MakerspacesKristín DýrfjörðUniversity of AkureyriIceland

Makerspaces –who are makers?

Kristín Dýrfjörð, University of Akureyri, Iceland

Makerspaces movement

• Comes from US -2006

Since - travelled the globe

• Is not a new to make and create in classrooms and preschools• What is new is Do It Together (DIT) in

stead of Do It Yourself (DIY)• It is based on disturbed teaching and

learning.• Crossing boundaries –between

schools and communities

• In US the 18th of June has been named the Makers day.

Who HowWhat is …

makerspace classroom

Who teach?• Students (children) – children

are sources of information and knowledge

• Teacher in the community …

• Online information

• Tools and materials (environment as the third teacher)

How does teaching look like?

• Facilitating children’s learning (provocations)

• Encouraging co-inspiration (look to each other)

• Encouraging co-critic – (help to provide feedback)

• Redirecting authority – form themselves to others sources

What does learning look like?

• Learn through engaging

• learn through doing

• Learn through being

What does the classroom look like• Tools and materials

• Storage and visibility

• Specific and flexible spaces

Makerspaces

• Are usually were everybody can easily access – many schools use libraries or hallways, or …

It gives an invitation to do, to tinker, to collaborate, to make mistakes, to work with others. TO LEARN.

Makers are creators• Many look at makerspaces as a connection

between STEM and steAm. • A way to connect in meaningful way design,

engineering and hands on an creativity.

Makers are dreamers

• Makers and builders and doers –of all ages and backgrounds –[they] have pushed our country forward, developing creative solutions to important challenges and proving that ordinary Americans are capable of achieving the extraordinary when they have access to the resources they need.

Barak Obama

Makers are collaborators

• Makerspace is a space where children are provided with materials to work together to complete a task.

• Innovation, problem solving, and cooperation all describe what happens in a makerspace.

• The process of experimenting and building a solution to a problem can occur with such low-tech materials as recycled boxes and cd’s towel rolls or building bricks and other manipulatives, scissors, tapes, glue-guns …

• Or with higher tech as bee-bots 3D printers and so on.

Children's agencyChildren believe in them selvesThey believe I can do it.‘We have a sense of ‘agency’ when we feel in control of things that happen around us; when we feel that we can influence events. This is an important sense for children to develop. Too often adults treat children as though they are incapable of making decisions or holding valid opinions. If instead we listen to and respect children’s words and ideas, we model collaboration and cooperation and show that we recognise children’s capabilities.’

(Early childhood Australia - Thouhill)

Makers have

agency

• They are tinkers, they try again and again ..

• They developeresilience

• They believe everything is possible

• Making is personal

Makers are empowers

• Makers empowerment is seen as: A sensitivity to the designed dimension of objects and systems, along with the inclination and capacity to shape one own world through building, tinkering, er/designing, or hacking.

(Clapp, Ross O,Ryan and Tishman, 2017)

• Being UN-empowerd is to have passive consumeristic orientation. In which one unreflectively accepts ready made goods and social systems as they present themselves.

(Clapp, Ross O,Ryan and Tishman, 2017)

Makers stands on shoulders of others

• Being a maker is not new

• Being a makerspaces classroom is new way of seeing and being.

• Is related to handcraft movement

• Has it roots in Dewey's – learning by doing

• Is in family with Reggio Emilia

Constructionism –Seymor Papert

People learn through making things –Creative experimentation.

• First children have to have manipulatives – something they can share – then…

The Blu bot projectIn Aðalþing, preschool in Iceland

Hector Zamora

It is vital to think about what is happening in the world in a moment where we are less and less concerned with anything involving manual labor, anything implying to use the body in a different trades, any relationship with materials.

Who are the makers?

Who are makers?