Elementary students’ dream machines come to life with help from high schoolers, IU students

MyMachine USA

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Elementary students explore a fabrication of their dream machine that IU students designed. Photo courtesy of Montclair Kimberley Academy

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How big would you dream, if you knew you couldn’t fail? This is the question that MyMachine Global — an international network of educators and partners launched in Belgium — asks students of all ages.

The first stateside chapter, MyMachine USA, is in its third year encouraging students across the United States to think creatively and develop solutions to challenges they face in everyday life.

MyMachine USA was launched by Indiana University’s Jon Racek, a program director and teaching professor at the IU Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, and Adam Maltese, professor of science education and the Martha Lea and Bill Armstrong Chair in Teacher Education at the School of Education in Bloomington.

Providing STEM education opportunities is important for future career readiness. In 2023, the Indiana Department of Education announced new academic standards for integrated STEM curriculum, preparing Hoosier students to be tomorrow’s thinkers, creators, advocates and entrepreneurs. IU serves as a partner to P-12 educators by bringing expertise, research and resources to the classroom, including through the Office of School Partnerships.

By bringing MyMachine’s award-winning methodology to the United States, Maltese and Racek are inviting students across grade levels to participate in a co-creation process. Elementary students dream up machines. IU design students formalize the concepts. Then high school students create the finished product, which is presented back to the elementary students.

“The reason I love the MyMachine project is that my design students are working with demanding clients, which very much aligns with real life,” Racek said. “They have to translate the ideas into forms and objects that will work. Then they must prepare these prototypes in a way that high school students can actually fabricate them.”

WATCH: Why students love MyMachine

Elementary students dare to dream

In the 2023-24 academic year, Maltese and Racek partnered with two elementary schools, Linton Elementary in Indiana and Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey.

Elementary students draw their ideas for dream machines. One idea was a Speedy Medicine Dose Dispenser. Photo courtesy of MyMachine USAMaltese, a geologist by training, was a middle school science teacher and a geologist at an American engineering company before joining the IU faculty. His research focuses on student experiences and engagement in STEM education from elementary school through graduate school.

“My colleagues and I work toward improving the current educational experiences of youth in order to better prepare them for an unpredictable future” said Maltese, who directs the Make Innovate Learn Lab and the Uplands Maker Mobile on the IU Bloomington campus. Partnering with Jon at the Eskenazi School, renowned for its incredible design program, showed MyMachine Global that Indiana University has the resources to introduce this methodology to classrooms across America.”

During the fall of 2023, they held an ideation day where the elementary students drew, sketched and decided which dream machines to produce. This year’s final selections were:

Baseball Pitcher: For practicing their baseball swing when their parents were not available to pitch to them.
Shape Shifter Cookie Roller: To simplify the combining, rolling, cutting and embossing of dough.
Speedy Dose Medicine Dispenser: To take medicine in a memorable and fun way.
Boost Buddy Stair Helper: For reaching objects in high places.
Glasserator: For fixing or repurposing broken glass

IU students design possibilities

Racek is an award-winning multidisciplinary designer specializing in architectural, landscape and industrial design. Before joining the IU faculty, he ran his own design studio in Los Angeles with his work being featured in publications such as The New York Times and Time magazine. He also enjoys designing for and working with kids. In 2008, he founded the organization Play360, a nonprofit that trains nongovernmental organizations to build low-cost educational resources in developing countries.

Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design student Christie Nguyen presents designs for the Glasserator, a dream machine idea for repurposing broken glass. Photo by Wendi Chitwood, Indiana UniversityIn January and February 2024, IU design students in the comprehensive design class were broken up into teams of three and assigned to make plans and prototypes for a machine. Junior-year design students Hannah Smith, Christie Nguyen and Peyton Mosley worked on the Glasserator.

“The kids wanted a box they could put broken glass in and it would come out restored,” Smith said.

“We wanted to steer them away from fixing glass to something more like a creative art project. However, their main goal was to save glass, and they said it was OK for the Glasserator to create something new. So, our design team steered the elementary students into a different direction that was more possible to achieve.”

With the final prototype, users can put glass shards in an enclosed box and combine them with resin in a mold, ultimately making a piece of art.

The design students learned a lot through the experience and said they feel more prepared to launch their careers.

“This project allowed me to understand how to work with clients and be more realistic about who I’m designing for,” Nguyen said. “I gained a real-life understanding of what projects may be like in the future.”

Middleton High School students in Wisconsin fabricated the machines in March and April in their Design and Fabrication course. Photo courtesy of Middleton High SchoolWorking with particular clients often means the design process is more iterative than straightforward. Learning how to navigate that was a valuable lesson for Mosley.

“I learned how to better interpret and integrate the varying critiques, which was a little difficult,” Mosley said. “Receiving critiques from so many different perspectives helped me become a better designer. In most of our classwork, I think we emphasize function and focus less on appearance and buildability, whereas this project emphasized all three.”

Students from Quincy Millerjohn’s Design and Fabrication II course at Middleton High School in Wisconsin, fabricated the machines in March and April.

The baseball pitcher crew liked the prototype idea of the backboard as a baseball glove, however, they felt the net was interfering with successful playability. As a result, they made a curved trough to catch the ball instead.

“One of the things we thought was challenging for us, was getting all the angles right on it to make sure the ball bounces in, but it ended up doing pretty well and it was a fun project,” said Zach G., who worked on the pitcher.

The big reveals

When the machines were ready, Maltese and Racek organized a big reveal at the respective elementary schools in May.

At Linton Elementary, students eagerly waited to see what became of the Baseball Pitcher, Speedy Dose Medicine Dispenser and Boost Buddy Stair Helper. In New Jersey, the students got to see how their sketches for a Glasserator and Shape Shifter Cookie Roller were actualized.

Students at Montclair Kimberley Academy eagerly wait to see the dream machines that were created. Photo courtesy of Montclair Kimberley Academy“The kids loved it, great positive energy,” said Yungjin Oh, head of the primary school for Montclair Kimberley Academy. “We have a summer grant to work on MyMachine involving the art, math, science and first-grade educators. It is going to be a cross-curriculum project, which will be beneficial for student learning.”

Now, heading into its fourth year of operation in the 2024-25 academic year, Maltese and Racek said they are excited about the program’s future and hope to expand.

“This year MyMachine USA’s footprint was in three states, and we hope to find support so we can broaden its reach in the Hoosier state and the country,” Racek said.

“We made changes over the years and have learned to hang back as much as possible and let the experience be driven by the students,” Maltese said. “It’s been interesting to see how the ideas and interpretations merge with skillset and creativity. The students take ownership of the process, and I’m excited to see how this opportunity inspires them to shape the future.”