Over the past decade, the maker movement and in its slipstream maker education have attained worldwide popularity among educators, politicians, and the media. Makers’ enthusiasm for creative design and construction, using old and new tools has proven contagious, and is worth exploration and critical reflection by the community of engineering and technology education (ETE). This chapter describes what has been said about “making” by philosophers and educators; what maker education is, and what is new and not so new about it; why it has gained momentum; what the evidence is about its effectiveness and its possible weaknesses; and how mainstream technology education may benefit from maker education. This chapter concludes with ideas for a research agenda.
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Maker spaces are generally regarded as a valuable innovation in comparison to traditional education, although it is largely unclear what is exactly learned. This deficiency hampers the deployment of maker spaces, particularly their embedding and integration in the existing practice in formal education. In the work presented here, we explore the possibility of having learners self-report on their learning experience. For this purpose, we developed an easy-to-use visual tool for assessing learning of 21st Century Skills in children’s maker space activities, the Self-Evaluation Tool (SET). Particularly, we investigated the validation of the SET for the self-evaluation of learning activities in the maker space and how children evaluate their own performance in the various domains. The results show higher scores on learning goals in subjectification and lower scores for socialization. Future research will focus on a comparison of the different types of maker programs.
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Informal learning spaces create opportunities for children and youth to develop their talents and to experience new social roles. In recent years, several public libraries in the Netherlands have established makerspaces to empower youth by facilitating the development of their digital skills in conjunction with their creativity. The Amsterdam Public Library created a network of makerspaces (Maakplaats021) and provided training for the makerspace-coaches. These coaches – former librarians or other professionals – have a central role in the makerspace and fulfill several functions. This contribution describes informal learning of children in these makerspaces and distills critical features that enforce learning through the lens of children aged 8–12 and their makerspace-coaches.
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