Figure 1 - The Maker Movement from - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-four-components-of-the-maker-movement_fig1_326052353
The maker movement is a social movement that promotes the creation and making of things using technology and tools. It believes everyone can be a maker and come together to design innovative solutions to problems. It has also recently contributed to the development of new educational programs. Some researchers are describing it as the next industrial revolution (Browder et al., 2019).
Some of the pedagogical issues that arise with the maker movement are as follows;
- It can be difficult to integrate maker projects with traditional academic subjects
- Maker projects can be time-consuming and resource intensive, which makes them hard to implement on a large scale.
- They require self-direction and critical thinking which may be difficult for some students.
- Maker activities may be seen as fun, rather than an opportunity for learning.
In our tutorial, our task was to continue with our activity from week 2 which was to design a water tower. We then had to code and program it using Microbit (Pictured above). Once we had the program working on the simulation in Microbit we were provided with limited materials to create our Water Tower in real life. Now after designing our towers in the room and adjusting the code to work a bit better based on the physical design we managed to create a tower that worked. Here is a video.
Now as you can see we were a bit time limited so it doesn't work perfectly but with a bit of refinement and more time to perfect the design it would work a lot better but the basics are there. It can start the water flow and stop water flow by moving the straw up and down This is a great maker activity that could be used in classrooms from about late stage 2 and up. Everyone in the classroom had different ideas on how to make their own water tower which does the same activity a great example of a maker activity and proof that. Constructionism is clearly a great way to foster creativity in the classroom as it provides students with a problem to solve and allows them to create a solution in any way they see fit and this is great for young minds.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, C. (2014). Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. Competitiveness Review, 24(2), 147–149. https://doi.org/10.1108/cr-04-2013-0039
Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital Fabrication and ‘making’ in education. FabLab, 203–222. https://doi.org/10.14361/transcript.9783839423820.203
Browder, R. E., Aldrich, H. E., & Bradley, S. W. (2019). The emergence of the Maker Movement: Implications for Entrepreneurship Research. Journal of Business Venturing, 34(3), 459–476. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2019.01.005
Hatch, M. (2014). The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the new world of crafters, hackers, and tinkerers. Choice Reviews Online, 51(07). https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-3798
Hi Euan,
Good blog post this week. I like your insight into pedagogical issues- there certainly are a lot of resources that must be provided for students so they have materials to build with. Realistically, only a limited variety of materials can be provided given expenses, although this could add an extra ‘challenge’ e.g only use recyclable materials.
You’ve mentioned that the tutorial task could be used in late stage 2 upwards. What subject would it work in? Is there a syllabus dot point it meets? Adding this information could help make your blog post more usable for teachers. I agree that the project could be used in primary classrooms however it would have to be differentiated to suit different…