Category: MakerEd

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Capturing the Culture of Making: FabLearn Fellow blog posts

The 2014/2015 FabLearn Fellows cohort is a diverse group of 18 educators and makers. They represent eight states and five countries, and work with a wide range of ages at schools, museums, universities and non-profits. Throughout the course of the year, they will develop curriculum and resources, as well as contribute to current research projects. Their blogs represent their diverse experience and interests in creating better educational oportunities for all. 

I’ve been privileged to mentor this group this past year and part of that is summarizing their amazing blog posts. Here are some recent highlights from March 2015.

What can these scraps reveal? by Erin Riley
“Process can be informed by what is available and as a result unfolds in different ways.” Erin explores how creativity and constraints work together as students use upcycled and recycled materials in projects. http://fablearn.stanford.edu/fellows/blog/what-can-these-scraps-reveal
 
STEAM, STEM, and Making by Tracy Rudzitis
Can the momentum of excitement about making, the new push for STEM education, and the acknowledgment that arts should play a role in STEM subjects be captured into real school change? Or will the enthusiasm, as Tracy asks, simply be redirected into minor tweaks to the status quo, lectures, and tests, because teachers and administrators simply believe that is the only way to teach. The key, Tracy says, is to understand the rich pedagogical history in which these new practices are situated. http://fablearn.stanford.edu/fellows/blog/steam-stem-and-making
Make your silicone protector for soldering irons by Gilson Domingues and Pietro Domingues
Soldering is the best way to connect electrical components, yet the iron is very hot and poses a danger, especially to children who have smaller hands and have trouble holding the iron so far away from the working tip. This do-it-yourself soldering iron protector is both fun and useful! http://fablearn.stanford.edu/fellows/blog/make-your-silicone-protector-soldering-irons
 
Teaching rights by Erin Riley 
Erin shares her version of a punchcard system that designates students who are trained users and teachers for various equipment. “When students teach they: solidify their own learning, share their knowledge with peers, and gain confidence.  When the teaching pool widens to include students, the heirarchy breaks down and our makerspaces become a place for students, including us.” http://fablearn.stanford.edu/fellows/blog/teaching-rights
From Name Tags to Lasting Artifacts; Fostering a Culture of Deep Projects by Christa Flores
Christa asks, “…are schools that are pushing design into their programs allowing students to know more than the terms of design (brainstorm, iterate and empathy) or are they truly teaching the value, and intricacy of the design process?” To answer this, she offers examples of deep learning through design and the complex mix of culture, leadership, and support for the process that is needed for success. http://fablearn.stanford.edu/fellows/blog/name-tags-lasting-artifacts-fostering-culture-deep-projects

Plus – Useful research on museum/ out of school programs

Research to Practice: Observing Learning in Tinkering Activities (Museum) – The Exploratorium Museum shares a useful framework for researchers, practitioners, funders, and policy-makers seek to understand what constitutes learning-through-tinkering, particularly in a museum setting. Supported by video case studies of the tinkering activities in the Tinkering Studio, they developed four Dimensions of Learning and three broad Facilitation Moves. In addition, they created a Tinkering Library of Exemplars that categorizes over one hundred video clips according to these frameworks.

Museum-managed STEM Programs – What evidence is there for the impact of museum (and other designed setting) managed programs on STEM learning and interest? What is known about the impact and value of such programs on school-age children’s understanding of STEM concepts and practices as well as their interest and engagement in STEM? By Bernadette Chi, Rena Dorph & Leah Reisman, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley

  Evidence & Impact: Museum-Managed STEM Programs in Out-of- School Settings (PDF)

Compiled by Sylvia Martinez, FabLearn Fellow Mentor
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Is “Design Thinking” the new liberal arts?

Is ‘Design Thinking’ the New Liberal Arts? (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Short answer: NO

Long answer: First, I hate the fact that this article is not available publicly, because it might be interesting to actually read. And it’s totally not fair for me to critique it based simply on the headline. That out of the way, let me expand on the short answer. No, “design thinking” isn’t the new liberal arts.

How about this headline, “Is this Harvard course on Jane Austen the new liberal arts?” or “Right triangles – the new geometry?”

That’s not to say that Jane Austen and right triangles aren’t interesting things to study and students could certainly go deeper than current curriculum practices tend to do. But let’s be clear. Design thinking is a way to “schoolify” the process of design, and to focus on a narrow slice of product design.

Now – you can tell me that this school or that curriculum gets design thinking “right” and I’d probably agree. A teacher who cares about design and has agency over his or her classroom can take the process of design thinking and do amazing things. (See Design Thinking, Computational Thinking, and Making in the Classroom – Good, Bad, Worse for my thoughts on this.)

Unfortunately, a lot of design thinking goes back to school dressed up in way too much process – too much planning, too teacher-managed and teacher-directed, too focused on “the market” as a driver, too much delivering a report “about” a product, and not enough actual doing.

It’s human nature to look for the new new thing. And I heartily applaud teachers looking beyond the back of the textbook for things that engage students fully – head, heart, and hands. I suspect that the willingness to try new things as a teacher is the best indication of the thing’s actual potential as a game changer.

Hopefully this headline was followed up by a more nuanced article – it could happen!

 

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I’m starting a maker program…. questions and answers

I recently got an email from a Chicago Public School teacher. She asked:

I recently read a book you co-authored, “Invent to Learn”.  I am a Chicago Public School teacher.  Until this year, I worked as a special education teacher, but I lobbied hard to create a STEM program at my school and this year I am the STEM teacher.   The program is truly mine to build and I would really love the chance to pick your brain about your experiences.  I am working to build a school Makerspace and the students are absolutely pumped.

She asked me some specific questions, and with her permission, I’m sharing her questions and my answers here.

Any mistakes you can advise me to avoid in developing our maker program?  Any mistakes you recommend that I make?

I think waiting for the perfect can get in the way of doing something good. The iterative design process isn’t just good for kids – it’s a way to feel justified in doing things and then making them better. Your process and choices will improve as time goes on.

The mistake to avoid is stopping the growth process or worse, giving up. I hope you have supportive leadership who will understand that it’s a process, not a perfection factory.

I now feel like I am teaching kids to understand things that I don’t quite understand myself (it is impossible for me to be a content expert in all of the areas the students are pursuing).  While I am excited about that, it is also scary.  How do I know if students are fostering misconceptions?  Should I be concerned about that?  Am I under-qualified for this job?

One of the things I find charming about having so many new things to explore is that it means that nobody can be an expert. Really, everyone is in the same boat you are! They may sound more experienced, but the stuff was literally invented yesterday, so it’s just a matter of trying things out.

That said, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn stuff! Build on your strengths and interests, and don’t be afraid to say to the kids – “I don’t know, let’s figure it out!” Model adaptability, curiosity, and determination for them and that’s the biggest lesson they will learn.

The thing you CAN be an expert in is teaching, and being the anthropologist and archivist for learning. Your role should be to carefully watch and listen and to help kids make their private thinking public. Some misconceptions you should be able to catch, some you won’t. It helps to have people who know about topics that aren’t in your wheelhouse, working with your students, and  listening as your students are showing and discussing their work or doing presentations.

If you weren’t concerned about this, I’d worry! Very few people are walking encyclopedias, that’s not the definition of good teaching anyway.

By the way, if your kids are old enough to learn something, they are old enough to figure it out in the first place. Allow them access to online expertise and books. Some will get it faster than others, and let them be peer mentors and local gurus. It helps you to not be the bottleneck of expertise, and models student-centered learning. “Go see Susie, she’s can show you how to solder.”

Say you were hiring to fill a STEM position at your school, what would you be looking for in a candidate?

Curiosity, adaptability, and likes kids. Ask, “what’s the last book on education you read? What’s your philosophy of learning?”

Working as a change agent can be incredibly rewarding and it can also be incredibly stressful.  What advice do you have for maintaining stamina and preventing burnout?

Be more relentless than you think you are capable of… but don’t be a martyr. I wrote more about this here: Go Ahead, Be  Unreasonable.

Build on what you (and the school) do well already. Choose your battles and work with the living.

Throughout the process of creating this program, I have been interviewing practicing engineers.  Many of them say that one of the most important qualities they value in their employees and colleagues is the ability to work in an interdisciplinary team of experts.  I am trying to structure some learning experiences where students will select an area of specialty based on their interests, dig deep to develop some expertise, and then come together with a mixed team to complete a final engineering challenge.

a.) Does this seem like a worthwhile endeavor?

Yes, but… forced collaboration is just as silly as no collaboration. Perhaps encourage teams, but don’t require them. If the collaboration is really worth it, it will happen. I don’t think it will help to try to predict exactly what expertise will be needed for a project until it’s a actually in process.

What about holding off on the selection of interests until the challenge actually starts? Start with the challenge, then divide and conquer.

b.) Based on your experience, do any projects (substantial, sharable, personally meaningful) come to mind that would lend themselves to this kind of structure?  I need help developing some good prompts (in addition to the awesome prompts for robotics in your book).

Here are some prompts for 3D printing.

Read up on Gary Stager’s “and then…” strategy for prompt creation

I am getting lots of pressure to post content-learning objectives in my classroom.  That is tricky when students may be working on different content areas.  I am pushing back a bit and trying to convince my administration to accept process-learning objectives instead (our focus areas in our makerspace are creativity, collaboration, communication, persistence, and problem-solving).  Should my objectives be my prompts (that doesn’t feel right, somehow)?

a.) Am I off base here — should I be more focused on content objectives?  

If you are working under Common Core or other similar standards, take a look at the overall goals in the first paragraphs and pages. They often have language that supports the process skills. So the argument is, I AM implementing learning objectives, ALL of them, not just the ones at the bottom bullet point level of the document.

And if you are really being told to literally post them, I think this is a waste of time and a great misunderstanding of research that says that kids do better if they have clear goals. Writing incomprehensible sentences on the board does not accomplish this.

Mandating the Daily Posting of Objectives and Other Dumb Ideas by Grant Wiggins

b.) If you were an administrator, what learning objectives would you be looking for when you walk into a learning space?

I’d talk to the kids to see if they are motivated and can use appropriate language to explain what they are doing. I’d look for authentic student work on the walls and shelves.

In our learning adventures so far, the students and I have discovered that making and tinkering often result in loose ends and dangling possibilities that are not resolved in a timely way at the end of the marking period.  While we are ok with that, I think we are really stressing out some of the adults around us.  Any advice for helping them cope and perhaps helping me respond to the question “how in the world do you grade that?”.  I am working hard to make the student’s thinking visible to me in my role as a “researcher” and valuing process.  How do I make that thinking visible to others as well?

I hear you. Many teachers incorporate documentation/reflection activities into project-based learning assignments. That’s not a perfect solution, as there’s only so much time in the day and the time kids spend on documentation is time not spent on the project. If there is documentation required as an authentic part of the project, that helps (like writing directions for others to use an invention.) I think getting video is a good thing – but then again, you have to edit it. Having the adults actually talk to the kids I think is the best thing.

It’s interesting that no one seems to want to dive into other forms of assessment that they are familiar with. For example, have your colleagues ever demanded to see a written test and asked you to justify why one question is worth 3 points and another worth 5 points? Or why the midterm counts as 30% of the grade rather than 50%?

It’s because this is new (to them, anyway) that it attracts attention. It could be an opportunity to ask your colleague to sit with you and do the evaluation with you. What factors do you look for? What’s the evidence of learning that you see? If they are asking the question honestly, then they should be willing to take the time to hear the whole answer and have a conversation.

Students have such HUGE ideas that they want to pursue (like creating a computer operating system!!!).  Any strategies for helping them to break something like that into manageable chunks without squishing their ideas?

That’s a tough one. You want them to shoot for the moon, but get something done too, not just be hitting their heads against the wall. Breaking down a problem is one strategy, having a bag of good prompts is another. Have a semi-firm timeline for when the research stops and the “do” starts. And you will get better at it too.

Have you seen STEM programs that effectively incorporated service learning to help students solve community problems?  Any suggestions for creating a culture of giving/service?

Most of the STEM focused programs I’ve seen are more about advocacy or solving problems, not so much in helping others. Like writing a proposal to the city council for a bike path. Tackling building projects supports STEM well, and even if the problem is too hard to really be solved, you can learn about the limitations of science or materials, or other hard facts.

It’s tougher to design a program around big social issues, like solving poverty or homelessness or even grander, like solving global warming. You want issues that you have some hope of having an impact, that the students can relate to and wrap their heads around.

But whatever it is, the STEM component needs to be maintained by asking the students to predict, measure, and analyze what they do. Weigh the trash collected, measure the heat saved by installing insulation and calculate the electricity and money saved. If you help someone, figure out a way to measure that impact, even if you are taking surveys and turning feelings into data like a “happiness index”.

Service learning is a terrific way to add relevance to projects, which is a key for engaging girls. The research supporting service-learning in education is also great.

Right now, I am the embodiment of “the special bunker” that meets for “42-minutes per week”.  I recognize that it is not ideal, but it is all that I can get right now.  How can I go about changing that?  Any advice for spreading constructionism and making to others?

Yes, we did say in the book that the worry about creating a makerspace is that it becomes an excuse not to change anything else. Then again, you do what you can do and keep the forward momentum going. Seymour Papert called it the Someday…Monday problem and said that what you do on Monday should at least be on the path to Someday. It’s a journey, and sometimes is a longer journey then we would like.

It’s also a show, not a tell. Develop student allies and advocates, partner with teachers who are willing, and find parents who “get it.” Call the newspaper and the local cable channel EVERY MONTH.

Find out if your admins want you to spread the word, and hold them to actually supporting it with PD and collaboration time. It’s unreasonable to expect that constructionism will just leak out of your classroom without the administration providing leadership, focus, and resources (including time and money).

Do you know any educators in the Chicago area that I should connect with?

Check the list at http://k12makers.org/ and join this Google group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/k-12-fablabs

Anything else you think I should know or that you want to tell me?  

Start with kids doing stuff and work from there. Just do it! Connect with others who you can collaborate, brainstorm with, and share ideas (see above).

These educators aren’t in your area, but they document their process nicely –

http://hillbrook.us/hbmakers/

www.lighthousecreativitylab.org

http://www.creatorsstudio.org/

Consider keeping your own blog – make it private if you have to, but the journal of your process will be useful to you as time goes on.

Best of luck,

Sylvia

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FabLearn Fellows – maker teachers making it work

This past year I’ve had the immense privilege of working as a mentor to the FabLearn Fellows, an NSF funded program in association with the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.

The 2014/2015 FabLearn Fellows cohort is a diverse group of 18 educators and makers. They represent eight states and five countries, and work with a wide range of ages at schools, museums, universities and non-profits. Throughout the course of the year, they will develop curriculum and resources, as well as contribute to current research projects. Their blogs represent their diverse experience and interests in creating better educational oportunities for all.

January in the FabLearn Fellows blogs saw a wide variety of philosophical and practical ideas. As “making” in the classroom becomes more mainstream, it’s important to think about the role of the teacher/leader in creative, hands-on classrooms and educational spaces. In these posts, we can see that teachers are planners, observers, catalysts, researchers, yearners, gurus, thinkers, and yes – makers! It’s such a colorful palette of roles when compared to the perception of the teacher as a content delivery system and classroom manager.

Just in Time Teacher Learning by Heather Pang – “The bigger take-away for me, as I help students with their projects is that I don’t need to know how to do everything before we start, and I will learn a great deal as we go.  And so will the students.”

“Technological Disobedience” in Cuba and informal making education by Susan Klimczak – This video on “Technological Disobedience” in Cuba complements recent FabLearn Fellows conversations about decentering making, makers, and maker education.

Making Code Real – Keith Ostfeld, a FabLearn Fellow in a museum, thinks about how coding works in his informal education context.

“Making” in California K-12 Education: A brief state of affairs – David Malpica explores the current state of maker education in public K-12 education in California. Looking at funding, standards, and support organizations creates a fuller picture of the myriad pieces of the puzzle that make up public education policy in these areas.

“Why I am not a Maker” by Debbie Chachra: Toward problematizing what it means to be a “Maker” – Susan Klimczak shares an article questioning the identity of “maker” as celebrating only those who make things, and whether that devalues people who have interests and jobs without tangible products. She connects this to the contributions of Dr. Nettrice Gaskins and Dr. Leah Buechley in questioning Silicon Valley’s interest in “making” as a generator of innovative products.

Rwanda maker interest – I shared a post by a friend traveling in Rwanda about the potential for makerspaces there. The comments, both online and off, connected several of the Africa-based FabLearn Fellows with her with suggestions, contacts, and resources. It’s a small world after all!

The Role & Rigor of Self-Assessment in MakerEd In this three part post, Christa Flores discusses various assessment techniques with the student at the center that work with PBL and maker programs.

Molds and Molding by Gilson Domingues with Pietro Domingues. These three practical posts offer reasons and instructions on making and using molds to reproduce small objects with detail and precision.

Collaborative work in the classroom with etherpad Mario Parade explains how to use an open source software tool called Etherpad for students and teachers to collaborate and document work.

Intel MakeHers Report: Engaging Girls and Women in Technology through Making, Creating, and Inventing – Juliet Wanyiri shares a new report on girls and making.

Hey Kids – Follow the Directions! – Aaron Vanderwerff asks, does following directions mean you aren’t really making?

Toward Making Change: Beyond #BlackLivesMatter – Two posts by Susan Klimczak document a collaborative project at the South End Technology Center @ Tent City supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean’s Equity Project.

An interesting article on “Culturally responsive computing: a theory revisited” – Susan Klimczak shares an article that supports a recurring theme among the FabLearn Fellows and at the Fab Learn Conference of how to put youth of color, young women and youth living in families with low incomes at the center of the maker education movement.

Sequencing activities to support discovery – Erin Riley provides a thoughtful yet practical analysis of several activities that served to build skills all while leading to more open, exploratory projects. Is it possible to provide an environment where students can find their own way creatively, all the while gaining specific skills?

Where the circle overlaps, thinking about the “A” in STEAM by Erin Riley – “STEAM supporters believe STEM should be updated to include creativity, innovation and aesthetics. Are we thinking of this like a Venn diagram, merging form (from the artistic side) to function (from the scientific side) or an extra component to add to the mix, enhancing work in STEM?”

Stay tuned for more!

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How tos: New Making in Education posts from the FabLearn Fellows

Several recent FabLearn Fellow blog posts have created a lot of room for discussion around the topics of fabrication, making, and design in museums and classrooms. Please comment and add your voice!

A brief overview of recent posts:

In 18th Century Buildings, Vector Drawing, History, and Math, Heather Pang explores how a project designed to be a simple skill-builder evolved into something more.

Christa Flores tackles Making for Making Sake? or STEAM for 21st Century Job Skills? weaving in educational philosophy, economic policy, and reaching out to FabLearn 2014 Netherlands attendees to create a global conversation.

Avoiding Cookie Cutters by Keith Ostfeld muses on redesigning an Inventor’s Workshop in a museum setting to help partcipants create more diverse, but still successful projects and includes a terrific video showcasing some young creators in action.

Addressing another perceived roadblock to projects in the classroom – that one teacher simply can’t support students all doing different projects, Christa Flores documents students as co-teachers in The Role of Co-Teachers in a Maker Classroom.

And Heather Pang considers “… the question of how much guidance, how many constraints, how much help to give students…” in Where is the line?

These posts all explore some of the most-asked questions hands-on authentic learning: How do students build skills? How does a teacher assess project work? How does a teacher reflect and iterate on lesson planning and design? Doesn’t this take more time than traditional instruction?

But most of all, these posts all help answer the question, “Can authentic learning be done in real schools and learning spaces?” Obviously the answer is YES!

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Should schools embrace making because it develops job skills?

I often hear that making, especially learning to program, is valuable because it develops “job skills”.

However, I don’t advocate for programming or making or tinkering because it’s a job skill. In fact, the “STEM crisis” is largely a myth. (See this IEEE article series.) There is even speculation that this is largely manufactured by companies trying to get more visas for lower paid workers, plus drive down salaries for veteran engineers and scientists by inflating the numbers of graduates.

That aside, I believe that programming is strongly a part of any real “maker” program and should not be artificially separated. I also don’t believe that kids learning programming or doing hands on work is “job training.” I believe it creates habits of mind that serve everyone. Logical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity are good for everyone. All students should have access to this basic literacy just like reading and writing is taught to all even though we don’t believe that everyone will be novelists.

 

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New report: Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature

A new literature review was just released by the Board of Science Education (an NSF funded program associated with the National Academies) called:

Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature, by Shirin Vossoughi and Bronwyn Bevan (The PDF is linked from a list, click here and scroll down)

The Board of Sciences has commisioned this and several other papers focused on informal and afterschool STEM learning. More information and links to the other papers are on their website.

The paper is a goldmine of research supporting tinkering and making activities that support learning – not just in STEM and not just in informal settings. Paulo’s research, Papert, and Leah Buechley’s FabLearn 2013 speech are all referenced (and my book too!)

The list of the other commissioned papers is interesting as well. All the papers are linked from this site.

Commissioned Papers

Formative Assessment for STEM Learning Ecosystems: Biographical approaches as a resource for research and practice by Brigid Barron

Citizen Science and Youth Education by Rick Bonney, Tina B. Phillips, Jody Enck, Jennifer Shirk, and Nancy Trautmann

Evidence & Impact: Museum-Managed STEM Programs in Out-of-School Settings, by Bernadette Chi, Rena Dorph & Leah Reisman

Children Doing Science: Essential Idiosyncrasy and the Challenges of Assessment by David Hammer and Jennifer Radoff

Broadening Access to STEM Learning through Out-of-School Learning Environments by Laura Huerta Migus

Making and Tinkering: A Review of the Literature, by Shirin Vossoughi and Bronwyn Bevan

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Is “Student-Centered” Just Code for Lord of the Flies?

Working this past year with the FabLearn Fellows has been an incredible experience. These 18 educators from around the globe are leading the way to understanding the benefits of “making” in formal and informal learning spaces.

This post from Christa Flores, called, The “Unstructured Classroom” and other misconceptions about Constructivist Learning tackles some of the misunderstandings that people have about making in the classroom. There is fear that “letting go” of the reins as a teacher means that students will just wander aimlessly or worse, the anarchy will ensue. On the flip side, people have ungrounded hopes that simply giving students choice and agency over their own learning will magically create perfect learning conditions.

Christa explains,

“In the three years that I have been teaching science through the lens of making or inventing and problem solving, I have often heard the iLab, referred to as “unstructured,” by some well meaning adults. This harkens back to the discord between what we know progressive education can be versus what we envision when we think of a “progressive classroom.” When I worked at Calhoun in New York City, we were considered a progressive school and we often had the debate about what we mean by the term “unstructured.” The debate would invariably follow a conversation with a nervous parent that would go something like this, “Its good for some kids maybe, but my son doesn’t do well in an “unstructured” classroom.”

Christa tackles the claim that unstructured classrooms are unplanned classrooms by offering examples of student-centered work in her classrooms. Teacher planning and preparation do not mean that the teacher is planning everything that happens in the classroom, but instead is shaping a learning environment with care AND pedagogical and content knowledge.

Please read the rest of Christa’s blog post on the FabLearn Fellows site!

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Research brief: Good learning involves direct experience, focus, motivation, and relationships

Quoted from “Conditions of Learning” – A research brief from the What Kids Can Do site How Youth Learn: A Portfolio to Inform and Inspire Educators, Students, Parents & More

In a recent paper, “Realizing the Potential of Learning in Middle Adolescence,” cognitive psychologists Robert Halpern, Paul Heckman, and Rick Larson remind us:

  • Good learning involves direct experience, “deep immersion in a consequential activity” (Bruner, 1966).
  • Learning works best when young people can focus in depth on a few things at a time; when they see a clear purpose in learning activities; and when they have an active role—co-constructing, interpreting, applying, making sense of something, making connections.
  • Motivation is a powerful engine for learning, and the right conditions can foster it. Motivation to learn is stronger when it emerges from the young person’s prior knowledge and interests, when it springs not from reward or punishment but from the task itself, and when it is driven by a desire for mastery and by identification with
    others who do it well.
  • Learning is often most effective when it is social; when it occurs as a shared activity within meaningful relationships; and when it allows for increasingly responsible participation—within a tradition, or a community of fellow learners, or one’s culture at large.

The bottom line: Young people can be—and want to be—fully engaged learners. The evaluation research on longstanding school networks that put these principles into practice—like Expeditionary Learning, Big Picture, Early College High School, and High Tech High—finds deeply engaged students motivated to do their best (National Research Council and the Institutes of Medicine, 2004; Castellano, Stringfield & Stone, 2003; Kemple, Hirliahiy & Smith, 2005).

The prevailing narrative, however, is one of student disengagement.

Read the rest of the research brief at “Conditions of Learning”

But look how beautifully supports hands-on, authentic learning advocated by educators involved in the Making in Education movement!