10 Ways Makers Empire Can Help With Remote Learning

2020 and 2021 have thrown lots of challenges at us all and made us come up with new ways to make sure that our students can keep learning and our teachers can keep teaching.

With remote learning, and learning from home continuing to be key ways of working for schools around the world, we thought we would share our favourite ways Makers Empire can be used for learning at home.

1. Learning at Home Course

Our Learning at Home course was developed as a direct response to schools around the world moving to remotes modes of learning. The course provides 90 design challenges divided into K-2, Grade 3-4 and Grade 5-6. Each challenge asks students to respond to a design task and is planned to take about 30 minutes to complete. To find out more about how to access our Learning at Home resources and start assigning design challenges to your students find out more here.

2. COVID-19 Challenges

The global pandemic has certainly made life challenging and difficult for people all over the world. It has also presented opportunities for people to work together to solve problems and improve daily life for each other. We’ve pulled together a bunch of ideas that students can work on at home to help them get creative and think how they might solve problems related to Covid-19.  Apart from learning great design and problem skills, it is also great for our young people to feel empowered and able to contribute during these challenging times. Check out some of our favourite remote learning resources. 

3. Mission to Mars

We have recently launched our new challenge courses which includes interactive activities with richer content. Our first challenge path is aimed at Grade 3-4 students and challenges them to prepare for a journey to Mars by completing a set of design challenges, game-based tutorials, quizzes and videos. The Mission to Mars Challenge Path with be available to all school users of Makers Empire in our next app update, but if you would like a sneak peek, let us know by emailing us at info@makersempire.com and we can get you and your students ready for take-off.

4. Monthly Competitions

Every month at Makers Empire, we run a monthly global design competition in the Competition Arena in the app. These are great activities that students can work on at home and have their entries featured in our competition gallery alongside entries from all over the world. Find out more about our 

5. Best Dressed Avatars

The first thing every Makers Empire is asked to do is to create an avatar to represent themselves in the app. Students can be as creative as they like with their avatars and make different outfits so their avatar can change his/her look to suit the mood or occasion. Avatar outfits can also make great learning at home activities. Imagine asking students to dress their avatar to represent a particular theme or topic they are learning about. What costumes and accessories would they make for an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, or famous inventor? How might they prepare their avatar for life as a front line worker during Covid-19, or dress their avatar up as someone who inspires them? Find out more about how to customise avatars.

6. Global Design Program

We often hear that ‘we are all in this together’, and it can be helpful for students to know that they are not alone. Students from all around the world are learning at home at the moment as the world continues to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Why not take the opportunity to connect with a teacher and class from another part of the world and work on a design challenge together via Makers Empire’s Global Design Program?

7. Set Your Own Design Missions

If you’ve got your own great ideas for design challenges your students could work on at home, why not create your own design missions and assign them to your students through the Teacher Dashboard. 

8. Respond in 3D

Remote learning requires a new way of thinking about how students can respond to learning tasks and demonstrate what they know, feel, and understand. To mix things up a bit, why not try asking students to create something in 3D with Makers Empire rather than writing or drawing about it. Perhaps students could design their favourite character from a story or create a scene to show what they think might happen next.

9. Celebrate

In amongst all the difficulties of 2020, it’s more important than ever to take the time to celebrate the good things in life, to be grateful for the people we care about, and continue to create special memories together. It can be more challenging to acknowledge special days and holidays through remote learning, but Makers Empire can be a great way for students to share and celebrate special events. For example, teachers might ask students to design something special for Father’s Day or Mother’s Day or create a design with a special message for Christmas or another relevant cultural holiday.

10. Challenge Each Other

Once your students are familiar with how to create designs using Makers Empire, they’ll have lots of great ideas for design challenges of their own. Students can create their own design missions in our Mission Maker and invite their classmates to try them out. A great way to encourage students who are working remotely to collaborate and communicate with each other. 

We are continually blown away by the creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience of teachers, especially this year, as they go above and beyond to make sure their students keep learning, safe and happy amongst all the disruption of 2020.

We hope that these remote learning ideas help in some small way towards easing teacher workload. If you have any other ideas about how Makers Empire can be used to support remote learning, or you have some great tips that have worked for you, we would love to hear from you.coiu