At the moment the buzz in education seems to be all about makerspaces and tinkering. The skeptics among will wait for this to pass while the adherents take the plunge. I am an enthusiastic adherent. I teach students how to solder and code onto Arduino based printed circuit boards. I teach them how to 3D design and create video games. This year I will also introduce new making skills such as printmaking, sewing, and linocut carving. I am always a bit anxious when other teachers, administrators, or parents walk into my maker class. It is, I’ll admit, chaotic at times. Most of the time I try to create an environment where the learning is not centralized but instead student driven. I’ve put trust in that my sixth graders will behave responsibly with potentially dangerous tools. So the question is how is the maker/tinker movement much more than a buzzword or a swing of the proverbial pendulum? It is more than this because it has the potential to fundamentally change the teacher-learner paradigm in more ways than can be anticipated.
It begins by breaking down what it that we consider play. Traditionally, play is to be done in lieu of more serious work and often with toys that can be easily recognized in their colorful plastic forms. Gever Tulley immediately challenges this notion in his TEDx presentation by examining an exchange between a parent and child. “Is that a stick? You know the rule about playing with sticks - parent to child” (Tulley). The implication is that a parent will see a stick as merely a stick and not a plaything with creative potential as child would see it. A maker education recognizes the child’s creative ability to turn any object into a plaything and celebrates not only the creativity but the act of creation, or play. Play leads to discovery and discovery is where authentic learning occurs. Or as Tulley explains, “Our goal is to ensure that they leave with a better sense of how to make things than when they arrived and the deep internal realization that you can figure things out by fooling around” (Tulley). Making also allows for students to create real things that exist in the real world. It teaches students how to become producers and not merely consumers. “Building is at the heart of the experiment. Hands on, deeply immersed and fully committed to the problem at hand” (Tulley). Making doesn’t deal with theoretical problems. It deals with real problems and solutions that must be continuously tested and analyzed. Most importantly, making puts the student in control and at the center of their own learning. It encourages kids to create as their own abilities and knowledge allow and seek out mentors when needed. Education needs to become more personal. A makerspace is precisely the place where students can begin to practice their independence and feel the joy in learning what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and at pace which works for them. The three cardinal rules in my makerspace, aside from those pertaining to respect and safety in the space are that students should walk into my room prepared to learn, create, and share. These rules alone will take us a long way in changing teaching; from how education is done to students to how education is done by students. Resource Tulley, G. (2009, July 1). Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
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AuthorIn this blog I will share my perspectives of the learning and materials from EDL 680, already a very inspiring course that I am taking for MA in Educational Leadership Archives
August 2015
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