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It is not that everything in the traditional education process is not beneficial or not effective. Plenty of great pioneers of different fields are produced from these traditional systems. So there can arise no question on the educational significance of the traditional systems.
So why there will arise the need to shift to the modern approaches of education is a big question to answer. Though the shift is necessary from the perspective of time, it will be very wise to calculate the extent of the shift. It will be our great mistake if we understand shifting as 100% shifting. There is no need for such a 100% shift and this can be backed by statistics spanning many decades of academic performances.
So by shift we should not understand total shift, instead it can be taken as partial and context-wise. There are many areas where traditional processes can score higher than the modern designs. There are also areas where modern systems provide better development than traditional systems. So, it will not be very wise to discriminate between the traditional and modern just for the sake of discrimination or any kind of rebellious perspectives. It will be better and more effective if we can harvest the best of the traditionals and mix it with the latest perspectives.
In the shortest, maker education is learning by making. Well it seems to be too short to carry any significant meaning within. Let me explain.
Traditionally we have seen education mainly as a reading and learning process. Schools and colleges used to prescribe various books in different subjects. Those books we need to read and learn and prepare for the exam. This is one type of education.
We cannot say that this type is totally useless or a failure as so many great scholars of different fields have evolved out of this traditional system of education.
There are some practical subjects, mainly Science and computer papers. And these practicals according to their curriculum cannot be exactly considered as within the category of maker education. The curriculum of the practical papers and the theoretical papers are often not perfectly synchronized but can be taken as somewhat related. And also those practicals are so designed that students can do those only in the laboratories under teacher supervision. So this does not meet the exact criteria of what is actually practiced as maker education.
This is the Wikipedia definition of maker education. We can see that the term is pretty new, being coined in 2013. Though it is said that this term is more related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning, maker education has been successfully used in many other non-STEM disciplines as well by many educational organizations.
So what is the exact agenda of maker education and how it makes it different from the traditional formats?
Educationists have studied the learning process of students and found that they learn best when there are questions in them. They have problems in hand and they need to solve those problems. Find ways or methods to solve those problems. They learn best when they do not learn only by their eyes and ears but also they use their hands in that learning. They need to perform something, arrange something, do something in order to reach the answer or result. That thing they understand better and retain in memory longer.
But why do we learn more and remember more with maker education?
Because the maker education process involves more sense organs and brain functions and for a longer stretch of time than the traditional processes. This enables more and better nerve connections which usually have more longevity and thus are remembered long.
When we learn from a book, or a class lecture, then a certain concept takes usually around a few seconds or few minutes to be delivered by the teacher and received by the students. And so it has very less retention in the memory and is usually forgotten within a day or two. But the case of maker education or maker learning is not the same.
Whenever we will be involved in some kind of project or development or exchange of views and ideas with the teachers as well as peer students, then there has to be deeper and longer engagements with those concepts or theories than just reading the books or hearing the lectures. And exactly this is one of the main purposes behind the idea of maker education.
No, things need not be like that with the idea and conception of maker education. It is true that the term maker education was coined by Dale Dougherly in 2013. But just because the official existence of this term came in 2013 it has to be a totally new concept by then, this is not exactly the fact.
There can be many variations of maker education and more than one such variation existed much before the era of Dougherly. For example you can remember those days when you used to run busy all day to complete your practical or project copies. Then there used to be a lot of classworks and homeworks.
Many can suggest that writing practical results or doing the classworks and homeworks are not belonging to maker education. Because you are not making anything or constructing anything with your hands. That’s true, but that’s not all.
Einstein used to call his laboratory. And he invented and discovered so many things of modern Physics and technology. So in that way he mostly used his brain, a piece of paper and a pen or pencil for doing it all. If so then how does the classwork or homework or some paper-pencil project works cannot be considered as capable of making?
So in that perspective, maker education is not totally a new idea. But just like all other things, it also has evolutions and improvisations. Thus we can say that we are experiencing an improvised newer evolution of maker education which is supposed to be more effective but more complex as well.
As I said above, the ideas were already under use with some other perspectives and names, maybe in a rather primitive manner. The actual formulation of what today we understand by Maker Education originated from around 2005 which is known for the maker movement.
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What is Maker Education Movement
The Maker Movement (Dale Dougherty)
In the maker movement, people no longer limited themselves to paper, pen and imagination, but liked to engage with objects all around them in ways that make them get more feeling and insights. The whole thing started when Dale Dougherty founded the Make magazine in 2005. People were inspired to perform inventions and innovations with acquisition of new skill sets at even the most miniature level but all with the name of ‘making’ or as a ‘maker’.
A lot kept happening after that eventually paving the way of entry of maker philosophy into mainstream education with the name of ‘maker education’.
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The first question that would be better to answer is why we would need maker education in our system, or what can we miss if we do not include it in our curriculum?
Well we are to miss and lose a lot indeed if we cannot understand the use and benefits of maker education. As stated above, education without a maker approach can be just memorizing facts and figures to recite them on exam papers and score some marks for updating the educational biodata. Hardly there will be much learning, knowledge acquisition and skill acquisition.
Even older methods of student engagements like the classworks and homeworks used to have very little scope for ideations and innovations, hands-on engagement with objects to grow alignment and connections of the education to the surroundings. All these and more become happening with the advent of maker education in our schools and colleges.
It is not easy to speak about the benefits of maker education as the list can be too exhaustive. But there are some very obvious and prominent developments that can be more easily associated with the maker education methods. Let us see some of those here.
1. Better memory retention performance
In every education process, memory and retention acquires the most important issue. If you cannot retain then there arise no question of intellectual analysis, application and further propagation or transmission. If your vessels are with holes then there can arise no question of any further cooking issues as it will not contain the basic ingredients in the first place. So before any further you have to mend those holes.
In the same manner if memory retention becomes the issue then all other issues fade. You need to address and solve that issue first. And maker education plays a major role in the quantitative as well as the qualitative aspects of memory retention. With increased engagements students tend to involve more brain functions which make the impressions in the brain more deep and more durable.
2. Create innovative and exploration motivations
In older methods of education there used to be less scope for experimentation and exploration. Students are just required to learn or even cram the facts and figures. But this type of approach to education does not generate too high value in terms of knowledge and skill. Then the education was more directed towards the scoring in mark sheets instead of learning and stimulating the appetite of innovations.
In STEM (Science Technology Engineering Medical) subjects still the scope of experimentation was far better than other available subjects in our schools and colleges. With the advent of maker education, all the other subjects are also getting a fair share of possible experimentation and exploration through the making process. In STEM subjects, introduction of maker education creates an even better hands-on learning environment than before.
3. Better knowledge and skill acquisition
Maker education provides the students with an arsenal of options and activities in order to undertake and engage. These engagements create better confidence and approaches in learning by a problem solving mindset. Thus this process creates learning as well as hands-on experience of all the course materials.
This learning with activities and experience creates much better knowledge and skill acquisition of the students which can make their expertise and career better and smarter than ever before. But there can be one obvious negative point as well. This process of maker education can be more complex and expensive than the older traditional methods of education. Still at the end it is undoubtedly worth it all.
4. Inspires innovation
I think for this benefit I would not need to discuss too much as this has already been done above. It is obvious that maker education can create more inquisitions and interest which will eventually result in more innovations.
Making itself is usually not far away from problem solving and innovations. To make you have to face problems and then solve them with your available knowledge resources and other resources. More you will make more resultant experiences you will gain that can develop resulting in more and better innovation tendencies.
5. Initiates better and meaningful collaborations
Collaborations are important in academic developments. Collaborations with teachers and collaborations with parents. In the old method of education, collaborations were more lean and mostly restricted between teachers and students. But if the student is not residing within the school campus and staying at home then collaborations of parents become extremely crucial.
In the method of maker education, on one hand collaborations between teachers and students gets more broader and intense, and on the other hand, there arises more scope of collaborations between the parents and the student. This increased involvement of parent student interaction on studies generates obvious positive effects in the academic life of the student.
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For maker education you need a maker space. Schools following maker education usually dedicate one or more rooms for makerspace setup. Many kinds of DIY (Do It Yourself) tools are made available in the maker space for incubating more creative ideas and constructions. The ideal setup of a makerspace is to be based on the ‘More is Less’ principle.
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Makerspaces usually have their own usage and maintenance rules regarding usage, safety and cleaning. More advanced tools and gadgets a makerspace will be having, more exhaustive usage directives and safety maintenance guidelines will be there.
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https://spaces4learning.com/articles/2019/09/01/makerspaces.aspx
An ideal makerspace is supposed to have many benefits on the students, which includes –
There can be many more benefits but these are the most fundamental and mandatory benefits that a makerspace should be designed to produce.
The idea of makerspace is hard to cover in just one article. Already lots of research is going all around the education world on the maker education and associated makerspace concepts. I have plans to write more on these topics, including more dedicated and exhaustive coverage on makerspace and maker activities.
Please keep watch on the KridhaTutor Blogs for future updates.
Already the world has embraced and already experiencing a lot of things happening in maker education. But this is just the dawn of the revolution. With developments in EduTech (EdTech or Education Technologies), and parallel development in communication (specially internet) and computing devices, the maker revolution is bound to become the greatest education trend of this century.
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Maker Movement on Shoulder of Giants
What’s Next for Maker Education
With rapidly growing members and supporters the maker education industry is heading towards an even bigger boom in the time to come not too far away. To reap the best of the benefits we should make and keep ourselves ready for these kinds of transitions. And that is the best purpose for our publications on maker education and philosophy for our readers.
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