Bits and Atoms, part one

- Towards a wider walls 21st C Maker Education curriculum pathway
- Wider walls means making the learning accessible to more citizens

Modern Maker Education has a history, philosophy, theory, practice and methods all of which have been dynamically developed over the past 50 years (refer Stager's book). This article outlines how to set it up and make it work in a big picture framework. The main aim is to provide a guide to teachers and school administrations interested in this pathway.

THE SPACE and MATERIALS

Paulo Blikstein argues the case for a dedicated Maker Space, aka Fab Lab:

“… after having conducted tens of robotics and invention workshops in schools, I was disappointed by the fact that students did not have a place to continue and deepen their projects – and projects would die after the workshop or the final expo. Schools manifest how they value a particular activity by building a space for it. If sports are important, schools build a gym and a basketball court. If music education is in demand, schools set up music rooms. Only then can like minded students gather together, hang out, do projects, talk about them, and create a productive subculture in schools. Unfortunately, I realized that there was no such space for engineering and invention. Even when schools had robotics labs, they were highly gender-biased and not inviting for most students. Robotics labs and science labs were not disruptive spaces anymore. Therefore in 2008 I started to work with schools around the world to establish digital fabrication labs – the FabLab@School project was born”
- Paulo Blikstein. The Democratisation of Invention (2013)

To setup a Fab Learn Lab or Maker Space we need a dedicated space, equipped with the right furniture, tools and storage. The room needs to be spacious with movable furniture. Beginning materials could be lots of cardboard, computers, 3D printers, microcontrollers and an equipment trolley. This is where my school's current maker space is at, including five Prusa 3D printers. Over time, the plan is to progressively expand into a full Fab Learn Lab with 5 types of machines (laser cutter, 3D printers, CNC routers, vinyl cutter and digital embroidery).

Much of the software is Free or Open Source (FOSS): MakeCode, Tinkercad, Prusa Slicer (if you have Prusa 3D printers), Scratch, Turtle Art … feel free to add to this list

THE THREE BETTERS: some materials are better for great learning

Harel and Papert (1990) argue that some materials are better with regard to the following criteria:

• appropriability (some things lend themselves better than others to being made one's own)
• evocativeness (some materials are more apt than others to precipitate personal thought)
• integration (some materials are better carriers of multiple meaning and multiple concepts)

This was said in connection with Idit Harel’s “Instructional Software Design Project”: a cross age tutoring project in which older students developed screens, using Logo, of fraction puzzles for younger student to solve. The better materials in this case being the learning design, computers and logo (an earlier version of Scratch). Of course, things have changed enormously since 1990. The atoms and bits are cheaper, better and more integrated than before. I argue that 21stC Maker Education is a modern embodiment of this educational philosophy. The materials outlined in this article are still better for achieving appropriability, evocativeness and integration than other materials.

THE HUMMING HOUSE METAPHOR

“low floor, wide walls, high ceiling, open windows”

This metaphor has been used as a descriptor for Scratch but it equally applies to a well constructed Maker Education curriculum. To explain:

• Low floor: develop an interesting project in 10 minutes, easily done using Scratch v3;
• Wide walls: Many diverse multimedia project pathways into any curriculum area and connections between software and hardware are available.
• High ceiling: In Scratch the priority has been on the wider walls but certainly the high ceiling (the ability to develop complex projects) is there as well. And there is a spin off from Scratch called Snap! where the powerful tools are more overt.
• Open windows: Collaboration, search and remix is a feature of the Scratch site, take someone else’s project and modify it

In the trade off between wide walls (project diversity) and high ceiling (project complexity) the emphasis ought to be on the wide walls, for most students. The goal is to get all students working on meaningful projects. A few will go on and master high levels of complexity in their making and coding. That opportunity is there too. (refer Resnick)

CAUTION: MOST CHILDREN ARE NOT HACKERS

Are all students makers in the age of social media? NO!

I have written a separate article about this (refer Kerr, thoughts on an article by Paulo Blikstein and Marcelo Worsley). The central point is that students often need support. If some don’t get it they will feel lost or frustrated. They drift into doing the less demanding parts of a task, eg. painting a project rather than tackling the coding. Without help (sink or swim approach) those who feel uncomfortable in a maker space can become disempowered.

Having recognised this there are different awareness's and strategies that improve the chance of success:

• include tasks that are meaningful to all students
• avoid too much “learn from failure” rhetoric
• find ways to get students out of their comfort zone. Setup collaboration so the lower ability in a pair is the driver)
• be aware that some groups expect to fail (stereotype threat (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006) which shows that individuals can perform below their ability level when they suspect that they belong to a group that historically does not do well at a particular activity)

THE PATHWAY

For most students there is lots of new learning involved. Here is a one pathway I have used suitable for Middle School students, say, Years 5 to 9, in my case Year 8s. There are other such introductory pathways, this is just one grape in a potential banquet:

(1) Work in a team to make a cardboard hat, then attach a microbit to code and power a half metre neopixel strip. Since it is a guided project the code will be supplied by the teacher. All groups will be supplied with basic introductory code (change the strip colours by pressing buttons) but then different groups will be shown how to develop more interesting effects (eg. rotating rainbows which respond to sound; neopixel strip lights that change colour one by one by pressing buttons or tilting the hat etc.).

(2) Work in a team to make an art machine. The machine has pegs to hold a couple of pens and is powered by a continuous micro servo (360 degree rotations). Once again the setup code is supplied. Then respond to challenges like: can you make the art machine draw a straight line.

There can be more introductory projects. But after a few like this students are ready to design their own projects.

DESIGN and REDESIGN: imitation, iteration and improvisation

When I trialled this approach recently with year 8s the sort of things they decided to build were a complete exo skeleton, a submarine made from geodesic domes, a sword and scythe weapon set, a mini computer, a dancing cactus and a couple of others.

Motivation was high for some groups:

• One student in the exo skeleton group made a shield at home and brought in DC motors extracted from remote control cars to augment his group's design.
• student in the weapon set group found the code for a flappy bird game and painstakingly copied it out for a microbit on the handle of their sword
• A student in the submarine group reported that she had spent about 10 hours at home making the triangles for her geodesic dome

All of the theories of design talk about the iterative stages of the design process. For example Mitch Resnick gives us this diagram to illustrate the process:

I began with guided design, then invited students to do their own design and then some (not all) of them during the process decided to redesign or improve their original design. I did not overtly teach this process. Rather some of the groups just decided to do it.

You could call this process imitation, iteration and improvisation (Designing Reality, 198). The process invites perseverance and resourcefulness.

I like Austin Kleon’s (“Steal like an Artist”) annotations on Mitch Resnick’s diagram:

TIME BLOCKS

Project based learning works much better with large blocks of continuous time – not one hour lessons but two, three or four hours (with 5 minute or recess / lunch breaks as normal). The difference this makes is remarkable. Some students became so engaged with their projects they were asking to work through their break times! The larger blocks of time enable both increased engagement by students on their projects, including the opportunity to improve their design along the way, and also increased opportunity for the teacher to build positive relationships. We are working as a team to build fun projects. Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten group calls this the 4Ps: Project, Passion, Peers and Play.

DESIGNERS NOTEBOOK

For each session (which varied between 2, 3 or 4 hours length) I told the groups to write out their plan in word and annotated pics at the start of each lesson (and to anticipate possible problems). Towards the end of a session I asked them to record their achievements, problems encountered and solved, who they had helped and who had helped them. So, by the end of the whole process they had a more or less comprehensive record. I also took photos of progress at significant points. One of my assessment goals was "Designers Journal and Teamwork". I think the quality of the journals did often reflect the Planning and Collaboration goals. One group was struggling to bring some disparate parts together into a coherent project. Their patchy journal keeping alerted me to this. On the other hand, some students were poor writers but compensated for this in their verbal presentations and questions to other groups when they presented.

THE ENDPOINT

The goal is for students to build personal or social meaning with engaging objects, microcontrollers and block code.

The end point should be some sort of display of products that have been created, a show and tell. I have seen this work. Teams that have planned their own project, worked hard, struggled with various problems and overcoming them, encouraging each other and then with pride displaying their final product to an audience. This might be on a small or large scale. When done on a large organised scale this is a Maker Faire.

The ultimate guideline in my view is eat your own dogfood! The teacher should also complete their own project, their own version of hard fun.

The experts who began all this have their own longer term, socially transforming goals:

• Neil Gershenfeld: to turn consumers into producers , How to make almost anything
• Adrian Bowyer (RepRap project) - to put the means of production into everyone’s hands

WHAT ARE THE STUDENTS LEARNING?

The students are designing and making artefacts, coding, designing and printing 3D objects, sharing ideas, collaborating and presenting their finished artefacts to an audience.

We can divide this along a constructionist to instructionist spectrum. The making and designing of artefacts was almost entirely student driven. With collaboration I did ask students who their preferred partners were and I set up the teams based on their selections. A couple of students asked to change teams early on and I said yes. With Makecode and Tinkercad (3D design) I did teach some introductory lessons. Particularly with Makecode my teaching was more on the instructionist end of the spectrum. But later on, when it came to completing some Makecode challenges I rearranged the seating and asked the stronger coders to help those who were having problems with it. To explain further would require a separate article.

REFERENCE

Listed in the order they are referenced in the text
Stager, Gary.20 Things to do with a Computer: Future Visions of Education Inspired by Seymour Papert & Cynthia Solomon's Seminal Work(2021)
Paulo Blikstein. The Democratisation of Invention (2013)
Harel, Idit. Software Design for Learning: Children's Construction of Meaning for Fractions in Logo Programming (MIT, June 1988)
Resnick, Mitchel. Designing for Wide Walls. (2020)
Kerr, Bill. Children are not Hackers, thoughts on an article by Paulo Blikstein and Marcelo Worsley.
Resnick, Mitchel. All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten, pdf
Kleon, Austin. The creative learning spiral
Resnick, Mitchel. Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity Through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play (2018)
Gershenfeld, Neil; Gershenfeld, Alan; Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution (2017)
Kerr, Bill. Own your own factory that makes more factories (about Adrian Bowyer, the founder of the RepRap project)