I’m heading out for a string of presentations and workshops – hope to see old friends and new!
ICE 2018 – Feb 26 (Chicago) I’m part of an “All-Star” lineup of presenters who are participating in the Illinois Computing Educators conference. Instead of one keynote they are bringing back keynotes from previous years to do panels and featured presentations. It’s a bit embarrassing to call yourself an “All-Star” but that’s their term, not mine! Check out the whole list and join us!
Then I’m flying straight to Italy where Gary Stager and I will keynote a School Innovation conference in Modena and lead a workshop in Bologna on March 2 & 3. Then we hit the road (by train) for lectures at Universities in Padua, Vicenza, Venice, and Pistoia. Finally a roundtable at the U.S. Embassy in Rome with an innovation policy advocacy working group.
Oh, and in between I’m flying to Valencia, Spain to keynote a conference there! INTED 2018 will be March 5-7 and I’ll be keynoting on March 5.
When we talk about making, there is a tendency to overlap our terms, like saying we’re going to “do makerspace”. I think unpacking these terms help uncover underlying assumptions, especially when designing new spaces and learning opportunities. I see this as four distinct aspects that work together:
Place – Makerspace, hackerspace, Fab Lab, Techshop, shop, science lab, open classroom, studio
By looking at these four aspects, we can untangle some of the confusion about what “making” in education is. These can combine in interesting ways – you can have a Design Thinking program that is strongly teacher directed in a makerspace that has a green eco-streak that permeates the projects. The place doesn’t dictate the process, which is good and bad.
Many times, when designing new learning opportunities or spaces it is assumed that their current culture will transform as well. Space planning doesn’t magically transform pedagogy. You can’t assume that just because you build a flexible space with terrific materials, it will magically be filled with wonderful student-centered, open-ended projects.
Here’s a “cheat sheet” for the four aspects.
Place
Both formal (credit-bearing courses, primarily at schools) and informal (extra-curricular activities, clubs, libraries, museums, community organizations, commercial spaces)
Hackerspace – “Hacking” indicates both an activity and political belief that systems should be open to all people to change and redistribute for the greater good. (roots in the 1960’s). More prevalent in Europe than US.
Makerspace – MAKE magazine (2005 – present). Popular Science for the 21st century. DIY and DIWO. Maker Faires. Adopted as a softer, safer alternative to hackerspace. Can be a separate room or integrated into classrooms.
Fab Lab – Spaces connected to the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms (565 worldwide) with a common charter and specific requirements for space and tools. Fablab also used as a generic nickname for any fabrication lab.
TechShop (and others) – non-profit or commercial organizations offering community tool sharing, classes, or incubation space.
Shop, science lab, classroom, studio – traditional names for school spaces for learning via hands-on activities.
Culture
Maker movement – technology-based extension of DIY culture, incorporating hobbyist tools to shortcut a traditional (corporate) design and development process, and the internet to openly share problems and solutions. Maker mindset – a positive, energized attitude of active tinkering to solve problems, using any and all materials at hand.
Hacker/hacking – Essential lessons about the world are learned “..from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things.” – Steven Levy
Green – values of ecology, conservation, and respect for the environment.
Citizen/amateur science – participation of non-professional scientists in gathering and interpreting data or collaborating in research projects.
Artisanal/craft movements – engaging in mindful and ethical practices to humanize activities, products, and production.
Process
Making – the act of creation. “Learning by making happens only when the making changes the maker.” – Sylvia Martinez
Tinkering – non-linear, iterative approach to reaching a goal. “messing about” with materials, tools, and ideas. “Making, fixing, and improving mental constructions.” – Seymour Papert
Design Thinking – customer-centered product design and development process popularized by IDEO and the Stanford d.school
Design – “to give form, or expression, to inner feelings and ideas, thus projecting them outwards, making them tangible.” – Edith Ackermann
Genius Hour – specific classroom time devoted to tinkering and open-ended projects. Patterned after companies (Google and FedEx, primarily) that allow employees to work on non-company projects on company time, thereby boosting morale and possibly resulting in products useful to the company.
Project-based Learning (PBL) – Projects are…“work that is substantial, shareable, and personally meaningful.” – Martinez & Stager
Beliefs about teaching and learning
Instructionism – Belief that learning is the result of teaching. Lecture, direct instruction.
Behaviorism – Belief that behavior is a result of reinforcement and punishment. Rote learning, worksheets, stars/stickers, grades.
Constructivism – Piagetian idea that learning is a personal, internal reconstruction—not a transmission of knowledge. Socratic method, modeling, manipulatives, experiments, research, groupwork, inquiry.
Constructionism – Seymour Papert extended constructivism with the idea that learning is even more effective when the learner is creating a meaningful, shareable artifact. PBL, making, citizen science.
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!
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be formally working with the first cadre of FabLearn Fellows as a mentor and advisor.
This program is a part of a NSF-sponsored project entitled “Infusing Learning Sciences Research into Digital Fabrication in Education and the Makers’ Movement.” The 2014 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. They have agreed to contribute to high-impact research and outreach to answer the following questions:
How can we generate an open-source set of constructionist curricular materials well-adapted for Makerspaces and FabLabs in educational settings?
How are teachers adapting their own curriculum in face of these new “making” technologies, and how can they be better supported? What challenges do teachers face when trying to adopt project-based, constructionist, digital fabrication activities in their classrooms and after-school programs?
How are schools approaching teacher development, parental/community involvement, and issues around traditional assessment?
I’m excited to help support the FabLearn Fellows. I believe that too often, researchers and practitioners in education are isolated from one another. As a result, we lose incredible opportunities to learn and share.
The next question is what to do when faced with early research? Do we just wait until the research is done? Or maybe even validated with other studies?
I don’t believe this.
I want to know, “What if these early findings are true? Would it change my practice? What would it look like in my classroom or school?”
Let’s just take one of the research questions being asked – Do detailed instructions help or hinder student understanding? What is the difference between a learner who is given step-by-step instructions vs. being given time to explore a new technology? It is often assumed that the way to learn something new is to follow explicit directions for a couple of tries, and then eventually do it on your own.
The early research is showing, however, that students who are given explicit instructions do NOT move to not needing those instructions. They stay “stuck” in a habit of depending on instructions.
Uh oh. As someone who works with teachers learning new technology, what should I do? Should I hide my handouts? Make them less explicit? I don’t know, but I’m sure thinking about it.
Maybe you are thinking about this with your students. Why not do a little experiment? If you give students detailed instructions “just to get them started” on early project work – why not see what happens if you skip the tutorials and hide the handouts? After some early confusion (where you will have to refrain from jumping in with the rescue) you may see new patterns emerging.
I know I’m not waiting around for the perfect research to happen. I want to find out the “what if…” sooner rather than later.
The next revolution in education will be made, not televised.
Here is what happens when you ask two Tech & Learning advisors to trade notes on one of the fastest-moving phenomena in education technology. Sylvia Martinez (SM) recently co-authored InventTo Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. Dr. Gary A. Carnow (GC) is Chief Propellerhead of Prolific Thinkers and the former CTO of Pasadena Unified School District. He is also the co-author of multiple edtech books. Both are excited about the Maker Movement. Read why you should be, too:
GC: I shudder when I hear that my local school is now reinventing itself as a STEM or STEAM school. STEM or STEAM is an interesting label, but it limits what is happening across the world outside of traditional educational institutions. A growing army of empowered parents and creative teachers are banding together in Maker Faires. What is this Maker Movement and why does every reader of Tech & Learning need to know about it?
Sylvia Martinez
SM: A number of reasons. First, it’s a global technological and creative revolution. Some very smart people are predicting that the tools and technology of the Maker Movement will revolutionize the way we produce, market, and sell goods and services worldwide. Want a new watch? Don’t ship it across the world, just print it out! Better yet, design it yourself and then print it out. Something this epic should be on every educator’s radar.
Next, the Maker Movement advocates a “Do It Yourself” or DIY attitude towards the world and problems that need solving. Learning to use what you’ve got and “give it a go” are valuable mindsets for young learners.
Plus it’s cool! Makers worldwide are developing amazing new tools, materials, and skills and inviting the whole world to join in the fun. Using gee-whiz technology to make, repair, or customize the things we need brings engineering, design, and computer science to life.
Finally, the Maker Movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. For educators, I believe that being open to the lessons of the Maker Movement holds the key to reanimating the best, but oft-forgotten learner-centered teaching practices.
Global Maker Faires and a growing library of literature inspire learners of all ages and experience levels to become inventors and seize control of their world. Online communities serve as the hub of a global learning commons, allowing people to share not just ideas, but the actual codes and designs for what they invent. This ease of sharing lowers the barriers to entry, as newcomers can easily use someone else’s codes or designs as building blocks for their own creations.
However, at the Maker Faires I’ve been to, I’ve met countless parents who say to me (as they watch their child happily soldering, building with LEGO, or programming robots) “School is killing my kid.” And unfortunately, I know what they mean. We can and must do better, not just for the empowered parents who can take their child to a Maker Faire, but for all children.
Dr. Gary Carnow
GC: The Maker Movement, according to Wikipedia, stresses “new and unique applications of technologies, and encourages invention and prototyping. There is a strong focus on using and learning practical skills and applying them creatively.” What does that mean for classrooms today?
SM: The new Next Generation Science Standards makes explicit calls for meaningful assessment, interdisciplinary knowledge, creativity, inquiry, and engineering. Specifically, we must change how schools approach science and math.
In too many cases, science and math have been stripped of practical applications because of a false premise that practical math is only for students who don’t go to college. This is a recipe for disaster and I think we see the results in students who gradually lose interest in STEM subjects over the years. We cannot and must not continue to pretend that success in STEM subjects means memorizing the textbook.
Making is a way of bringing creativity, authentic design thinking, and engineering to learners. Tinkering is the process of design, the way real scientists and engineers invent new things. Such concrete experiences provide a meaningful context for understanding abstract science and math concepts while often incorporating esthetic components. Creating opportunities for students to solve real problems, combined with imaginative new materials and technology, makes learning come alive and cements understandings that are difficult when only studied in the abstract.
We must bravely reintegrate actual labs and design into science. We must be able to answer a math student who asks, “Why do I need to know this?” (And the answer should never be, you’ll need this next year.) We must reinvent classrooms as places where students ARE inventors, designers, scientists, and mathematicians TODAY. Making is the avenue to this reimagination of 21st century education.
GC: Your background is engineering. I began my career as a teacher of gifted children. We both subscribe to MAKE Magazine. Where do teachers, parents, students, and administrators, or for that matter anyone who is interested in providing meaningful experiences for students, begin?
SM: In his 2005 book, Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop—from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication, MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld described the next technological revolution as one in which people would make anything they need to solve their own problems. Gershenfeld predicted that for the cost of your school’s first computer, you would have a Fabrication Lab or fab lab—a mini high-tech factory—capable of making things designed on a computer. This prediction is now reality.
In our new book, we identify three aspects of the making revolution that are game-changers for schools. All of these are accessible and affordable today. Any of these are great places to begin:
Computer controlled fabrication devices: Over the past few years, devices that fabricate three-dimensional objects have become an affordable reality. These 3D printers can take a design file and output a physical object. Plastic filament is melted and deposited in intricate patterns that build layer by layer, much like a 2D printer prints lines of dots that, line by line, create a printed page. With 3D design and printing, the ability for students to design and create their own objects combines math, science, engineering, and craft.
Physical computing: New open source microcontrollers, sensors, and interfaces connect the physical world to the digital world in ways never before possible. Many schools are familiar with robotics, one aspect of physical computing, but whole new worlds are opening up, such as wearable computing. Wearable computing, soft circuits, and e-textiles use conductive thread and tiny mobile microprocessors to make smart textiles and clothing. Other kinds of new microprocessors, like Arduinos, combine with plug-and-play devices that connect to the Internet, to each other, or to any number of sensors. This means that low-cost, easy-to-make computational devices can test, monitor, beautify, and explore the world.
Programming: There is a new call for programming in schools, from the Next Generation Science Standards to the White House. Programming is the key to controlling this new world of computational devices and the range of programming languages has never been greater. Today’s modern languages are designed for every purpose and every age.
The common thread here is computation. The computational potential of these technologies, tools, and materials elevates the learning potential beyond craft projects. Of course there are things to be learned from building with cardboard or Popsicle sticks and in our book we discuss ALL kinds of making and makerspaces for learning. But computation is the game-changer that should make educators sit up and take notice.
All of these experiences and the materials that enable them are consistent with the imaginations of children and with the types of learning experiences society has long valued. Making is a stance that puts the learner at the center of the educational process and creates opportunities that students may never have encountered themselves. Makers are confident, competent, curious citizens in a new world of possibility.
GC: What matters most about learning to me is not the product but the process. What I love about the Maker Movement is that makers rarely work in isolation. Making is a social activity. The Maker Movement embraces failure and believes that everyone can make. When I look back on my traditional schooling, what I remember is that I had gifted teachers who knew the power of project-based learning. I remember the projects and the process and have little memory of whatever facts I had to cram for the dreaded “pop quiz.” What brought you to the Maker Movement? Is this just the next big thing or is this the real deal?
SM: Gary, you pack a lot into your questions! What brought me to the Maker Movement is that it deeply connects with my personal reasons for becoming an engineer. I wanted to know how to solve problems—real problems in the real world, not textbook problems. I think all kids want to change the world, and the Maker Movement and Maker ethos teaches kids that they have the power to make the world a better place, NOW. They don’t have to wait for a book or a teacher to tell them what to do, because there is a whole world out there of people all trying things and sharing the results. Somebody somewhere is asking the same questions as you and by sharing the journey, we all can learn more.
I realize the attraction of always searching for the “new new thing”, the magic wand that will fix all problems. I don’t believe that the Maker Movement is a magic wand. I hope it doesn’t get turned into a buzzword. Maybe we can talk more about how to make sure the hype doesn’t overwhelm the promise of the Maker Movement in schools. However, it is my strong belief that educators who look deeply at the Maker Movement will find a wealth of new ideas and inspiration to revitalize their classrooms and give children the opportunity to touch the future.
The K12online conference is a FREE, online conference organized by educators for educators around the world interested in integrating emerging technologies into classroom practice. A goal of the conference (among several) is to help educators make sense of and meet the needs of a continually changing learning landscape.
This year, Gary Stager and I were pleased to be invited to keynote the conference strand called “Building Learning.” The neat thing about K12online is that all the sessions are archived permanently online for easy viewing.
So some of you may have noticed that I’ve been pretty quiet here lately. All my writing energy has been going to a good cause though! I’m happy to announce a new book: Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, authored jointly by yours truly, Sylvia Martinez, and Gary Stager.
This book has been cooking a long time, fueled by our belief that many schools are heading away from what real learning looks like – projects that are student-centered, hands-on, and authentic. But there is a technology revolution out there that has the potential to change that. New materials and technology can be game-changers: things like 3D printing, microcomputers like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, sensors and interfaces that connect the physical world to the digital, and programming. At the same time, a vibrant “maker movement” is spreading worldwide, encouraging people to make, tinker, and share technology and craft.
Invent To Learn is for educators who want to learn about these new technologies and how they can work in real classrooms. But it’s not just about “stuff” – we explore teaching, learning, and how to shape the learning environment. By combining the maker ethos with what we know about how children really learn, we can create classrooms that are alive with creativity and “objects to think with” that will permanently change education.
Student leadership
One chapter of Invent To Learn is about how learning by doing also gives students a chance to become leaders in their schools and communities. Giving students access to modern creativity tools and technology is not about “jobs of the future,” it’s about real learning NOW.
Making for every classroom budget
Even if you don’t have access to expensive (but increasingly affordable) hardware, every classroom can become a makerspace where kids and teachers learn together through direct experience with an assortment of high and low-tech materials. The potential range, breadth, power, complexity and beauty of projects has never been greater thanks to the amazing new tools, materials, ingenuity and playfulness you will encounter in this book.
Check the Invent To Learn website for information on getting the print or Kindle version of the book, and also about professional development for your district.
Start the year off with hands on Think you need to wait for kids to settle down and learn the basics before you let them do projects and hands-on work? Not according to this expert teacher.
What tech vision will you share? What message does your Acceptable Use Policy send when it goes home with students for them and their parents to sign? This year, change overly complex, negative language to language that celebrates the potential of technology – and students.
Games for collaboration and teamwork
Want to create a more collaborative, constructivist classroom? Instead of traditional icebreakers, try these games that encourage collaboration and teamwork.
ICE 2018 – Feb 26 (Chicago) I’m part of an “All-Star” lineup of presenters who are participating in the Illinois Computing Educators conference. Instead of one keynote they are bringing back keynotes from previous years to do panels and featured presentations. It’s a bit embarrassing to call yourself an “All-Star” but that’s their term, not mine! Check out the whole list and join us!
