Crossroads News
A-Maze-Ing: Teacher Builds Labyrinth Prototype
Dori Friedman attends the Constructing Modern Knowledge conference.
Middle School Technology Coordinator Dori Friedman attended the Constructing Modern Knowledge conference with one clear goal: to bring back something meaningful to her students. Over the four days of the conference, held in July in Manchester, New Hampshire, she set that plan in motion.
Dori and another attendee created a prototype of an electronic labyrinth, an idea Dori had been considering as a classroom project. “No one was teaching us,” Dori recalls. “We learned by doing.” They assembled a joy stick rigged to control the movements of a maze that Dori built from a discarded plastic sandwich container and coffee stirrers. To guide a ball to the finish line, users must maneuver the joy stick to tilt the maze’s base at just the right angle, sending the ball rolling on its proper path (or into a dead end).
Dori is excited to have her Middle School students create a maze “10 times larger” in class. Rather than a joy stick, they’ll build the maze to be controlled with their feet using pressure sensors. She envisions students swapping in customized mazes designed to tie in with curriculum in other classes.
For Dori, who attended the conference through Crossroads’ Faculty Professional Development fund, the lessons she learned go far beyond the mechanics of the maze. “It took us three full days to get it right,” she acknowledges. “I know how it feels to not know how to do something, but to keep trying anyway. That’s something I can share with my students. So what if you failed three times in a row? On the fourth time, you succeeded.”
