The gears of my childhood, again!

Lessons from the Gear Thinkers

I’ve been rereading Seymour Papert's Mindstorms. I thought I had understood it. But I needed the update. Recently, I’ve been part of a curriculum reform which overall has created waves. This was partly because of leadership errors (a mix of good and bad interventions) and partly because middle class parents complain when Schools depart from traditional structures.

Whilst I was writing my interpretation (here) of “The Gears of My Childhood” (Preface to Mindstorms) I discovered a bunch of other interpretations in Meaningful Making book 3 (free download!). Some of them I thought enhanced my interpretation of the "Gears" article. I’ll quote some extracts. Hopefully, this might encourage some to read the originals. Even though my main goal is to clarify my own thinking about what to learn from Seymour’s gears reflection.

Gears of Learning by Ridhi Aggarwal, p. 10

Children should be given the opportunity to explore their questions like babies explore the world around them ...

Children would learn by doing only when they make things that are answers to their own questions. Based on this idea, we started a Question Hour in which children could just share their daily curiosities about anything and everything. They raised questions and discussed possibilities, and then they explored the ideas by making things.

Papert reloaded by Federica Selleri, p. 14

As Papert said, we need to create and take care of the conditions in which the learning process takes place, because the creation of cognitive models is closely linked to the experience associated with them.

Therefore, it is important to pay particular attention to the context in which the experience takes place, and to design it in such a way that it can be about generating ideas and not about running into obstacles. This means thinking about the tools you want students to use, and trying them out for yourself to evaluate their possibilities, but listening to the students’ hypothesis about how things work and supporting their investigations.

What makes a project meaningful? by Lina Cannone, p. 16

I believe that a synergy between teacher and learner must be nurtured. We must abandon pre-planned activities and projects that ignore the participation of the learner. We must give way to the co-planning of activities

Finding my Gear at Twenty-Three by Nadine Abu Tuhaimer, p. 21

After graduation, I realized that my love for tinkering with objects outshined my love for programming,

At 24, I decided to take the “Fab Academy – How to Make Almost Anything” course. This is a six month long intensive program that teaches the principles of digital fabrication

Since then, I’ve been teaching in the Fab Academy program and trying to incorporate what I learned with the different educational programs I run at the Fab Lab where I work, the first Fab Lab in Jordan.

Making means heads and heart, not just hands by Lior Schenk, p. 22

Car child did not become car professional — he became a mathematician. He also became a cyberneticist and renowned learning theorist, responsible for both the 1:1 computing initiatives and the constructionist movements rippling across education to this day.

Gears were, he describes, “both abstract and sensory,” acting as “a transitional object” connecting the formal knowledge of mathematics and the body knowledge of the child.

This notion of knowing — what it means to know something, to learn, to develop knowledge formed the central thesis of Papert’s career. Knowledge is not merely absorbed through cognitive assimilation, but actively constructed through affective components as well. Papert would assert, in other words, that we learn best when we are actively engaged in constructing things in the world. Real, tangible things. Things you can hold, manipulate, and feel in order to make sense of them.

Papert’s successes, as he would ascribe, were not due to interacting with gears as objects — rather due to falling in love with the gears as more than objects, as a conduit across intellectual and emotional worlds.

As Dr. Humerto Maturana said, “Love, allowing the other to be a legitimate other, is the only emotion that expands intelligence.”

Time to Tinker by Lars Beck Johannsen, p. 28

I believe that we need to help our students discover their own gears, and help them channel it into their projects whenever possible. I also believe that it is a teacher’s task to help students develop new gears. Another task is being aware of the way you learn. If something is easy to you, it is natural to believe that it is also easy for everyone else, but that is not the case. We need to help our kids to discover their strengths!

There are a few things that could make this happen. One is knowing your students! Not just on a factual basis but also on a more personal basis. How would you otherwise discover, what makes them tick, what they love, who they are?

I strongly urge all the schools I work with to make time for more project based, constructionist, student-centered learning. The after-school programs, which most kids attend because the parents are working, also need to be a more inspiring place to spend your time. A place to tinker, do what you love, make stuff together with other kids, and have fun!

Between the garage and the electronics workshop, by Mouhamadou Ngom, p. 33

To conclude, I would say that the most important part of learning by doing is careful observation. My secret as a specialist in electro-mechanics is to take careful notes. For example, before disassembling a mechanism, I mark the intersections between the different gears. This is why I ask learners to observe well, to listen well, and to document their work.

Find your unique gear by Xiaoling Zhang, p.35

Dr. Papert’s experience makes me think that it might be a natural human instinct to love fiddling with objects as a prompt to explore the world around us. By building and playing with things, we are also building the connections between ourselves and the physical world. When it happens frequently and reliably, then it becomes a way of thinking. It makes it easier when we see consistency in the world to believe that there are laws behind seemingly superficial phenomena and to discover even more possibilities.

… every child or every person has their own unique “gear.” But can everyone find their gear? Or can we help them to find something that THEY love and can be applied as a bridge to understand more abstract ideas and the world. It seems that unique gear can’t be cloned or taught, but must be discovered

SUMMING UP, the lesson from the Gear Thinkers:

• Children should be given the opportunity to explore their questions
• We must give way to the co-planning of activities
• Listen to your students; pay attention to detail
• Be a trail blazer! Setup the first FabLab in your location
• Knowledge is actively constructed using hands, head and heart
• Love is essential for optimal knowledge growth (of the objects we work with as well as human-human)
• Know your students, personally
• Everyone has to find their own gear. They might need help with this
• Observe everything carefully