Sylvia Martinez, an expert on educational technology, has written about how all children need to reinforce math and science concepts through “tinkering”—interacting with the physical world, as opposed to just learning at their classroom desks. (For example: collecting water samples to test pH levels, or reinforcing math concepts by learning basic computer coding.) It doesn’t work, Martinez says, “to explain everything to kids without them having any basis in experience. I’m trying to expand the idea of ‘tinkering.’ It’s not just going down to the basement and playing with stuff. You can play with data, ideas, equations, programming.”

Parents can foster this type of experimentation at home, but schools should also do their part. The problem is that in an age of increased focus on standardized test scores in reading and math, many schools are canceling computing and science courses or cutting down lab time.

“We’ve created math and science in school as very abstract,” Martinez says. “We’ve taken away a lot of hands-on experiences from kids in favor of testing. We’ve reduced a lot of science to vocabulary, where kids are being given vocabulary tests about the ocean instead of going to the ocean or looking through a microscope at organisms. If we taught baseball the way we taught science, kids would never play until they graduated.”

I’m really glad she got the idea in there that tinkering goes beyond “stuff” and extends into playing with concepts too. I also am glad that the conversation is about “what’s good for kids”, not just “what’s good for girls.”

I’ll be exploring that topic a bit more in the coming months, it’s been on my mind a lot lately!

Sylvia

I’m presenting a session on Friday – Tinkering: A New Model of ICT and STEM Learning

Yes, I know it says “new” – but it’s not. Poetic license, I guess I was worried that things have to sound new to get any notice. However, I’m hopefully presenting a new look at old-fashioned learning. I’m combining some of my existing resources about tinkering and playful learning with some new ideas about the role of gender, the danger of looking at science only through the lens of the “scientific method”, and the synergy between art and science.

Be back next week!

Sylvia

Annie Murphy Paul has written an opinion piece about how tinkering is essential to learning – and I’m quoted! How cool is that?

“If we want more young people to choose a profession in one of the group of crucial fields known as STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — we ought to start cultivating these interests and skills early. But the way to do so may not be the kind of highly structured and directed instruction that we usually associate with these subjects. Instead, some educators have begun taking seriously an activity often dismissed as a waste of time: tinkering. Tinkering is the polar opposite of the test-driven, results-oriented approach of No Child Left Behind: it involves a loose process of trying things out, seeing what happens, reflecting and evaluating, and trying again. As Sylvia Martinez, a learning expert who spoke about the value of tinkering at a meeting of the National Council of Women in Information Technology earlier this year, puts it: “Tinkering is the way that real science happens, in all its messy glory.””

Paul, the author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives is at work on a book about the science of learning

Read more…

You can call it hacking, or you can call it tinkering, but it’s the way most programmers learn to program. By modifying code others have written, you can learn an incredible amount. Programming, like life, is rarely done starting with a flowchart!

Sylvia

The session was really interesting and we had some great questions about how tinkering can fit into the school day, especially with so much focus on test results and career and college readiness. It seems that to many people, tinkering conotes a messiness and unprofessionalism that doesn’t apply to “real” jobs in scientific fields.

I believe just the opposite is true – tinkering is exactly how real science is done.

I like to think I have a unique perspective on this. After graduating with an electrical engineering degree I went to work at an aerospace company and ended up on a research project to create the GPS satellite navigation system. It was fun, exciting work and we were building something that was literally theoretically impossible. The hardware was too slow, the software didn’t exist, the math was only a theory, and existing navigation systems weren’t build to handle the precision we needed. The military pilots we worked with didn’t trust it either, creating interesting team dynamics. There were many days where we just sat around and talked through the problems, went to try to them out in the lab, and watched our great ideas go up in smoke. Then we did it again.

It was the essence of tinkering. We tinkered with ideas, methods, with hardware and software, always collaborating, always trying new things. There was no “right answer”, no “scientific method”, and sometimes the answers came from the unlikeliest sources or even mistakes. There were flashes of insight, fighting and battle lines drawn, crazy midnight revelations, and occasional 6 hour lunches at the local pool hall/bar.

I’m not suggesting that any of that is a good model for K-12 STEM education – but perhaps we should avoid squeezing all serendipity out of STEM subjects in a quest to teach students about a “real world” that exists only in the feeble imaginations of textbook authors. Tinkering is the way that real science happens in all its messy glory.

Sylvia

I’m excited to be an invited panelist at the National Council of Women in IT (NCWIT) Summit on Women and IT: practices and ideas to revolutionize computing next week in New York City. The topic is Tinkering: How Might ‘Making Stuff’ Influence Girls’ Interest in STEM and Computing?… and I’m the “K-12″ voice on the panel.

We were each asked to do an introductory 5 minutes to establish our point of view about these issues. I started with a slide deck I use about tinkering and technology literacy and managed to cut it down to about 20 minutes when I thought – why not share this version on Slideshare! So here it is.

School only honors one type of design and problem-solving methodology, the traditional analytical step-by-step model. It ignores other problem-solving styles that are more non-linear, more collaborative, more artistic, etc. These styles are seen as “messy” or “soft” with the implication that they are not reliable. However, who do we lose when we ignore, or worse, denigrate alternative styles of problem-solving. I think one answer may be “girls” but honestly, it’s broader than that. We lose all kinds of people who are creative, out-of-the-box thinkers. And these are exactly the people I want solving the problems we face in the 21st century.

Teaching a tinkering model of problem-solving is good for girls because it’s good for everyone.

Sylvia

One of the issues, however, is that many teachers think that they can’t teach programming. Programming is seen as too difficult, something that is done only by highly trained professionals — the proverbial “rocket scientist.” In reality, programming is just like any other subject. Lots of teachers learn how to teach things that may seem very difficult. I know if you stood me up in front of a class and told me to teach Advanced German or Organic Chemistry I’d run screaming from the room too! But every day, teachers get up and teach all sorts of difficult things – programming is no different.

The great thing today is that there are lots of ways to teach programming to all ages. I’ve written about a few of these options before, but Gamestar Mechanic is a new tool in this toolbox.

Gamestar Mechanic is not exactly a programming language – it’s more like a toolkit, where students can construct games of all kinds. It also provides game-like entry to game design – the initial steps are “challenges” that take you one step at a time, just like a game. There are some other cool features, like an online showcase and community. With initial funding from the MacArthur Foundation (see Digital Media in the Classroom Case Study: Gamestar Mechanic), Gamestar Mechanic was fully released to the public in Fall 2010.

If you are interested in game design for children, the Gamestar Mechanic website is well worth your time. It includes sections for parents and educators, and offers both a free version and a premium version that seem reasonable, with pricing and features both for home and school use.

Related wiki: Games in Education Resources

Sylvia

via Elliot Washor: Making Their Way: Creating a Generation of “Thinkerers”.

Elliot Washor of the Big Picture Schools writes about a Maker’s Faire – a time and place outside of school dedicated to bringing together the factors that make learning really happen – time, materials, personal interest, a helpful community, and taking risks.

Be sure to read this article! Making Their Way: Creating a Generation of “Thinkerers”.

Related articles from the Generation YES blog:

• Tinkering and creativity
• Tinkering and technology
• Tinkering and the grades question

Sylvia

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I especially like how Sherry Turkle, the famous educational researcher explained bricolage. “The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next.”

This week, Newsweek magazine gives us, The Creativity Crisis. “For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.” This article tackles the contradiction between America’s “standards-obsessed schools,” what we know about how children learn, and businesses who say that creativity is the number one attribute they need in new employees.

This perception of a different kind of problem solving, not the one taught in school with rigid steps and “right answers” – but one of playful invention, with room for serendipity, and respect for reflection seems to me to be at the heart of creativity. Because creativity is only meaningful in the act of CREATION – it’s not a feeling, or a mindset, or an outcome. But it CAN be taught, contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not an inborn talent that you are either born with or not.

It’s about playful invention, and I believe that the notion of bricolage captures that perfectly, and is especially appropriate when talking about children.

Sylvia

Here is just a short list of things he mentions as he’s describing how to structure learning environments where children learn through tinkering.

no set curriculum
no tests
lots of stuff
lots of tools
real tools
immersive
time
how to make things
deep realization that they can figure things out
nothing turns out as planned
every step is valuable
just start building
fully committed to project at hand
success is in the doing
failures are celebrated and analyzed
child-appropriate response to frustration
all materials useful

These kinds of attributes are great goal-posts for any authentic project, not just technology projects.

Sylvia