Teach Wonder
Teach Wonder
Everything but the Book Study: Maker-Centered Learning
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In this episode, were discussing Maker-Centered Learning, a favorite book of our staff. Julie selects several passages and we discuss how close-observation, problem-solving, and seeing yourself as a maker impact outcomes. We stretch the definition of maker is some unexpected ways and talk about how this all relates to our latest celebration: Make and Show.
Learn more about Make and Show
Check out Maker-Centered Learning
Music: David Biedenbener
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Okay, now we're recording.
Introduction:So welcome to teach wonder. Yes, welcome to teach wonder, a podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham.
Ashley O'Neil:Welcome back to our latest episode of teach wonder. We are in the middle of a mini series that we're calling everything but the book study, where one of us brings a piece of content, either an article, a podcast, a magazine, a book, and they've kind of done a deep dive, and the other person knows very little or nothing about it, and we talk, and you come along with us. So today, Julie has brought some things, so I'm going to let Julie take it over and get us started.
Julie Cunningham:Yes, so this book has been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, and I haven't looked at it in a while, and I was reminded recently how much I enjoyed its message. So it's called maker centered learning, empowering young people to shape their worlds. And if you've been with us for any amount of time, that probably is self explanatory as to why I like the word agency. So it's self explanatory as to why we find that message important. And a lot of it is or some of it is like case studies of things that have been done in different classrooms. And so it's not all informal education. Some of it is like traditional K 12 classrooms. But I picked out a quote on page 136 for us to think about today. And it says finding opportunity builds on looking closely and exploring complexity, because often it is in doing these things, closely, examining objects and systems and exploring their complexities that the possibility for change becomes visible. In other words, finding opportunity builds on an examination of how things work, why they work, the way they do, and how they could be made to work otherwise. And for me, that sort of gets at like the premise of being a maker, right? Like, how do people recognize, learn to recognize, or have the curiosity to recognize that they can change their world around them. And so, especially if it's anything man made in their world around them. And so if they have a need or a drive or problem to be solved, like, how can we teach young people that they can do that with the tools they have available?
Ashley O'Neil:There's so much in that paragraph, and like most things when it comes to teaching and learning, that contains a ton of skills, and like skills to be learned, but also embedded skills to have already had or to be working on. And I think that could be like a thesis for an entire, like someone's entire experience of study, right? One of the things I thought about first, when you shared that was this attention closely, like the close attention, and taking the time to think about things, um, I was in the woods this weekend and going for a walk, and at first, you know, you just notice, like, all the brown. And then you walk a little further, and you start to notice, like, the bird song. And then you notice how much bird song it is. And it's almost like the more time you spend in a place or with a thing, it peels back these layers of awareness, right? It wasn't until, like, a good quarter mile in before I noticed that it wasn't actually all brown. There was some really cool, poly forest, and really cool, we call them fairy step fungus that were on the plants. And there was tons of color and things that were living and alive. But it took that kind of descent into close observation to start to see those details, and to start to see the forest as this rich, alive space. And I see that with students. I also think that that way of attending is in contrast or in tension with how we often move through the world.
Julie Cunningham:Sure, yeah, yeah. And so then, you know, if we're interested in young people, especially learning that they can be a maker or a tinker, right? And whether it's in their classroom or in their natural world, then how do we like and not in a contrived way, but how do we really teach these skills so that they sort of become a part of their nature, and so that they really recognize that they do have the agency to affect their the world that they walk through. And some of the examples in the book are our teachers really. By choosing an object, like an everyday object, and I think you'd probably have to work kids up to this noticing, noticing and wonder, right, curiosity, observation, but something with a kindergartener as simple as like a pencil and all the parts of a pencil, but like you said, like, your your first, I think your first instinct would be to dismiss that as, yes, I've seen a pencil before, right? So the victor push
Ashley O'Neil:through this barrier, run your own head, and then, like, with kind of how we kind of move through the world, which is just kind of, like speed and quick and efficient and like, maximizing everything. To say, like, Nope, it's not just a pencil. There's this author I really love, who talks about like, the art of noticing and the art of making sense of things. And obviously her bent is more for like, the literature written world, but I think it applies here to one of her practices that she recommends is that you pick up small, something small, like a stone, an acorn, a shell, something pretty mundane, like a piece of mulch, and you have it in your pocket all day, and you just kind of like, thumb it and touch it throughout the day. And, like, you write about what you think, what you thought about it, what you noticed right away, and then you come back after, like, kind of containing it or holding it for that full day to say. And I think it's that same kind of idea that some of these things take repeated visits and time in order to really understand them.
Julie Cunningham:And I think that would be true on the adult side as well as the student side, right, because the adult would have to believe that this investment in this observation, close observation, isn't necessarily going to pay off in this unit in kindergarten, but it's going to pay off down the line, right? Like, and I suppose that's true of a lot of things that we teach. Like, you don't necessarily see immediate feedback specific, but this one specifically, right? Because you could easily, like, move on and decide that you've observed everything there is to observe. Or you could sort of sit in
Ashley O'Neil:the yeah and the distance between. It's a soft skill. I we use that term a lot in education, and it's, it's one of those things where it doesn't directly tie into learning to read or mastering decimals, right, but that skill kind of bleeds into like to be able to take things apart and puzzle through things and stick with stuff. It's a very short leap to all of the things that we want students be able to do. And those habits of mind are those, those living skills. I also think it's hard to teach this or to facilitate a space like this if you're not actively working on thinking about things this way yourself, sure, right? Like if you if you aren't closely attending things, it's hard to see the value in and then also hold space for students to do that too.
Julie Cunningham:And so that is a great segue to I have part of what made me come back to this book, and what made me think about this is, in my adult life, I was just, I just had an example with another adult that I interact with in the program that I volunteer for, where we have a way of taking attendance in the program that I volunteer for and for taking attendance for kids, right? And it's an app fine, like there's lots of things we use apps for, but it and it was a purchased app. It was something that a commercial app, and like, it's a it's used in the sporting world, I think quite often, like other parents, have interactions with it, with gymnastics and soccer and things that I don't coach. But nonetheless, it doesn't do quite. It does. It does things adequately, but not quite the way that we need them to do. Right? Think there's certain things about it that are just fine, yeah, but yet, it's probably the best that we had available to us and and we make it work, right? And I think I've been coaching my fifth year. I've used it the whole time, right? Well, one of our other lead coaches, who has a background in coding, and a friend with a background in coding, decided that he was going to build an app that did everything that we wanted it to do. Like, why do some my question isn't, like, that's fabulous, right? He has the tools that he needs, and he understands that he can deconstruct the app and make something better. And we all worked on giving feedback, and we've tested it and iterated it and whatever else. It's great. It was a great process. But I just like, there's probably 30 lead coaches. Why did only one of us see the world that way? Right? That that okay? Not only do I see that this is a need, we all probably saw this as a need, but I understand that I can change this. Like, I can. I have the agency,
Ashley O'Neil:yes, the ability, yes, that like, this is a possible. This is a possibility.
Julie Cunningham:And I don't have more time than any of than any of the rest of you, but I'm going to make the time in my adult life to iterate this. This, right? This app, this that I'm making, that I'm creating from scratch, to be useful to all of us and to do everything that we want to do. And I just thought, Why? Why do some people get to that point and just say I can be part of the solution, like I understand that I can change this about my world, and then how do we get more youth to that point? Yeah, and that's what started me thinking about it again, right?
Ashley O'Neil:Like, yeah, that's really interesting. And it it's one of those things where you could have easily dismissed it and been like, well, he's just a coder. And we do that a lot. Like, if I say, well, he's just a coder Now, insert, oh, he's just good at math, right? We decide that that is available to some people and not available to others. But I would agree with you that. Like, I'm sure he's a lovely person, but there's nothing magical about him. Like, he doesn't have the magic that none of us have. It's this
Julie Cunningham:outlook or more time, right?
Ashley O'Neil:Like, yes, the magic ingredients are his own perspective and not, like, his time, his level, whatever. And that's that's a really interesting way to think about things. In a similar vein, I have found myself struggling lately to keep that make your mindset. There's like, a little bit of a desire, I think, for like, a frictionless like, I just want a quick and easy solution to a couple of things, and one of those was related to summer camp. We are hosting an animation camp, and we need a good way to hold iPads, and I have found a really inexpensive way that was like, ready to purchase would have cost me two seconds, and it would have been done. And then it was an idea someone else had, and my co worker and I also found another way that would cost maybe a little less, but took some like, inventing, innovating, kind of backwards design on our part, and actually forced myself to sit down with her yesterday, because I was like, if I'm by myself, I'm going to choose, like, the path of least resistance here. But that's not good for me. It's not a good practice. For our space and like, this is good for me to have to figure it out, but I also know I need to, like, verbally, process all of these things. Like, I could have done it by myself, but I needed someone there with me. And I think that's another powerful thing when we think about teaching and learning these skills, that CO person, right? Like, if we put myself as a student and my co worker as the teacher, in that sense, having that person alongside me, she knew nothing more about this. We were looking at the same photo. I actually shared it with her first and then she shared it back with me. We were looking at the same information, but just having that one person who's willing to, like, be patient and like, talk something through with you, is how we develop folks who go, I can change the world around me. This doesn't have to be the status quo. We can make this exactly what we need. And that's what we did. We now have a version that we designed that isn't like the one we started with, because our iPads are heavier, and it's going to be great, but it took a couple of leaps to get there, and that's
Julie Cunningham:that the communication piece and design thinking, right? Like that iteration, the communication iteration back and forth. So that's definitely part of the maker process. I think the other thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is we see a certain type of, I don't want to say not object made in our space. But, I mean, there's constraints based around the materials and the tools, and so we we tend to see a lot of building of 3d three dimensional objects, right? Like whether it's cardboard or wood or whatever, and some of that's our clientele is a certain age, right? So they're in a certain space in which, like, developmentally, developmentally, that makes sense, right? So there's some of that, and then there's some just constraints of the things that are available. But when we think about it, like in an adult life, or in our our lives outside of work, like, what does it mean to be a maker? And I just think of all the different like, if I say that to somebody, it's almost not meaningless when you think about the agency to interact with the needs in your environment or your space, right? But almost like there's so many things that make people a maker. And I was thinking specifically about how often people are makers in their kitchens, right? The cooking and baking, and I don't know, like, that would never be something that we make in our space, because we're not set up for that. But right? But nonetheless, like, how do we maybe broaden our
Ashley O'Neil:definition of it? Right? Yeah, it makes total sense, because there are folks who can look at a recipe and automatically think of like the components and how to substitute things, or how to tweak it, or how to make it work for their their their specific tastes or interests or whatever, and they see it as a bunch of possibilities and like a framework or a guideline, or they just can go recipe less and say, I have things in the kitchen that I want to figure out. That is true. That's true. I also think. Think about people who have really good processes in their lives, like we, I often don't think about that, right, but like folks who have, like, really, really serviceable, functional spaces in their houses, right? Like, whether it's like, like, a protocol where all of our dressers are actually on their first floor. Because why am I checking laundry upstairs and downstairs? And we all get dressed in the main bathroom, like stuff like that, where you just go, like that. Rule of clothing in the bedroom works for some folks, but for our family, we do it down here because we've got young kids or whatever it is, right? Like just saying, Does the rule exist because it makes sense, or does it not make sense for us? And how can us? And how can we make the world work better for these specific people, ie our family in that situation?
Julie Cunningham:Yeah, and that. And part of what made me think about our different definitions of makers, or things that we accept, that makers create, right, rather than thinking about the process of being a maker was, we do have an event coming up called make and show in May, and just trying to help people understand it's for mostly for young people, but not solely for young people. But it's not, it's not fair to sell things, right? So you really, it's the expectation, really is to show off what you've made. But sometimes, like putting especially on paper, the words to that type of event, the description for that type of event, has been difficult, right? Like we see a lot of young people in our space throughout the year who, who, if we called them makers, would probably Yeah, talking about, no, I just did this. And yet they're making things all the time. So to celebrate that process by looking at potentially an outcome is sort of the idea behind the make and show event. But also, I think that can be a hard thing to define, a hard thing to promote, yeah,
Ashley O'Neil:and to celebrate totally. It's totally a challenge, because many of the characteristics that we talk about, we're trying to explain something that's a little bit intangible, that's not quite clear, right? Like, like, persistence doesn't quite get at it, and curiosity gets close. But it's like, this kind of interesting combination that, like you said, presents in a ton of different ways. And it's also it's rare that we're not selling something or promoting something. We're just here to celebrate and say, Hey, this culture, this community of making, is something that I think we have valued so much in the maker space in the last 10 years that it's been around, and we see the value in kids kind of having this maker mindset, that this is just one more way we want to like, honor and celebrate and highlight and showcase the amazing thing that making is for its own sake, right? And then also we know, like we're both former educators, we know the really important things that this maker mindset can do in terms of positive impacts for kids in a school setting, right?
Julie Cunningham:Yeah, and it's nice to have an audience. Once in a while, it is.
Ashley O'Neil:It's nice to be able to have someone else say, like, wow, this is amazing. Look what you did. Not that. That's why they did it, but it it definitely, yeah, we don't get to celebrate those kind of quirky things very often, and celebrating them here feels really good. This is teach wonder brought to you by the Center for Excellence in STEM education. Links are in the show notes and transcripts are on our site. You you.