Placemat Instructions

What is a Placemat Instruction?

Placemat Instructions are a fantastic solution to common problems faced by teachers and students in open-ended engineering projects. The problems being:

• Students being “stuck” at the beginning of a project, being overwhelmed by the openness of the project.
• Students losing focus of the “big picture” goals of the project and continually needing to ask for help/clarification/reminders/resources from the teacher
• Students needing inspiration for possible solutions that don’t give too much exact instruction or lead to a singular “correct” solution.

Placemat Instructions solve these problems by providing a concise overview of a given project, along with “tips and tricks” and code snippets. Most importantly, placemats provide images of generalized examples of solutions without giving step-by-step instructions that lead to a single solution. This kind of resource achieves the perfect balance of inspiring and informing without spoiling students’ unique creativity and original ideas with too much direct instruction. Providing students direct access to the “bird’s eye view” of a project also frees educators from time sinks such as answering the same questions or giving the same suggestions to individual students over and over again.

Placemat Instructions can be physical (printed and laminated) or digital, ensuring that they can always be easily accessed by students throughout the duration of a project.

Placemat Instructions are the brainchild of CEEO PhD student Sara Willner-Giwerc, and their use is already spreading beyond the CEEO into other educational settings. For example, LEGO Education has adopted the concept, creating “Activity Briefs” for many of their lessons.

For more on placemats, how they work, and to access a comprehensive library of project placemats, visit Sara’s website Robotics Playground.

How to make your own Placemat Instruction

Placemat Instructions can be used for any open-ended project where educators want to maximize solution diversity among their students. Educators can design their own from scratch (usually using a slide presentation software like Google Slides or Powerpoint) and can also download templates designed by Sara for LEGO SPIKE Prime and LEGO Mindstorms EV3. Currently, placemat instructions exist for LEGO WeDO, Micro:Bit, and Arduino in addition to LEGO SPIKE Prime and Mindstorms EV3.

And for a “totally meta” experience, check out this Placemat Instruction of Placemats!

Applications

Now that you know what a placemat instruction is, how to use one, and how to make one, how can we leverage this tool in our Tech and Play endeavors?

This is where YOU come in. Let’s brainstorm together about possible uses for placemat instructions in our projects. Printed placemats work well in situations where computer screens and electricity may be scarce. Digital placemats don’t need to be transported or printed, and can be accessed anywhere there is an Internet connection.

If you have ideas and suggestions for how placemats can be used in your playful project, leave a comment!