DQC Week 9
The Maker Movement has been growing in popularity in recent years. The wide ranging, nearly all encompassing nature of activities in the Maker Movement allow for a diverse group of participants. Makers are creators and builders, they use the materials around them to bring ideas to life. Activities in the Maker Movement might include building with wood, sewing, building circuits, baking, weaving, welding, painting, etc. The Maker Movement seems to be only limited by a maker’s imagination, “the maker movement welcomes all types of making” instead of “drawing boundaries around what is and isn’t making.”
Some educators are beginning to incorporate principals of the Maker Movement in schools and believe in “the maker movement’s potential to transform how and what people learn in STEM.” Hands-on learning is a very popular way to engage students in activities. However, most schools do not have great reputations for creating truly engaging hands-on learning experiences. Instead, I believe, schools tend to draw boundaries and organize inauthentic experiences. Will schools be able to avoid drawing boundaries? If schools are to implement the Maker Movement, what will they need to consider while implementing? How will schools avoid watering down the experiences?
I definitely agree that there will be INCREDIBLE challenges to scaling the Maker Movement to include under-prepared schools. The success of the Maker Movement will depend on each school and the organizers who can advocate for and promote the curriculum. In order to avoid drawing boundaries and organizing inauthentic experiences, training administration and teachers to really understand the true value of these spaces and the curriculum is imperative. They have to really buy the value themselves before they try to sell them to the students.
It won’t be a surprise then that some schools will be more successful than others. I think what is crucial is how these advocates anticipate and address challenges that arise- which requires having the foresight to see what may go awry. An extreme example- what would happen if kids want to use 3D printers to create weapons? Other less extreme issues include how to appeal to individualized interests and have the resources to accommodate them all.
The implementation of the Maker Movement needs to be carefully calculated; I imagine that the initial experience may need to be “watered down” to gently introduce the concept of empowerment and innovation in converting an abstract idea to a concrete product. Over time, the experience would gradually become richer and richer with incremental positive feedback along the way. If we were to throw this big successful idea at an under-prepared school, it would fail, and hence hurt future attempts to reintroduce the program.