Makers Empire offers teachers a variety of in-built tools, features and resources to help make planning, teaching and assessing student work easier. Plan your whole class, term, semester or year around different activities to engage your students, cover required curriculum and align with specific learning areas.Â
Watch the video for a tour of Makers Empire features and tools or learn more about individual features below.Â
The Training Lab houses helpful tutorials and videos. New users should start in either the Video Room or Basic Tutorials. Both these rooms are designed to teach users how to use the app’s tools and features. Once users are more experienced, Pro tutorials show them how to make the most of Makers Empire tools and features.
Basic tutorials show new users how to use the app and how to create simple designs in 3-6 steps via a series of bite-sized challenges. Efforts are rewarded with tokens and level ups that unlock new design items and features.
After users have completed the first few basic tutorials, the Video Room is open to them. This is where users can view step-by-step, how-to-design videos for students narrated by students. The Video Room is a great way for new students to see how designs are made before giving it a go.Â
Pro Training Lab houses fully guided, step-by step tutorials that provide superior instruction, guidance and support. Designs are created in Shaper using more advanced controls and can involve up to 65 steps.Â
Training lab activities are ideal for a single or double lesson as students can do them at their own pace. These activities are also ideal extension activities for students.
Custom Design Missions give teachers the power and flexibility to quickly add their own engaging content and design challenges to the Makers Empire 3D app. You can personalise design missions to appeal to your students’ interests, complement other areas of study, and to make learning with Makers Empire even more fun.
Teacher missions are ideal for remote or blended learning as teachers can set custom design missions in the Teacher Dashboard. The missions will then appear (remotely) in students’ devices as a notification within the Makers Empire 3D design app.
Learn more about Design Missions.
Simple design missions are ideal for a class or double-period. More complex design missions or a series of design missions can be done over a term’s worth of activities, taking between 4-10 weeks to complete.Â
Delivered within the Makers Empire app, Challenge Courses provide a highly engaging, complete design program for students. Each Challenge Course comprises four types of activities on a popular theme, and are aligned to international curriculum including NGSS, Australian Curriculum, International Baccalaureate, and National Curriculum (UK).Â
Each course contains four activities:Â
There are dozens of Challenge Courses for school customers to choose from. Learn more about current Challenge Courses and teaching with Challenge Courses.
Ideal for a term’s worth of activities, taking between 4-10 weeks to complete.Â
Makers Empire runs four managed projects a year. Over the course of the managed project, groups of schools explore an engaging, themed Challenge Course aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
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Teachers in a managed term project will:
Ideal for a term’s worth of activities, taking between 4-10 weeks to complete.Â
Daily challenges are in-app challenges related to international holidays, iconic celebrations and noteworthy trailblazers, as well as challenges designed to stretch students’ problem solving skills in specific subjects across the curriculum.Â
Daily challenges are ideal for remote or blended learning as they are a self-contained activity delivered within the Makers Empire 3D app.Â
Learn more about Daily Challenges.Â
Ideal for a single or double lesson. These activities are also ideal extension activities for students.
Makers Empire runs a Design Thinking competition in the app every month around a particular problem or need. Students can test their problem-solving and design skills against a global community! You can also browse the competitions page for other lesson ideas.Â
Competitions are ideal for remote or blended learning as they are a self-contained activity delivered within the Makers Empire 3D app.Â
Learn more about design competitions.Â
Ideal for a single or double lesson. These activities are also ideal extension activities for students.
Makers Empire’s Lesson Plan Library within the Teacher Dashboard contains 150+ curriculum-aligned lesson plans created by the Makers Empire learning team and teachers within the global Makers Empire community. You can search lesson plans by language, grade, subject, international curriculum/standards and themes to suit your learning needs.Â
All lesson plans are aligned to the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, National Curriculum (UK), International Baccalaureate, The Australian Curriculum, the NSW Curriculum and the Victorian Curriculum.
Some teachers like to follow lesson plans in a methodical, step-by-step manner while others like to use them as part of their preparation but often improvise during class. Whatever your preferred method, we encourage you to use the Makers Empire library as a rich learning resource.
Learn more about Makers Empire’s lesson plan library.
Ideal for a term’s worth of activities, taking between 4-10 weeks to complete.Â
