Month: January 2016

FabLabs in schools and professional development: how to do it?

FabLabs in schools provide an unique opportunity for teacher professional development, in all disciplines. They may provide a situated learning experience where teachers can recall the difficulties students have in the process of learning and thus reflect upon their own teaching practices. Given that the majority of teachers are not familiar with fabrication and electronics, they are put back into the beginner’s seat, providing the possibility of reflecting metacognitively about learning and teaching. Accompanied with engaging discussions and activities of grounded on the affordances the activities provide, teachers learn about the best practices of teaching through modeling and engagement in practice.

The nature of the activities in FabLabs range from exploring, designing, building, and asking questions – all traits considered desirable in today’s research in education. What if we could apply these features into an English Poetry class? How can we promote transfer from the teachers experiences in the FabLab into their ‘Monday’? I propose a PD curriculum that through engaging in FabLabs, teachers are provided the opportunity to reflect on how learning happens, how to transfer these ideas into their own practice, and ultimately affect learning outcomes of their students.

“In fact, the richness of makerspaces comes not from the fact that the abstract is left out, but that it is brought in together with new ways to build relationships with and between objects and concepts. ” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.5)

The process of tangibilizing ideas I believe is central to the learning process teachers would go through. How might a History professor tangibilize a class about the Industrial Revolution? Perhaps by reenacting a pivotal moment, trial, or protest where the students represent the historical figures. Students will be engaged by the shared responsibility of doing research on the topic, creating a skit, performing it, and finally discussing what they learned from the experience. This process has direct parallels to the activities in the FabLab where the goal is to learn in the making, where the process is the goal, and the final product is an experience.

“The history of educational technologies and education reform (Collins & Halverson, 2009; Tyack & Cuban, 1995) has repeatedly demonstrated that the implementation of “revolutionary technologies” often leads to considering their benefits as self-evident. We see research (done together with teachers) as a tool for both measuring learning outcomes and as a way for teachers to reflect upon and optimize their own practice.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.6)

This PD curriculum would also need to introduce new concepts of assessing if students are learning more or less once these new practices in teaching are utilized in the classroom. I am not proposing the elimination of ‘traditional’ testing but an added level of observation of the student’s process, effort, and progression to provide new measures of assessment. These measures would in turn provide valuable information for the teachers to formatively assess their own practice.

“Assessing the work that takes place in makerspaces is possible, but it requires a new set of approaches and tools. Teachers and practitioners need to be aware that the metrics of success will not necessarily be test scores but very different types of assessments—it is a common and dangerous trap to promise that students’ math scores will automatically improve as a result of a maker class.”  (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.10)

Finally, a sustained community of practice is needed to create synergies amongst teacher’s experiences, doubts, and shared knowledge. Utilizing the common thread of their FabLab PD, they could share and discuss how they applied what they learned in their disciplines, curricula, classroom activities, and assessments.

“Allowing teachers to “pair up” and design curriculum together, even if they are from different areas, greatly expands the range of activities that can be done in the labs and makes it possible to attract students with a variety of different interests.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.9)

The FabLab PD experience might trigger in teachers the desire for a more multidisciplinary approach to their practice where the connections between the abstract and the concrete are explored and transferred. “Knowledge is not merely a commodity to be transmitted, encoded, retained, and re-applied, but a personal experience to be constructed.” (Ackermann, 2001, p.7) To do this, they must be open to potential overlaps of different disciplines and creating opportunities for the students to engage not only mentally but physically with the concepts at hand.

With this intention in mind, FabLabs provide not only an opportunity for students to do so, but for teachers, as students, to engage and experience with potentially different approaches to teaching their discipline. There is no ‘magic bullet’ but I believe that FabLabs could provide an interesting mechanism to scaffold the teacher’s progression towards transforming their own practice.

On top of using the FabLab as a PD environment, the teachers might also be inspired to use the space for special projects within their discipline. Back to the History teacher, he might want to show how the evolution of machines has increased the production output of goods, having the students experience the speed with which they can prototype products using only pencil and cardboard versus using the computer to design and the laser cutter.

Hopefully, the now worldwide Maker’s movement will survive and prosper as a means to the ultimate end – improved learning outcomes – both for the students and for the teachers.

“We have the once-in-a-generation opportunity to establish something truly new in schools, make it sustainable, and deeply integrate it in the school day. We have the opportunity to give to millions of children a new entry point into the world of knowledge and science, and give them a much richer palette of expressive media for their ideas to come true, creating much more sophisticated “objects to think with.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.12)

For this to happen, all stakeholders must be committed and involved in the process. A FabLab PD might be one way to stimulate and help spread even more widely the affordances this kind of space can provide to all parties involved.

“The maker movement will only survive and fulfill its educational goals if the decisions are being made by teachers, education researchers, and education policy makers—professionals that really understand schools, teaching, and learning.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.12)

References:

Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget’s constructivism, Papert’s constructionism: What’s the difference. Future of learning group publication, 5(3), 438.

Blikstein, P. & Worsley, M. (2014?) Children Are Not Hackers.

Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget’s constructivism, Papert’s constructionism: What’s the difference.Future of learning group publication, 5(3), 438. Chicago

• “And if we believe, as Piaget and Papert do, that knowledge is actively constructed by the child in interaction with her world, then we are tempted to offer opportunities for kids to engage in hands-on explorations that fuel the constructive process. We may do so at the cost of letting them “rediscover the wheel” or drift away when shortcuts could be welcome.” (Ackerman, 2001, p.1)
• “Because of its greater focus on learning through making rather than overall cognitive potentials, Papert’s approach helps us understand how ideas get formed and transformed when expressed through different media, when actualized in particular contexts, when worked out by individual minds. ” (Ackerman, 2001, p.4)
• “In all cases, situated approaches to learning revalue the concrete, the local, and the personal! Such a shift has important implications in the fields of cognitive research and education.” (Ackerman, 2001, p.6)
• “In reclaiming the deeply grounded, experience-based, and subjective nature of human cognition, Papert’s approach reminds us that alternative epitemologies are indeed possible, and that concrete thinking is no less important than figuring out things “in the head”. ” (Ackerman, 2001, p.7)
• “Becoming one with the phenomenon under study is, in his view, a key to learning. (Papert)” (Ackerman, 2001, p.8)

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Blikstein, P. & Worsley, M., Children are not Hackers: Building a Culture of Powerful Ideas, Deep Learning, and Equity in the Maker Movement

• 4 cultures with diverging ideas
  • The hacker culture: extreme autodidactism
    • “The popular image of the hacker is that of a disheveled, unshaven white male in his twenties, doing all-nighters in a messy electronics lab, capable of learning anything by himself by scouring the web or doing late-night runs to the library.”
  • The publishers’ culture: product before process
    • MAKE magazine & Maker Fair
    • “Having spectacular projects is the natural path of evolution for an exhibition, but not very inviting for novices.” (Blikstein & Worsley, p.3)
  • The culture of informal educational spaces: the “keychain” syndrome
    • “This incentive helps the proliferation of the “30 minute” workshop model: fast, scripted, perpetually “introductory” workshops—what we called in previous work the “keychain syndrome”—children keep doing keychains and other trivial objects but never move on to more complex projects, which require more complex facilitation, curriculum design, and equipment (Blikstein, 2013).” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.4)
  • The “job market” culture:
    • “Despite the best of intentions, this Silicon-Valley-inspired fixation on K-12 education as STEM job market training has influenced the tools, goals, and pedagogies incentivized (or allowed) in schools.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.4)
• Fun vs. Hard Fun
  • “In fact, early Constructionists were not interested in pitting serious against playful (Papert & Harel, 1991, p. 1), but instead finding ways to live at the intersection of the two. ” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.5)
• Abstract versus concrete thinking
  • “In fact, the richness of makerspaces comes not from the fact that the abstract is left out, but that it is brought in together with new ways to build relationships with and between objects and concepts. ” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.5)
• Research versus gut feeling
  • “The history of educational technologies and education reform (Collins & Halverson, 2009; Tyack & Cuban, 1995) has repeatedly demonstrated that the implementation of “revolutionary technologies” often leads to considering their benefits as self-evident. We see research (done together with teachers) as a tool for both measuring learning outcomes and as a way for teachers to reflect upon and optimize their own practice.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.6)
• The need for on boarding in fab labs
  • “In our own research (Blikstein, 2013; Davis, Bumbacher, Bel, Sipitakiat, & Blikstein, 2015), novices coming into a maker lab need a considerable amount of onboarding and facilitation before they can start “hacking” and learning by themselves.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.6)
• The job market’s needs effect
  • “Research suggests that the best predictor of STEM career choice is not a student’s K-12 math or science performance, but their self-reported love for science and if they see themselves as scientists in the future (Maltese & Tai, 2011).” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.8)
• From a keychain culture to a culture of deep projects
  • The need for dedication and inspired curricula
  • “Allowing teachers to “pair up” and design curriculum together, even if they are from different areas, greatly expands the range of activities that can be done in the labs and makes it possible to attract students with a variety of different interests.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.9)
• From a product culture to a process culture
  • “When we compared the efficacy of example-based and principle-based reasoning, we found that students consistently performed better when primed to use principles instead of just using examples from the real world.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.10)
  • “Learners should be aware that they will be evaluated not only by the quality of the final product, but also about their process–including, for example, how they collaborated with colleagues, how they managed the work, and how much they went outside of their intellectual comfort zone.” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.10)
• Maker’s Pedagogy
  • “However, now, it is time for educators to take back the driver seat. The maker movement will only survive and fulfill its educational goals if the decisions are being made by teachers, education researchers, and education policy makers—professionals that really understand schools, teaching, and learning. ” (Blikstein & Worsley, 2001, p.12)

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Papert, S. (1999). Papert on piaget. Time magazine’s special issue on” The Century’s Greatest Minds, 105.

• “Piaget was launched on a path that would lead to his doctorate in evolutionary biology and a lifelong conviction that the way to understand anything was to understand how it evolves.” (Papert, 1999, p.2)
• Ask a child – “What makes the wind?”
  • Answer might not be “true” but certainly “coherent” in the child’s mind

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic Books, Inc..

Introduction, Chapter 1 & 2

• Instrumental use of the computer
  • As a tool, but does not inherently change our way of thinking and our daily lives
• “Every normal child learns to talk. Why then should a child not learn to “talk” to a computer?” (Papert, 1980, p.6)
• “The idea of “talking mathematics” to a computer can be generalized to a view of learning mathematics in ‘Mathland’; that is to say, in a context which is to learning mathematics what living in France is to learning French.” (Papert, 1980, p.6)
• “Although technology will play an essential role in the realization of my vision of the future of education, my central focus is not on the machine but on the mind, and particularly on the way in which intellectual movements and cultures define themselves and grow.” (Papert, 1980, p.9)
• “… this book is an argument that in many important cases this developmental difference can be attributed to our culture’s relative poverty in materials from which the apparently ‘more advanced’ intellectual structures can be built” (Papert, 1980, p.21)
• “… two kinds of thinking Piaget associates with the formal stage of intellectual development: combinatorial thinking, where one has to reason in terms of the set of all possible states of system, and self-referential thinking about thinking itself.” (Papert, 1980, p.21)
• “… educational intervention means changing the culture, planting new constructive elements init and eliminating noxious ones.” (Papert, 1980, p.32)
• “I see ‘school math’ as a social construct, a kind of QWERTY.”

Papert, S. (2000). What’s the big idea: Towards a pedagogy of idea power.

• “Public access to empowered forms of ideas and the ways in which technology can support them fertil- izes the process of new growth.” (Papert, 2000, p.728)