I’ve written before about Gever Tulley and this short TED talk video about his Tinkering School. I used it to open my Educon conversation – Tinkering Towards Technology Fluency.
Here is just a short list of things he mentions as he’s describing how to structure learning environments where children learn through tinkering.
no set curriculum
no tests
lots of stuff
lots of tools
real tools
immersive
time
how to make things
deep realization that they can figure things out
nothing turns out as planned
every step is valuable
just start building
fully committed to project at hand
success is in the doing
failures are celebrated and analyzed
child-appropriate response to frustration
all materials useful
These kinds of attributes are great goal-posts for any authentic project, not just technology projects.
Sylvia