What is Maker movement? What is a Makerspace? Who are the makers?

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“The Maker movement is a community of hobbyists, tinkerers, engineers, hackers, and artists who creatively design and build projects for both playful and useful ends” (Martin, 2015, 1), and a makerspace is where the creators, or makers, develop their projects!

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The idea behind the Maker Movement is to engage young people with innovation. Cheyenne and I decided to create a lesson plan that was both informative and fun so students could leave with an understanding and a smile. In order to do this, we decided to use the maker kit “Makey Makey” since it offered a lot of possibilities and experiences with many needed resources. Once we decided on the Makey Makey, we narrowed the creation down to making a Guitar Hero. We thought this would further engage young people, since at the end of the building process they would be able to play with it.

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We started the project with thinking about what we wanted the kids’ end goal to be. In order to do this, we first had to go through the entire process of building the Guitar Hero. We determined the end goal was for students to understand a circuit and how it works.

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We developed the objectives below:

• Students will be able to experiment with a makey makey board by connecting alligator clips and wires in order to program a homemade guitar hero

• Students will be able to produce a project in order to introduce students to creating circuits

 

With these objectives, we facilitated a group lesson at Tinkr Lab at Meridian Mall with a group of 7-10 year olds. We learned a lot about Makey Makey, our lesson plan, and what worked well and what needed revisions, which will be discussed below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did the Maker experience go for you? What did you learn?

 

The pre-planning process went well. We quickly figured out that we wanted to create a Guitar Hero with Makey Makey, so we researched and experimented with the kit to develop a successful guitar that could link up to a computer to play music. As our thinking process happened, we typed questions, challenges, ideas, links to music, and a multitude of other thoughts in order to help us not lose our train of thought and focus. We realized that certain alligator clips had to be connected to a specific area on the Makey Makey board or the incorrect color would light up on the computer. We created a table to show the correct matching keys and clips, so we wouldn’t forget it for the future.

Once we were at the makerspace, Cheyenne and I struggled with WiFi connecting at a fast speed. We needed internet for kids to be able to play the Guitar Hero game at the end of their creation, so it wasn’t imperative that it worked immediately, but it was a moment of frustration.

We then had four kids go to our table to start the process of making the Guitar Hero. We had the kids read the objects and try explaining to us what they thought they were going to learn. The makers did not know what a Guitar Hero was or the definition of a circuit. We first had them try to guess, but they didn’t know so we defined circuit as moving a current of electricity. When I asked what a current was, one little boy said, “like a wave.” I asked him what a wave does, and he said, “it moves.” So what do you think a current here does, I asked. He replied, “move electricity!” And with that… the thinking had just begun.

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Cheyenne and I quickly realized that adjustments had to me made to the experiment. Below is a list of changes for the future:

1. Prepare all of the materials instead of having students do it themselves. We will cut the foil strips, color the foil strips the specific color, place the tape on foil so students only have to place it on the cardboard, have one alligator clip connected to the Makey board, and computers ready to go. It took the children way too long to do the entire setup process. Our focus wasn’t on them being able to create a Guitar Hero, but rather for them to understand a circuit.

2. Instead of having a guitar shaped cardboard, we will have a small cardboard rectangle. The kids never picked it up and tried to play with it, so having a smaller workspace will make it easier for them to click the correct colors.

 

With the above changes, children will be able to focus on the end goal: creating circuits.

Planning the website, on the other hand, was a bit more of a challenge. We started with using a Wordpress and we determined it was not user friendly so we switched to a Weebly. Due to lack of communication within the group, we struggled with delegating and accepting tasks. In the end, we were successful.

 

 

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What value, if any, do you see in the maker movement as a paradigm for teaching and learning?

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The Maker movement fosters critical thinking skills through the use of kids having to question their thought process. “Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it” (Glasser, 1941). Children were able to learn from their mistakes which created more questioning and thinking. They took those questions and implemented changes to the project. For example, the buttons were not matching the color and the kids had to reassess the alligator clips. Throughout the entire project, there were many moments where students had to learn from doing and then doing again.

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What new insights have you gained about teaching, learning, and technology through this activity? What will be different about you as a teacher, your classroom, or your students?

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After watching kids complete this project, I realized the importance of questioning. The children had to continually reevaluate their mistakes along the way. They had never played Guitar Hero, had never seen a Makey Makey board, and had never dealt with circuits before, and were given limited instructions and guidance. As they made a mistake, they had to question what they were doing wrong. Some of the kids became irritated and wanted to give up, but that is partly do to their lack of experience with being innovators and critical thinkers. As stated in A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, “inquiring minds can identify new opportunities and fresh possibilities” (Berger, 2014, 5) where people who don’t inquire often give up instead of persevering through the challenge.

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I have realized that “you don’t learn unless you question” (Berger, 2014, 24). I plan on having students compile a list of questions prior to me breaking down a prompt. I found it very beneficial when we did that with creating this project. This will help students engage in critical thinking prior to an assignment. I anticipate students struggling at first, but in the end them becoming successful thinkers.

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What advice could you give to others interested in replicating your activity, creating a resource website, or implementing maker activities in their classrooms?

 

The biggest advice I give for replicating the activity is this- prepare all the materials, don’t make it into a guitar, and let the kids experience trial and error and try to figure out the solution on their own.

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Creating a website with a group of people was more challenging than anticipated. We didn’t think that would be one of our issues, so we didn’t discuss or plan the website as a group. We quickly decided to use a website and then quickly decided to change it. However, only one person picked a theme and there was no discussion on what should go on our team’s page; It was unorganized. It would have been best on day one to assign specific roles to people so we knew exactly what needed to be on the website. It would have eliminated any tensions that arose.

 

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Words Cited

Martin, Lee (2015) "The Promise of the Maker Movement for Education," Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER): Vol. 5: Iss. 1, Article 4.

 

Edward M. Glaser. (1941). An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking. Retreived from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/our-conception-of-critical-thinking/411

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.