Week 9 DQC – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

Week 9 Response

ccolgan — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 07:45:56 +0000

I’m taking Beyond Bits and Atoms with Dr. Blikstein, so I’ve been very immersed in the Maker Movement, teaching coding to kids, and building animals with the laser cutter this quarter. As an assignment for that course, I visited a maker space at Barron Park Elementary School, part of the PAUSD. Smita Kolhatkar, the head of that space, uses many low cost materials, such as cardboard and basic stationary tools, despite having a beautiful lab with 3D printers and programmable robots. In the Peppler and Bender article, they note that: “Too many would-be makerspace creators are focused on creating the idealized space with the right equipment. You don’t need a 3D printer, sewing machine, or any of the fancy tools mentioned here to get started.”

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.

I didn’t know what engineering was…

nhardson — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 05:46:10 +0000

When I was in high school I had a vague idea of what an engineer did. They built things. Usually with their hands I thought. Bridges and buildings and stuff. I didn’t think I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be a math major. My best friend wanted to be a chemistry major. Looking back now I wonder how two people with a passion for Math and Science did not explore the possibility of pursuing the E or T in STEM. Now at a place like Stanford I can’t imagine not understanding how much the world requires engineers and computer scientists. And yet, I didn’t think that way not too long ago. It is amazing to me the lack of exposure I had to engineering and that it took me an entire year to enroll in a Computer Science class at Stanford (only to realize how much I loved it). I think that my Stanford experience would have been very different if I had exposure to computer science and engineering in high school. I think the state of our world requires early access to computer science. I think students, regardless of socio-economic background, should walk into college with at least a minor understanding of what programming is. I know I wish I did.

Swinging the opposite direction

hgamble — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 05:36:49 +0000

I think that the Maker movmenet has great potential to revolutionize the way in which we teach science and engineering. I really interesting expression of it’s absence in highschools right now is the number of Freshman who come into Stanford every year saying they want to be physics majors. In highschools, often the closest thing to an engineering type class that students are exposed to is physics. Students who enjoy the engineering/making of the physics classroom associate that mindset and process with physics and are quickly disillusioned upon taking intro physics classes in college which are largely theory based and whose labs end up being much dryer than those they experienced in highschool.

That being said, there is always the danger that the pendulum will swing too far in the maker direction and abandon the practice of having its roots in theory. One of the major issues of this class has been how to ground the staggering amount of “making” that is going on in the educational technology space right now in theory. I think that there is a nontrivial danger that if schools start to over emphasize making it will be to the detriment of theory based approaches to solution.

DQC Week 9

eanders7 — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 17:06:14 +0000

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?