From the beginning, Tales From CREATE has been about educational makerspaces. While that isn't changing, I’m going to start including some of my writings about STEAM education as an integrated platform and about Project Based Learning (PBL) here. Both are naturally connected to makerspaces.
Modern schools were not created to advance the interests of students. They were intended to create workers that were just educated enough to work in factories. That principle underlies nearly every public school, and many private schools that follow conservative educational philosophies. |
School makerspace in the style of M.C. Escher. From DALL-E |
One of the core tenets of modern progressive education is to flip the manufacturing premise and create well-educated adults who are broadly educated in a way that serves the interests, not only of the individual students, but, as independent critical thinkers, and deciders about public policy. In other words, people who advance the interests of all of society.
School makerspaces can also serve the same social and cultural functions as other activities. Just as there can be "band kids," "sports kids," and "drama kids," there can be "maker kids." Now there are E-sports kids and coding kids. Often, they are the same individuals. The principles of Social Emotional Learning tell us that students who are socially comfortable do better in school and in life.
Making for students can be a project in Minecraft, a game in Scratch, or it can be a well-crafted prompt in a generative AI like ChatGPT or DALL-E used to present the results of a project. The point is to encourage creative thinking and instill the confidence that they can successfully navigate their world. It's our job as educators to equip their figurative toolkits and instill in them the certainty that that they can learn anything.
Note: I added "pen and ink" to the DALL-E prompt and got this one.
