Transitioning tinkering to the classroom: setting the stage
While making and tinkering currently occupy mostly informal environments (museums, libraries, MakerSpaces etc) it has exciting potential in outreach to and integration into formal learning environments. Bringing making/tinkering into schools and classrooms presents a range of specific challenges, constraints, and possibilities.
This photo forum and discussion will present six different approaches developed by educators in five different countries. Each presenter will display a photograph of a schoolroom they constructed or adapted for a making or tinkering workshop and discuss their experiences and considerations when choosing the activity, shaping the environment, navigating the constraints of time and space, conducting the facilitation, and more.
More about this session: To engage with conference participants, a discussion will follow our photo forum. To start things off, we will consider the Likert scale responses (from 5=‘essential’ to 1= ‘open to compromise’) to questions regarding making/tinkering considerations when brought into schools. This discussion will be open for active contribution and debate by those present in the audience.
Session speakers
Assistant Professor of STEAM Education
Previously based at the Children's Museum of Pittsburg, Peter continues his work with teachers in makerspaces in Western Pennsylvania despite moving to University of Wisconsin-Madison to assume his post as Assistant Professor of STEAM Education. He will share his experience creating makerspaces in schools in Western Pennsylvania.
Daniel runs the outreach program at Tekniska museet called Maker Tour. The tour goes around the country to schools and fairs. He will share his experience on mobile maker and tinkering activities.
Alina is project manager for the Association ScienceCenter-Network in Vienna where she is setting up and coordinating projects as well as trainings for teachers and explainers.
She will share from her experience in supporting teachers to use the tinkering approach in schools, and the implementation challenges that come along with balancing the classroom teacher and science centre approaches.
Pedro Pombo directs the Fábrica Centro Ciência Viva de Aveiro. In this role he has overseen the creation of maker-kits and maker-programming that has been implemented as outreach into schools. He will bring his experience of developing and implementing this programming to the session.
