Goodbye Libr-287!

As everyone else has said, I'm sad to see this class go (that's not to say I'm not happy that it's summer, though!). We read a lot of great books and articles and watched some excellent videos. Some favorite reads for me were Simon's The Participatory Museum and Martinez and Stager's Invent to Learn: Making Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. When this class is taught again I think that it would be great to sample some of Samuel Papert's actual works, as Invent to Learn inspired me to do. I guess I can admit that I liked least (or, didn't like) the Ideo book, The Ten Faces of Innovation. 


The Maker Faire project was the highlight of the semester for me. I still can't get over how fun that scribble machine is! Having success in the process while stepping outside of my boundaries made me a far more confident maker.  While I was wrapping up my makerspace proposal today I was browsing the Makershed store and the instructions on Make it @ Your Library and had the feeling that I could conquer any of those projects, whereas before I would have stayed away from LED lights and circuits and wires and...

Finally, this was the class that I had the most interaction with my fellow students in. The weekly blog posts brought out a lot of creativity that was fun to watch. My regret is that I didn't become more creative with my reflections.

I wish there were a sequel to this class... "advanced makerspaces?"

An additive process

Or, my thoughts on 3D printing.

Over the past few of years, 3D printing technology has become know for quite varied innovation. Weekly, there are new reports on medical breakthroughs and other surprising feats that would never have been possible without the technology. On a less grandiose level, 3D printing has also become linked to the maker movement and library makerspaces. I was surprised when, in her TED Talk on 3D printing, Lisa Harouni said that the technology of 3D printing has been around for over three decades.

Many are skeptical of 3D printing because they think it's a fad, but what seems to be a sudden explosion of a new technology is really just an old technology becoming more accessible for consumers. Despite this fact, 3D printers the cost of 3D printers still start at several hundreds of dollars, with the least expensive requiring assembly. This price is too much for people, particularly parents buying for their children, when they are new to the technology and are still learning. That's why classrooms and library makerspaces make good and necessary homes for 3D printers.

How is a student printing out a set of dice on par with the printing of a skull that will go in a human body? In Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager, the authors provide educators with persuasive arguments for advocating for making in the classroom. Educators are told not to simply say that "Students need to be prepared for the real world of the future," but to instead explain that"A makerspace offers the potential today for students to engage in the real work of mathematicians, scientists, composers, filmmakers, authors, computer scientists, and engineers, etc." Because these technologies will change the future of so many fields--medicine, science, manufacturing and customization, art, space and aeronautics--it's necessary to let all young students interact with these technologies. That's another reason why these printers should be in free and open spaces like libraries. 

That's not to say that just adding a 3D printer to a classroom or makerspace is enough. These places provide the necessary amount of structure and guidance for learning this new technology and all of the accompanying software. Invent to Learn emphasizes that process is more important than product. That's why it's not appropriate to tell a student whose result is a failed product that they have failed. The purpose of a 3D printer is the making of a product, so how does an educator make sure that it's still about process? Martinez and Stager suggest asking students to make products that they may need to use in other parts of the classroom. Projects often lend themselves to making measurement and using other math skills. The process of 3D printing can also be emphasized by teaching about the different steps that go into the product. The filament used  for example, gives teachers an opportunity to talk about environmental issues. Most 3D printers that will be found in the classroom or library will only be able to print out ABS or PLA, the second of which is biodegradable. Educators can also discuss how manufacturing on demand limits the carbon footprint. Copyright and open source are other major points to talk about with students as they design their products and alter downloaded designs. These discussions can inform the students' process.

As a fabrication tool, 3D printing is an additive process, meaning layers of filament are built up instead of carved out from a block of material. As a classroom tool, 3D printing is also additive to the learning process. This technology prepares students for technologies they will interact with in the future, empowers them to create and design their own items that they may use in and outside of the classroom, and allows them to learn about other topics in an experiential manner. 

Mistakes and Failure

I have to admit that I was taken aback by the assertion in Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering,and Engineering in the Classroom that we have a tendency of "fetishizing failure." My strongly held belief has always been that American society doesn't accept mistakes enough--and Martinez and Stager were telling me that we actually "fetishize" mistakes? 

A few years ago I read a book called Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aaronson. This book taught me that not only do we not want to admit to mistakes, but that not doing so can cost lives. When we are unwilling to admit to small mistakes, it means we're unwilling to admit to big mistakes. When we can't admit to big mistakes, we often proceed when we should stop or ask for help. That's why it's important to encourage young students to acknowledge their errors. The book explains that not wanting to admit to mistakes is a result of cognitive dissonance. We grow up seeing that mistakes happen to people who are failures, and we don't see ourselves as failures. If we admit to a mistake, then, we are admitting to being a failure when we don't see ourselves as such. That's why it's important to teach young children that making a mistake does not make someone a bad person. In classrooms today, teachers may as well be called judges. 

While I don't agree with how Martinez and Stager present the topic of failure, I do agree with many of their points, including their position that "The current failure fetish is more sloganeering than progress" (Chapter 5). I talk often about how the power of mistakes, but when it comes to accepting the ones I make myself, I still have a lot of improvement to make. I'm sure this is a product of the learning environment in which right answers are good and wrong answers are bad. I also agree that teachers don't need to create situations for failure as a lesson. Errors and mistakes should come naturally in an environment in which students are free to experiment. By "fetishizing failure" Martinez and Stager don't mean that we shouldn't accept and mistakes, but that we go about them all wrong because we don't just let them happen naturally. 

Martinez and Stager explain that real mistakes are "self-correcting." When we are making something, in order to move forward we almost always have to correct our mistake. There's no time to be judged and lectured. Our mistakes become less like mistakes and more like steps in the process. I think that allowing children to make mistakes--genuinely--is in line with, not opposed to, constructionism which says that we gain knowledge from experience and that this experience is best when it produces something that can be shared. In fact, mistakes can be a shareable element from such experiences. Seymour Papert himself, in his Eight Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab, says that "You can't get it right without getting it wrong."  

Scribbling Machine!

For my 287 Maker Faire project I made a scribbling machine. The instructions, which can be found on a number of websites, first came from The Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium. I used the one on Make it @ Your Library. Prior to this, I had never seen or touched a motor, and, admittedly, I didn't know how they worked. I read an article on motors from Make it @ Your Library, but the mechanism remained murky to me. After I had the motor in front of me and touched the wires to the battery and saw the axle being to spin, I began to understand. This situation reminded me of the discrepancy that exists in schools between learning about engineering and actually engineering, as discussed in chapter 2 of Invent to Learn. Reading the article on motors was akin to hearing a lesson in school by a teacher. Information was received, but it was hardly real until I encountered the motor.

The instructions provided a picture of a motor and suggested finding one in an old toy. I found this bubble machine and detected the motor. I took out the motor and experimented with touching the wires to a battery, which caused the axle to spin. My father helped me solder more wire onto the existing wires to make them longer. He also suggested that I solder a wire between the two batteries that I was going to use because it was difficult to keep them together. I wouldn't have known a) how to solder and b) that I should solder if my dad hadn't been there and provided guidance. This seemed like a skill that would  be hard to pick up from reading as it addressed a problem that I was actually facing.

The toy I took apart for the motor. The motor is the silver cylinder.

The instructions for the scribbling machine are hardly prescriptive. In fact, it serves more as a prompt than as instructions. The prompt: make a machine with a motor and markers, and see how you can change the marks made. Essentially, the maker is told to attach the motor to a frame and offset the motor with varying weights to cause the frame to move in different ways. How the maker does all this is up to them. If there is no weight on the motor or if the weight is centered the frame will just move slightly in place. The weights cause the motor to bounce and move about in circles. I used four different weights made out of linoleum sheets used for linocut printmaking. 

Weights used to vary the movement of the machine

The machine! I used a plastic cup for the frame and rubber bands to hold the motor and batteries on. In this photo you can also see where the weight goes on the axle.

The most tinkering for this project came from adding the weights to the axle. I learned that if the weight is heavier, the machine will move slowly and bounce less, causing the markers to create a solid line. If the weight is lighter and bounces more, the machine moves quicker and causes the marker to lift from the paper. The regular markers with the pointed tips left dots when using a lighter weight. I also used markers with a paint brush tip, which left waves when using the same weight. 

The marks made also varied based on the tip of the markers used

Results:

This project was truly what Seymour Papert would call "hard fun" in his "Eight Big Ideas Behind the Constructionist Learning Lab." Getting the motor to work while attached to the cup was difficult, and the process required I learn more about the relationship between the motor, its wires, and the batteries that power it. The given age for this project is 0-10 and 11-18. I would add that this project is perfectly difficult for a 25-year-old like myself who has no experience with motors. Experimenting with the weights and figuring out the behavior that would result wasn't as difficult, but took a lot of time and observation. Seeing the results on paper was absolutely fun. As someone with a more artistic bent than an engineering one, the results felt like the reward.

I found which brush stroke I preferred (the third weight with the paintbrush tip marker), and planned out a scribble based on the behavior I expected from the machine. I put one marker on at a time, and the following picture is the result:

My prized scribble

As it says in Invent to Learn, you never want to hear someone say they are done with a project, because each experience should spur new ideas. I plan to try this next with acrylic paint and watercolors.

The separation of subjects // funding a makerspace // links

Thoughts on the complete separation of subjects and areas of learning

I appreciate Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom's recognition that in contemporary learning environments there's a chasm between each subject. Math, language arts, history, science, art, and physical education are all taught separately. This separation is only increased when students get older and go to different classrooms for each subjects, with different teachers and for equal amounts of time. Growing up, I knew I wasn't one of the students who was good at art. I also knew I wasn't one of the students who was good at math. Every student was labeled by other students and teachers alike based on their strong areas and their weak ones. People who were thought to be bad at math would continue to be bad at math--it became part of their identity. 

Math and science have been separated from the humanities--especially art--and needlessly so. In contrast, people mathematicians and scientists used to be closely identified with art (Leonardo Da Vinci is the prime example mentioned in Invent to Learn). This is another result of schools separating subjects so rigidly. Arts and sciences should converge again with the use of makerspaces and fablabs. One of my favorite artists, Vik Muniz, recently released a project called "Sand Castles," in which drawings of castles were etched on individual grains of sand before being blown-up into large photos. In order to do this, he collaborated with Marcello Coehlo--an MIT graduate and teacher at MIT Media Lab. (While I was reading Invent to Learn I kept trying to remember where I had recently encountered the Media Lab.) Located at The Creator's Project is a video documenting the project. Skip ahead to 2:25 to see Coehlo explain his role. In order to push the limits of art, we need to often turn to science.

Seymour Papert believes that every student's experience is different. He explains that he was amazed by gears when he was presented with them as a young child, but he adds a disclaimer supporting his belief: not every child will feel toward gears what he felt toward gears. Not every child will have have the same reaction to the same object. This is why Papert finds computers to be attractive for learning environments. Every student given a computer is presented with the same object, but there are an infinite number of possibilities for how they interact with the computer and what they do with it. This notion is completely equitable for all students, but it also individualized. This combination is rarely found in classrooms today, which usually rely on one lesson plan given to all students, despite their individual learning styles, past experiences, and interests.

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Thoughts on funding

Kickstart a Kid's Makerspace by James Floyd Kelly is helpful in guiding organizers of a makerspace to choose equipment and in showing that makerspaces probably don't cost as much as you think they do. The final estimated costs are  $11,000 and $23,340 for a basic and a bigger kids makerspace, respectively. In the comments, many have added suggestions and substitutions to bring the cost down lower. While this cost may be substantially lower than many think it might be for purchasing 3D printers, lasercutters, arduinos, and the like, it is still a large sum of money for schools in lower-income locations. When a school has difficulty buying books, a 3D printer is out of the question. The same is true of libraries that are in bad financial situations. I think many would agree that the communities that would have the most difficulty purchasing these items are also the ones that would benefit the most from such spaces.

Kelly advises the use of Kickstarter or Indiegogo, but I recalled Donors Choose, a crowdfunding platform mentioned on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2014 which only has projects that raise money for K-12 schools. Schools that are considered to be high poverty are listed as such. A look at Donors Choose right now shows that teachers are using the platform to raise money for exactly the kinds of hands-on, technology-based items Kelly says should be in a makerspace. One teacher is requesting money to buy SD cards for her students' Raspberry Pi computers. Another, in a campaign called "Tools For Our Makerspace" is hoping to buy drills. Perhaps Donors Choose draws a different crowd to fund from than Kickstarter and is better known, but it seems that a centralized place to fund donations for K-12 schools has proven to be a good idea.

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Some Relevant Links:

After being introduced to Seymour Papert, the "Father of the Maker Movement," I had to know more! Here's The Daily Papert, run by Gary Stager, one of the authors of Invent to Learn. Here is the tag for "tinkering."

And, an article posted just this afternoon called 'Humanities Folks' Need to Pay Attention to STEM, and Vice Versa 

Getting on message

Do libraries risk getting “off message” when we focus on non-traditional services and community collaboration? 

I don't believe that libraries risk going off message when they provide the public with what the public seeks from the library as a place of life-long learning--regardless of whether or not the services are traditional. In Nina Simon's The Participatory Museum, she acknowledges that including participatory activities in a museum may cause those who prefer a more traditional experience to feel like the museum is going off message. She emphasizes that these non-traditional modes of museum-going cannot be the only option for visitors and should not take away from the experience of visitors who do not wish to participate. This should be the same case in libraries that decide to provide non-traditional services such as makerspaces. An article titled "The Library of the Future is Here" published by Business Insider, demonstrates that people still understand that libraries need to offer traditional services: "The library of the 21st century still has books, but it also has 3-D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, and spaces for conducting business meetings. It offers computer coding classes."  "

I would argue that the addition of non-traditional services redirects libraries to be on message as "forums for information and ideas" (as so described in ALA's Library Bill of Rights) in the 21st century. Simon says that participatory involvement in museums is necessary because people are now used to being able to create, share, remix, comment on, and critique the content that they consume on the internet. When a museum or library can mimic this, they are attracting an audience that would otherwise feel more fulfilled in the digital world. When traditional services are still maintained and unaffected by new services, patrons with all needs will benefit. In providing non-traditional services and community collaboration, libraries expand the audience that they can reach because they tap into different modes of learning beyond what traditional services account for. 

Having libraries promote non-traditional surveys can also help them promote the ones that are considered "traditional" by creating an opportunity to inform a new crowd. OCLC's 2010 Library User Perceptions survey is rather telling. In the survey, we find out that most users still think that libraries are all about books. The survey explains: "As new consumer devices and online services have captured the information consumer’s time and mindshare, his perception of libraries as books has solidified." Even without the addition of more non-traditional services, I think many librarians would take issue with this opinion. What about electronic databases? Reference services? Or even onsite book clubs and story time? Users still just see books. Adding non-traditional programming can bring in new users who will see that libraries are not simply about books and remind them that the library has a place in the 21st century. 

"The Library of the Future is Here" describes the efforts of Chattanooga Public Library in Tennessee, and countless other articles have documented libraries that have done the same. As more libraries shift to these types of services and the public becomes aware, the more the public will realize that the library's message is still the same as it always has been, but that the addition of services to take care of patrons who prefer a different learning environment does not change the mission, but maximizes it. 

Libraries should make sure that non-traditional services or participatory projects reflect their mission statement. Simon points out that participatory activities are not for having fun, but for providing information in a new way. Serious evaluation of programs is necessary, as is commitment from the library staff. If library staff are conscious of their non-traditional services and willing to be flexible and change the services as needed, they will be able to stay on message. 

Questioning the visitor

This weekend, I went to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The geology/paleontology room features the skeleton of the most complete pygmy mammoth ever found. The skeleton was found on one of the local Channel Islands, and pygmy mammoths have only ever been found on islands. 

While circling the exhibit, I was faced with an unexpected question: 

Why do I think pygmy mammoths lived only on islands?

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Nina Simon talks a lot about the value of asking museum visitors question in the chapter on social objects of her Participatory Museum. The topic of reflection questions and social objects go hand in hand, as the object--whatever it may be in the museum--provides an opportune gateway for questioning. It's important to remember that in daily life questioning is often a contrary reaction or used as a method of testing. Reflection questions shouldn't attempt to yield a specific response, but should instead guide visitors to think.

While a museum shouldn't have a specific answer in mind for a reflection question, they should have a reason for asking a question. Simon says that a museum may ask questions because they want visitors to relate to the object, because they want visitors to interact with one another, or because they want visitors to provide the museum with information. I would add to the first point that one way visitors can relate to these objects is by drawing on their own well of knowledge.  While the "What's Your Theory" question didn't allow me to make a connection with my own life to the exhibit, it would have allowed me to draw on my own knowledge of animal migration and local geographic or geological history (if by chance I had any...). Instead, the theory it asked me to come up with limited me to draw only on what I had just learned from the exhibit. If a visitor hadn't been considering a theory already, they could easily walk by the question without giving it much thought. 

The question presented in the pygmy mammoth exhibit didn't seem to exist for any of the reasons Simon listed, but I would say that it did have a purpose. This question reinforces the fact that although there is currently a favored theory, the answer of how the pygmy mammoths ended up on the island is still debatable. It tells the visitor that what they are viewing is still an active point of research. In other words, this sign serves more to say something instead of to ask something. The question posed in this exhibit could, however, do both with a slight re-design of its presentation. 

 Simon says that the question should fit with the rest of the content presented with the exhibit so as to not look like it was haphazardly added as an afterthought. This exhibit achieves this quite well--the question display looks exactly like the other information stands. If a visitor hadn't been considering a theory already, they could easily walk by the prompt without giving it much thought. The exhibit could provide a way for the visitor to record their answer. Off the top of my head, I could see the stand having a chalkboard finish to allow visitors to fill in the blank using a colored stick of chalk. By having a space for answers to be recorded, it seems more likely that visitors (even the ones who don't share their answer) would consider the question more seriously than when only told to think of an answer.

The way a question is asked or presented is just as important as the question itself. That the question may be answered in some way is also integral to a complete experience involving questioning the visitor.