School makerspaces are not about products, they are about training minds and imaginations to solve problems. They are also about learning that not every problem has a solution and how to engage with that reality. In real life, if a student reprogrammed a standardized testing computer, they would be expelled and possibly prosecuted. Makerspaces are safe places where they can color outside the lines.
Progression: Four year olds are "free players" with unfettered imagination. Six year olds are all about rules and fairness, even to the point of creating rules on-the-fly to benefit themselves. As students grow, they grow to be more like most typical adults – cautious, habitual and ordinary. We want to intervene before they lose their exploratory courage.
This is why makerspaces that primarily utilize "recipe" projects where students all use the same components and end up with the same object are not as educationally effective as those that present a problem or a need, (or a Project Based Learning driving question) and let students design their own solutions. It's not about what students end up with, it is how they get there. The learning does not happen by executing somebody else's idea, it happens in the struggle to solve a problem.
But a "Kobayashi" approach isn't just about thinking outside the box. It can be about adopting an adversary mindset – a recognition that the world is not the friendly, supportive place we foster in our classrooms. As military writers Gregory Conti and James Caroland recognized in their 2011 article about cheating:
"We learned much from the students during the course of this exercise. They embraced the test, proved far more devious than their day-to-day personas let on, and impressed us with their ability to analyze and defeat the inherently flawed classroom system."
Conti, Caroland
IEEE Security and Privacy
July/August 2011
