Opportunities and challenges for online tinkering communities
One outcome of the past two years of adapting programming to a socially distant and online format is communities coming together to explore topics through hands-on exploration. The pandemic has opened up new possibilities for collaboration and sharing with an extended network with people from different geographical locations, a range of generations, a mix of formal and informal settings and diverse experience levels working with art/science. In this session we’ll take a look at a globetrotting tinkering workshop, a weekly programme for beginners to get hands-on building automata, an invitation to tinker at home with the Exploratorium, a Scratch community project, and a programme that connects children in rural areas with those living in the city. We’ll brainstorm ideas for building online communities and think about how they can support current projects. We’ll discuss practical tips and tricks that we can use to help these programmes meet our goals.
The Tinkering Space at the 2022 Ecsite Conference is sponsored by the LEGO Foundation.
Facilitator
Freiburg im Breisgau
Germany
Session speakers
MIT Media Lab - Research Affiliate
San Francisco
United States
Tinkering@Home is a social media initiative consisting of activities, ideas, and resources for kids and families to tinker with materials and tools that they already have in their house. It is an invitation to connect with a community of learners and educators around the world as they share and discuss their tinkering projects through social media and the Exploratorium's web page. I will share tips, activity ideas, and learnings from the past 2 years of online tinkering around the world.
Exhibit-interdisciplinary & curate/Director
During the pandemic, when museums were unable to conduct physical education activities, we tried to use material kits, guidelines and online platforms to reproduce the activities of remote joint education activities. Although such an attempt is challenging, it also brings us new interactive inspiration, including giving children in rural areas the opportunity to learn and sharing with children in the city, and also including the opportunity for us to expand the training activities of teachers to different place.
Designer of learning experiences
UdiGitalEdu / University of Girona
The TalentMaker European project was born as a response to the situation caused by COVID in multicultural schools, where lockdowns widened the gaps between the most vulnerable families and the rest. The project designs digital capsules with activities that families con do at home with everyday materials and objects, mixing talent-based education and maker education, and proposes a system for teachers to create their own capsules and share them, thus generating an online community of committed educators.
Professional Development Lead
San Francisco
United States
Tinkering@Home is a social media initiative consisting of activities, ideas, and resources for kids and families to tinker with materials and tools that they already have in their house. It is an invitation to connect with a community of learners and educators around the world as they share and discuss their tinkering projects through social media and the Exploratorium's web page. I will share tips, activity ideas, and learnings from the past 2 years of online tinkering around the world.
