I was a kid with a vivid imagination who stumbled upon cartooning as a way to express myself. Years later, I was an artist who stumbled upon language learning as a way to express myself to more people. After that, I became an English language teacher who delighted in bringing about meaningful international connections in my Boston community. One of those connections was the student who later became my husband, but that's another story. After moving to Brazil and starting to teach at a binational center, I eventually stumbled upon the Maker Movement as another layer to enhance English language learning--one that is meant to empower students and help them problem-solve. And yet it's a movement that I feel is sometimes misunderstood.
I usually share practical, hands-on activities for English language classes in these Maker Monday posts, but I'll pause for a few weeks to share a little about the Maker Movement itself and to try and clear up a few misconceptions I've encountered while exploring this movement's potential role in English language learning.
Although we could argue that humans have been making for millennia, I understand the origins of what we know as the Maker Movement to have started with the publication of Make: Magazine and Maker Faires (both started by Dale Dougherty in 2005 and 2006). Maker Faires are places where amateurs, students, teachers, engineers, techies, and people of all kinds of interests gather to show things they've built.
Emerging alongside these was the DIY (Do It Yourself) movement, in which people started sharing all kinds of skills, from home improvement projects, to crafts, to low-tech life hacks, often in the form of tutorial videos that could reach a wide audience. It is said that the DIY movement may have started a new industrial revolution, allowing people to make things at home that previously had only been manufactured and mass-produced. Other initiatives by MIT and the Obama administration further encouraged the development of this culture--one that is defined more by collaboration and making things in community than by simply making. Educators quickly welcomed this movement, and libraries found a new relevance in the digital age by becoming a hub for communal making, rather than a quiet place for individual research and study.
As the Maker Movement makes its way into education with maker spaces and maker clubs and maker culture knocking on the door and demanding to be noticed if not embraced, it can bring about an uneasiness to those who don't identify as "makers." It can even be seen as something cliquish, elitist, or downright intimidating. The misconception I hope to tackle this week is that "Maker" is all about arts and crafts, something best left to "creative" people.
While crafting--with traditions going back for centuries--is certainly part of the Maker Movement, it doesn't play a defining role. Art and craft activities can definitely add variety and memorable moments to a class, as well as a change of pace, and perhaps a different way to reinforce the material being learned. But when it comes to the Maker Movement, there are even bigger ideas at work.
The purpose of making isn't the product itself, but the process and the skills learned along the way. The item made could be something that solves a problem, represents an important principle or shows some of the maker's personality and passions. It might be a simple challenge where people have to work together to build something quickly that will later be dismantled and the pieces used again differently, or it could be something more permanent and useful to the community. And it could also be a craft that is enjoyed or given as a gift, though the product itself is not the ultimate goal. The magic happens in other places along the way.
When I have my students make something, I always ask myself what kinds of skills--soft, people skills, as well as (and sometimes more important than) the technical skills--they will practice. I also ask how they can use the target language as part of the experience. The making experience may require the use of certain target language when working together; or, perhaps it's the reflection on the experience afterward that will give opportunities for more meaningful language use.
If everyone's project looks the same, or if the only new word in English the students are using is the word for the item they made, I'm not satisfied. If students come out not knowing why they made a catapult or a fun creature, I know I have to re-think my lesson plan. And if I, as the teacher, feel that I need to be the entire source of information and knowledge when it comes to making, I'm actually selling students short.
We're often told as educators that we need to prepare our students for the changing world we live in, and that 21st Century skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and digital literacy, among others, are essential for success. Those are tough things to teach, and things we all could stand to learn more of ourselves. We live in an age where a quick Google search can connect us with information for research, and provide answers to most students' questions. And yet we still find ourselves teaching in the same old way, with exercises that rarely relate to real life. We drill the almighty verb to be, but students often have no idea who they are.
It's my hope that Maker projects and activities will help students of all backgrounds learn to discover and express themselves, equipping them not only to tell, but to write their own story. If everyone makes a cute little craft that looks the same, how will they discover who they are as an individual? And if the hard work of selecting colors and cutting the materials always comes prepared ahead of time for them, how will they learn critical thinking, or to persist through struggles and setbacks? While we need to make activities accessible and inviting, and provide some guidelines, we also need to find ways to give students choices and autonomy.
What if, rather than studying lots of tutorial videos during our prep time as teachers, we let students explore the kinds of online tutorials that suit their interests and fit the guidelines of the activity? Sometimes we all need a step-by-step guide to learn some skills, and that's OK--the DIY movement is full of fun videos that empower people to make things on their own. So what if we gave students more autonomy to decide exactly how to go about their making? The teacher lights the spark, sets the guidelines, and facilitates the making, but the student is the protagonist and has to learn how to solve the problems they encounter. The teacher can cheer them on from the sidelines and provide resources and language, but the student has to be the one who pushes through to make something new.
With that in mind, what if we gave students more opportunities to learn skills from each other, or, through the Internet, to learn from young people on the other side of the world, sharing ideas and different approaches? Isn't this kind of communication--explaining a process, asking questions, problem-solving, and exchanging ideas with people of different backgrounds and abilities--a more relevant way to practice English language?
Sure, students might make a craft of a cute little creature. But let's not end with the product--how can they be further challenged to use the language structures from the book, and from life? Maybe it's by introducing, describing, or making up a story for that creature, together with other students and their creations. Maybe they could work together to build a habitat or a neighborhood, or an entire ecosystem--or even something practical to solve a problem in their own neighborhood. It's not always going to be a smooth, easy process from start to finish, and it requires time, patience, and guidance. It's a culture that needs to be cultivated, and it doesn't happen overnight.
Sometimes all we have time for is a quick challenge to make something that has some connection to the topic being studied. But imagine how much more useful that challenge could be if we equipped students with some simple language tools to collaborate and problem solve: "Let's...You can...I'll...What if..."
We also need to give students a safe place to fail. That's a scary thing. But with failure and setbacks come the tools to problem-solve and think more critically. We need to provide low-stakes challenges where students know it's OK to make mistakes and are not afraid to try out different approaches. Cultivating this environment allows students to learn self-confidence by experimentation, as they create something new together, collaborating and building communication skills with peers. If we can equip them to do that in a foreign language, a global language like English, even better! I'm going to echo Mitchel Resnick of MIT Media Lab in redefining DIY as, "Let's do it together!"
I'll be sharing further thoughts in the next Maker Monday post in two weeks. Meanwhile, what's your experience with collaboration in making crafts or other things? What's your vision for developing global citizens in your community?
I usually share practical, hands-on activities for English language classes in these Maker Monday posts, but I'll pause for a few weeks to share a little about the Maker Movement itself and to try and clear up a few misconceptions I've encountered while exploring this movement's potential role in English language learning.
Emerging alongside these was the DIY (Do It Yourself) movement, in which people started sharing all kinds of skills, from home improvement projects, to crafts, to low-tech life hacks, often in the form of tutorial videos that could reach a wide audience. It is said that the DIY movement may have started a new industrial revolution, allowing people to make things at home that previously had only been manufactured and mass-produced. Other initiatives by MIT and the Obama administration further encouraged the development of this culture--one that is defined more by collaboration and making things in community than by simply making. Educators quickly welcomed this movement, and libraries found a new relevance in the digital age by becoming a hub for communal making, rather than a quiet place for individual research and study.
As the Maker Movement makes its way into education with maker spaces and maker clubs and maker culture knocking on the door and demanding to be noticed if not embraced, it can bring about an uneasiness to those who don't identify as "makers." It can even be seen as something cliquish, elitist, or downright intimidating. The misconception I hope to tackle this week is that "Maker" is all about arts and crafts, something best left to "creative" people.
While crafting--with traditions going back for centuries--is certainly part of the Maker Movement, it doesn't play a defining role. Art and craft activities can definitely add variety and memorable moments to a class, as well as a change of pace, and perhaps a different way to reinforce the material being learned. But when it comes to the Maker Movement, there are even bigger ideas at work.
The purpose of making isn't the product itself, but the process and the skills learned along the way. The item made could be something that solves a problem, represents an important principle or shows some of the maker's personality and passions. It might be a simple challenge where people have to work together to build something quickly that will later be dismantled and the pieces used again differently, or it could be something more permanent and useful to the community. And it could also be a craft that is enjoyed or given as a gift, though the product itself is not the ultimate goal. The magic happens in other places along the way.
When I have my students make something, I always ask myself what kinds of skills--soft, people skills, as well as (and sometimes more important than) the technical skills--they will practice. I also ask how they can use the target language as part of the experience. The making experience may require the use of certain target language when working together; or, perhaps it's the reflection on the experience afterward that will give opportunities for more meaningful language use.
If everyone's project looks the same, or if the only new word in English the students are using is the word for the item they made, I'm not satisfied. If students come out not knowing why they made a catapult or a fun creature, I know I have to re-think my lesson plan. And if I, as the teacher, feel that I need to be the entire source of information and knowledge when it comes to making, I'm actually selling students short.
We're often told as educators that we need to prepare our students for the changing world we live in, and that 21st Century skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and digital literacy, among others, are essential for success. Those are tough things to teach, and things we all could stand to learn more of ourselves. We live in an age where a quick Google search can connect us with information for research, and provide answers to most students' questions. And yet we still find ourselves teaching in the same old way, with exercises that rarely relate to real life. We drill the almighty verb to be, but students often have no idea who they are.
It's my hope that Maker projects and activities will help students of all backgrounds learn to discover and express themselves, equipping them not only to tell, but to write their own story. If everyone makes a cute little craft that looks the same, how will they discover who they are as an individual? And if the hard work of selecting colors and cutting the materials always comes prepared ahead of time for them, how will they learn critical thinking, or to persist through struggles and setbacks? While we need to make activities accessible and inviting, and provide some guidelines, we also need to find ways to give students choices and autonomy.
What if, rather than studying lots of tutorial videos during our prep time as teachers, we let students explore the kinds of online tutorials that suit their interests and fit the guidelines of the activity? Sometimes we all need a step-by-step guide to learn some skills, and that's OK--the DIY movement is full of fun videos that empower people to make things on their own. So what if we gave students more autonomy to decide exactly how to go about their making? The teacher lights the spark, sets the guidelines, and facilitates the making, but the student is the protagonist and has to learn how to solve the problems they encounter. The teacher can cheer them on from the sidelines and provide resources and language, but the student has to be the one who pushes through to make something new.
With that in mind, what if we gave students more opportunities to learn skills from each other, or, through the Internet, to learn from young people on the other side of the world, sharing ideas and different approaches? Isn't this kind of communication--explaining a process, asking questions, problem-solving, and exchanging ideas with people of different backgrounds and abilities--a more relevant way to practice English language?
Sure, students might make a craft of a cute little creature. But let's not end with the product--how can they be further challenged to use the language structures from the book, and from life? Maybe it's by introducing, describing, or making up a story for that creature, together with other students and their creations. Maybe they could work together to build a habitat or a neighborhood, or an entire ecosystem--or even something practical to solve a problem in their own neighborhood. It's not always going to be a smooth, easy process from start to finish, and it requires time, patience, and guidance. It's a culture that needs to be cultivated, and it doesn't happen overnight.
Sometimes all we have time for is a quick challenge to make something that has some connection to the topic being studied. But imagine how much more useful that challenge could be if we equipped students with some simple language tools to collaborate and problem solve: "Let's...You can...I'll...What if..."
We also need to give students a safe place to fail. That's a scary thing. But with failure and setbacks come the tools to problem-solve and think more critically. We need to provide low-stakes challenges where students know it's OK to make mistakes and are not afraid to try out different approaches. Cultivating this environment allows students to learn self-confidence by experimentation, as they create something new together, collaborating and building communication skills with peers. If we can equip them to do that in a foreign language, a global language like English, even better! I'm going to echo Mitchel Resnick of MIT Media Lab in redefining DIY as, "Let's do it together!"
I'll be sharing further thoughts in the next Maker Monday post in two weeks. Meanwhile, what's your experience with collaboration in making crafts or other things? What's your vision for developing global citizens in your community?
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