher, but the real magic happened when we used the new AI features on Delightex. The students spoke directly with "Bob the Space Explorer" to interview him about the real-world challenges of living in space. 🛰️🌌

Armed with Bob’s insights, the children sketched, planned, and built their own inventions. It’s amazing to see how 6-year-olds can tackle complex problems when given the right tools!

This week in The Shed we will be launching the 4th Annual Dash Robotics Tournament.
Watch this space for some mission ideas and tips on running your own competitions.

My own kids love watching Mark Robers's videos.
I like his idea of 'Hiding the vegetables'.

Mark Rober, a NASA engineer turned YouTube sensation with over 75 million subscribers, has spent his internet career making creative, silly, engaging science experiments for viewers, many of them young people.

His company, CrunchLabs, sells Build Boxes and Creative Kits to bring the fun home to kids. But underneath videos of swimming pools filled with Jell-O and Goalie Robots that can beat Cristiano Renaldo through the power of physics, Rober argues he’s introducing kids to real science.

“For the last 15 years, once a month, I’ve uploaded a free science or engineering video to YouTube,” Rober said in a TED Talk at TED 2026 in Vancouver, British Columbia earlier this week.

“And 16 billion views later, what I’ve learned is, I can’t teach you if I don’t have your attention. But if I can get your attention with something remarkable, well, now I have something to attach the learning to.”

He calls this method “hiding the vegetables,” by introducing “kids that grew up on YouTube and TikTok” to science, technology, engineering, and math, in fun, creative ways.

“It’s really boring if you make a video about the scientific method, but what’s not boring is if you make a video about a 15-ton Jell-O pool you can actually bellyflop onto. And in the process, I’mma sneak in all six steps of the scientific method.”

He noted he was inspired by his high school statistics teacher, Mr. Malloy, who used statistics lessons to predict a rival school soccer team’s penalty kicks.

→ Read the full story: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/mark-rober-class-crunchlabs-science-curriculum/fbrss2

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So many fun electrical teaching resources out there but I always think it's better to use the real stuff.
Y5 students were investigating the difference between Simple, Series, and Parallel circuits this week as part of the inquiry into energy.

The Y2 teachers wanted to build in some measurement work into their latest unit of inquiry into homes.

They started the week with a fantastic provocation of a space ship crash landing in the school playground and next week we will be starting to design plan and build our own model homes.

This week however we wanted to focus on those essential measurement and ruler skills.

Student came to the Shed were we revealed that this is not the first time aliens have visited the school. We unveiled the school X-files and showed them the aliens from previous years.

The only problem was all the data had been mysteriously deleted!

Students used their observation skills and practiced holding a ruler correctly to draw and measure straight lines to gather information about the different aliens and then we used a classification key to identiofy their names and home planets.

Then just for fun we whipped out the glue guns, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes and made our own aliens; rounding off the session by building some simple shelters for them to spend their first nights on Earth in.

What a busy afternoon!

Check out the lesson resources HERE.
https://canva.link/5hw6xrlx6e3hdg7

Technology in education is a tool - not a goal in itself.

Our aim as educators is to help create exciting and independent human beings.
Technology is just one way of getting us there.

Had an interesting conversation with the ESF House Captains team about how we can ensure fun, engaging, hands on learning belong at the heart of education.

https://youtu.be/mFp5y08I8A0?si=uZmHj5D7WJlHD8U9

House Captains #8 – Steven Allan: How One School’s Makerspace Is Challenging EdTech Assumptions Walk into award-winning school makerspace, The Shed, and you’ll see everything from robots and sock puppets to model volcanoes and sewing projects. Most impo...