While reading this, I also couldn’t help but think about the disparities between these families and those in lower SES or culturally diverse families. In one section, the study describes not only are there knowledge and SEL payoffs to learning this stuff early, there are other developments such as new roles in the community, invitation to apprenticeship, etc. It’s as if opportunities beget more opportunities. So how are we to expect families who aren’t in the right neighborhoods or backgrounds to get into the game? It re-affirms for me the need for investment in areas such as mentoring programs and social networks where students can draw motivation and information from others if they cannot get that from their parents.

I’m also struck by the important of parent experience to help students persist through challenging periods of learning by drawing on their own experiences. However, we know most parents won’t have those experiences to draw from. One opportunity that I see might be to consider how the child might teach parents. If I recall from the Teachable Agent work, students learn better when they know they are going to be teaching it to someone else. What if that someone was a parent? Perhaps it just takes reframing the problem to see the opportunity in front of us building more ways for children to teach parents on the new technologies and skills they’re exposed to at school and in life.

Despite this disparity, I think I still gained a lot of value out of having a technology-minded parent because I was able to observe and model his behaviors towards technology. When I did express initiated interest in engineering and computer science later, his role shifted to that of a resource provider (driving) and encouragement to continue pursuing my interest. The study did leave me wondering how much sooner I could have pursued computer science and what societal factors lead parents to be more inclined to introduce boys to technology.

The article Digital Fabrication and ‘Making’ in Education: The Democratization of Invention also made me curious to know more about how people develop “maker” identities, and how strongly this impacts first-time users of a makerspace.

One major challenge my team faced was that these students don’t  follow the “do it yourself” or “do it with others” mindset. Is it possible to inspire this mindset? To what extent?

My main takeaway from my visit to Barron Park was that the teacher is the key component of a successful maker space. Ms. Kolhatkar has identified the needs of her students and develops projects that will interest them, not always necessarily using the flashiest and newest technology. The Margolis, Goode, and Chapman article mentions that the “secret sauce” of success is “passionate, creative teachers who are interested in the problem solving of computer science, with a variety of secondary subject credentials.” The issue of access to these teachers is vital to the success of the Maker Space movement.

Most of the children interviewed in the Barron, Martin, Takeuchi, and Fithian don’t even need to make it to school to learn about computer science–they have parents that are well-connected in the technology industry. For instance, we have stories of Alex’s father expressing his colleagues’ interest in reviewing his son’s code or the parent who paid his daughter $25 to debug his software. Only in the wealthy enclaves of Silicon Valley could these kind of experiences be viewed as a possibility.

What about all the other kids? How can the fantastic learning opportunities of students with fantastic maker space instructors and tech savvy parents be made available across the economic spectrum? I saw that Marc also posted this excellent video: https://vimeo.com/110616469. Leah Buechley’s talk really gets at the heart of the issue–it is up to the Maker Movement’s leaders (who are mainly teachers themselves) to expand access. Perhaps its an unfair burden to ask of overtaxed educators, but without a true step towards equality in representation, the Maker Movement will fail precisely because of its success with wealthy engineers. This group has effectively blocked others from joining.

]]> https://ed342.gse.stanford.edu/week-9-response-3/feed/ 0 https://ed342.gse.stanford.edu/week-9-response-2/ https://ed342.gse.stanford.edu/week-9-response-2/#respond Thu, 03 Mar 2016 07:25:35 +0000 http://ed342.gse.stanford.edu/?p=1593 “Stuck in the Shallow End (2008) reveals how these beliefs about a narrow strata of students having “high potential” in computer science is laden with racial, gender, socioeconomic biases and plays out in schools through tracking, course assignments, course availability, and instructional resources [12]. As explained by educational researcher Carol Dweck, this type of evaluation of students is the result of a “fixed mindset”—a static view of intelligence that negatively impacts teachers’ assessment and attitudes towards students, as well as students’ performance in school [6]. Instead, increasing diversity requires a “growth” mindset, which centers on a belief that all students with quality education can grow in their capacity and engagement. Our mission is to build talent, to assure that all students have access to equitable and engaging computer science knowledge.” (Margolis et al., 2015)

The way Margolis et al. uses fixed mindset on teachers in the above quote is both provocative and challenging. The focus on professional development and common sense measures, like moving from AP CS to a scaffolded curriculum, is a really powerful way of shifting the conversation away from descriptions of student failure toward improving the learning environment. This article struck me as quite radical for that framing, and I hope we get a chance to discuss it in class.

In Blikstein’s section 2, he explores the constructivist, constructionist, and critical pedagogy philosophical roots of Maker pedagogy. From this perspective, Maker learning is meant to buttress its students’ development in ways that extend beyond STEM classes. Very succinctly,it is meant to support their development in an object and creative-oriented atmosphere, and to expose them to ways of thinking that are nontraditional, for the learning of tangible and intangible skills and understandings.

Contrast this with Peppler and Bender’s article. Their description of the Maker movement is very community-oriented, with a focus on a Maker identity and movement. They focus quite a bit on the material aspects of Makerism and the concrete products to be made. There is no hint of the deep theory that Maker space pedagogy taps into, and they left me with the sense that the defining qualities of a Maker space are which gadgets they have.

Blikstein has written about this less-theoretical approach to Makerism. We see a little of this in the “keychain syndrome” portion of the reading, and for anyone interested in further critique, I recommend his and Marcelo Worsley’s article “Children are Not Hackers,” which concerns their fears about shallow interpretations of the Maker movement. I also recommend this speech by Leah Buechley about Maker magazine and Maker Faire (these were both readings in Beyond Bits and Atoms). In brief, there are serious equity concerns about an interpretation of the movement that focuses too much on product over process and on STEM over more general personal development, and identity worries that the pedagogical Maker movement may be overtaken by well-to-do, adult “hackers” who like tech and are demographically nearly homogenous.

I can’t do the issues justice in this small space so I hope you will explore these links. I think good Maker pedagogy has a lot of potential, but am concerned that Peppler and Bender’s profile of it leans more “hacker” than “maker.”

“The maker mindset empowers people not just to seek out jobs in STEM or creative fields, but to make their own jobs and industries, depending on their interests and the emerging needs they see in a rapidly changing society.”

The above quote really resonated with me. I am an entrepreneur and I feel very strongly that entrepreneurship is a key element in finding a solution to a lot of problems in the world, especially in my neck of the woods (the Middle East). Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, and Maker Spaces foster this state of mind by giving the maker the opportunity to physically making something. I think that is very empowering and to see the physical manifestation of your mind’s creativity is both symbolic and powerful. I think this physical manifestation is even more important in our digital world, where concepts and creativity are becoming more abstract and I feel less accessible for children to grasp the true power of their minds. That is not to say that digital creativity isn’t important, the article goes deep into how diverse maker spaces can be, from software to robotics to design. However, there is a shared element of some celebrated “physical” manifestation, even if it is a software program it is a program that has a use-case as opposed to a cog in a system.

I also like the scrappiness that maker spaces embody, the “do what you can, with what you have, where you are” attitude. This inspired me to search for Maker Spaces in my own country Who knows, perhaps I will start one! I love the idea of educating youth while also bringing together a community and even solving issues for the community.