This paper explores the possibilities for enhancing the Irish-language learning experience through students collaboratively constructing digital artefacts in the form of stories via design-based learning activities aligned with curricular knowledge in and through the medium of Irish. Irish is one of Ireland's two official languages where Irish is the national minority language and English is the dominant majority language. For quite some time, however, significant weaknesses have been noticeable in the teaching of Irish as a second language in the primary education system. This study culminates in a practical innovative model called TALES (Technology, Activity, Language Learning, Engagement and Story) and offers a possible solution to the problem of underachievement in Irish. TALES integrates all four language skills through the storytelling phase and maps them to four corresponding multimedia skills during the digital recreation phase, developing language and technology skills in the process. It externalises student thinking whilst co-creating sharable learning artefacts, negotiating meaning and deepening learning. TALES engages students in the meaningful production of the Irish language, and provides them with increased and spontaneous opportunities to speak and write the language through creative writing and digital recreation activities. It supports a curriculum-aligned, student-centred, technology-enhanced, design-based, constructionist and collaborative approach to language learning. Students demonstrated a more positive attitude towards Irish and were intrinsically motivated to learn it. They became more digitally fluent as they became more adept at designing and creating, developing interpersonal, communicative and problem-solving skills in the process.
Attempting the hands-on activities typical of makerspaces without in-person expert facilitation can lead to frustration and decreased engagement. This study aims to explore the collaboration affordances of REACH, a novel communication device that allows users to share gestures around a common artifact while in separate locations. Using a modified version of the divergent collaborative learning mechanisms framework (DCLM), this paper highlights the affordances of REACH to support students in collaboratively engaging in joint attention and boundary spanning perception and action, even when they are physically disparate.
This paper introduces PaperCut, software that enables novices to design textured 3D vessels from paper cutouts. The software and accompanying workflow were developed to enable novices to explore 3D printing entirely through hands-on craft-based activities, bypassing traditional Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Machining (CAM) software workflows. The approach is designed to enable novice creators to apply their expertise in traditional craft to interactions with a 3D printer. We describe our approach and discuss a workshop in which participants used PaperCut to create 3D printed forms in clay and a custom 3D printable play-dough.
Making and constructionism offer teachers novel ways to engage students in learning. These novel approaches allow students to engage in rich, meaningful learning while building their broader STEM skillset. However, rates of adoption and curricular integration remain sporadic and difficult to understand. For many teachers, the question of integrating making and technology within their classroom becomes “is it worth the effort?” With few teachers expert in maker technologies before entering the classroom, issues of cognitive load associated with technology adoption are of high importance for teacher adoption of technology. How much mental effort it will take for them to learn a technology and subsequently teach it are essential parts of making informed instructional decisions within schools and classrooms. We use the term Technological Instructional Overhead (TIO) to evaluate and engage the various cognitive and practical considerations for teachers when potentially adopting maker projects and technologies within their classrooms.
Justifying universal K12 computer science (CS) education requires a clear articulation of why CS is valuable for all students. Drawing from Constructionist perspectives on the relationship between computers and cognition, we analyze interviews with secondary school students at the end of their time in a 2-year, constructionist CS course to better understand how these students’ CS education affected their experiences with computing in their everyday lives. In doing so, we identify three types of experience where students begin to “re-see” technology: respect, curiosity, and an impetus to do more. We analyze these experiences using Constructionist perspectives on computer cultures, material intelligence, and liberatory pedagogy. Finally, we discuss how computational identity development is a unique process mediated by learners' participation in communities of practice and explore implications of this analysis for the goals of K12 CS education.
Most studies in maker education foreground gaps in teachers' content knowledge or challenges teachers face in implementing maker activities. In this paper, we seek to contribute to a better understanding of what teachers (grades 9-12) see as the benefits of introducing maker activities, especially in regard to equity. We focused on eight experienced computer science (CS) teachers implementing an etextile unit in their classrooms in which their students stitched circuits with conductive thread and programmed sensors and actuators. Hour-long interviews conducted post implementation focused on: What do expert CS facilitator-teachers see as the affordances of e-textiles for 1) issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and 2) their own professional growth and personal experience? In the discussion we consider implications not just for maker education in classrooms but also in creating a fulfilling professional experience for teachers.
In maker education, traditional classroom assessments often fail to capture student learning. As of now, most assessment focus on the end product, are language-based, and are teacher-directed. Designing effective assessment processes requires resolving tensions between what teachers hope to accomplish and what they can do. This paper explores the values and tensions of elementary school teachers when it comes to designing assessment activities and tools for maker education. We describe the design, implementation, and outcomes of a values-led co-design workshop for reimagining assessment for maker education with three teachers. Using observation data and workshop artifacts, we present insights into teachers’ values, tensions, and ideas regarding maker education assessment, as well as their final assessment design.
Programming is increasingly becoming a subject across the spectrum of educational environments for preschool children. Concerns have been raised regarding a too instrumental and uncritical implementation of programming. This study follows a preschool and reports on the obstacles infused during a six-month design-based study introducing a programmable floor robot with children, featuring formative focus group sessions and pedagogical development. An activity theoretical approach was taken to examine the various tensions with existing pedagogies that arose during the project and how these led to pedagogical development toward a programming ethos based on making pedagogical materials and tinkering activities, where failure is an inherent part of the educational process. The paper discusses the potential problems of using new subjects with current curricula and how new technologies are part of reshaping childhood pedagogies.
The digital footprint we leave while using devices that are connected to the internet has an impact on our life. While the fact is generally known among students, it is often not on their minds when they interact with their digital devices on everyday activities. The data trail, if at all, cannot easily be seen and its emergence is hard to understand due to the complexity of the underlying technologies and processes. Nevertheless, the impact can be huge and to know about it is necessary to live a digitally self-determined life. This short paper presents a course designed for undergraduate students in media literacy with the intent to help them achieve a better understanding for these abstract processes in a creative, constructionist way.
Sports spaces are being increasingly used for enabling a variety of computing education opportunities. This work often aims to support socially and disciplinarily minoritized communities, often children of color with specific cultural practices and identities around sports. In this work, we focus on how these experiences can be extended to support youth in developing lasting long term skills around computational making using athletic interest and participation as a jumping off point. We focus on how such a making process can enhance and augment learners’ sports understanding, and by extension sports performance; as well as how their sports interest helps them encounter and make sense of different computing concepts. In this paper, we discuss working with a student athlete, his journey of designing and bringing to life ideas around sports technologies, through physical computing and prototyping technologies. We employed a user-centered design approach for designing the learning experience, and emerging methods for assessing learning in making experiences. We blend data around his making experience with observations and interview data around his sports experiences. We find that the process of making augmented his ability to think more deeply about elements of his practice (e.g., strategies of play, ecosystem, and teamwork) and a deeper appreciation of science and technology in the real world. This work contributes an additional lens on how making can serve as a powerful process to realize new possibilities involving computing education in cultural-sustaining computing learning environments.
This longitudinal case study of a Thai farmer shares a remarkable 15+ year-long constructionist learning journey. Through close mentorship and projects grounded in agricultural village life, this farmer transformed his life in radical ways, developing planning tools and thinking processes that enabled him and his family to work their way out of crushing debt and becoming an expert in his community. We focus on the representational skills he developed in mapping, mathematics, and data visualization. This adult learner's story emphasizes the critical role of representational tools as “technologies” of cognition and speaks to the broad applicability of constructionism to change how learners of all ages perceive, organize, and relate to their worlds.
This study explores how a few high school-aged youth, employed as Youth Teachers at an after-school fabrication laboratory (FabLab), talk to one another as they rehearse part of a lesson in preparation to teach elementary school-aged youth to program robot Finches. Rehearsals, which usually consist of running through lines, walking through direct instruction, and transitioning between speakers in front of other Youth Teachers, are a regular practice at Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn as youth prepare to teach at an outreach site the next day. Using interaction analysis of one typical rehearsal, we illuminate linguistic shifts as youth negotiate identities, meanings, and leadership. These movements help us understand how youth teachers navigate the multiplicities of their identities as Black and Brown young people positioned as teachers while learning to program.
This study investigates students' conceptualizations of creativity within a constructionist learning environment and the potential implications for designing engaging learning experiences. We analyzed group project papers from three iterations of an undergraduate course on creativity and identified two distinct conceptualizations of creativity: Extraversion-Freedom and Playful-Adaptation. Each conceptualization is associated with different emergent practices. By understanding and incorporating these conceptualizations into learning environment design, educators can enhance student creativity, engagement, and learning outcomes. Additionally, our findings provide insights into developing nuanced learning experience design tools that align with various perspectives on creativity, fostering a deeper appreciation and understanding of the creative process in constructionist learning settings.
Activities that support the intersection of craft and construction materials with computational tools and devices have been well documented in the literature. Importantly, such physical computing learning experiences are still relatively uncommon in school-based learning environments. To address this, we designed an eight-week project called “DIY Games with Craft and Code.” In this project students design unique DIY (do-it-yourself) board games from pizza boxes and craft materials and bring them to life with a micro:bit microcontroller. Our research seeks to illuminate the affordances and constraints of this project in supporting students’ transdisciplinary engagement in physical computing. In this paper, we report on the co-design process between our research team and two participating middle school teachers who facilitate coding clubs at their schools.
Although BioMaking is flourishing as a Constructionist genre of Making that intersects with the biological sciences, not much is known about its utility or impact in K-12 learning. We review a group of high school BioMaker projects submitted to an international design challenge. We use perspectives in cultural relevance to address the following research questions: (1) what do BioMaker projects reviewed reveal about Making in the context of life sciences and everyday life? and (2) in what ways is BioMaking distinct from traditional life science instantiations that emphasize active learning? We discuss BioMaking and its potential to respond to youth priorities and to broaden active learning to include lessons in design principles and social impacts. We conclude by highlighting the potential BioMaking has to broaden life science education priorities to include more critical stances about technology production and society.
What constitutes a ‘constructionist’ design? Five educators facilitated a low-tech 3D-geometry activity—collaboratively constructing a body-scale icosahedron—across different instructional contexts spanning preschool to professional development. Their testimonies suggest that this activity embodies key constructionist principles—it: (1) (re)introduces body syntonicity into mathematics; (2) fosters reasoning continuous with prior knowledge; (3) positions geometric concepts as a source of power to achieve personally relevant objectives; and (4) renders thought processes publicly shareable in culturally valued ways. Whereas Papert's educational legacy has been historically associated with students creatively building personally meaningful artifacts using digital technology, we believe his “space of mathematics educations” inspires designs for guided learning in diverse media.
This paper explores the benefits of interactive scaffolds in constructionist learning experiences with Agent-based Modeling and Programming (ABM & P). While many previous studies have supported ABM & P learning, they often lack embedded interactive scaffolds. In a recent study, we introduced the Tortuga Interactive Scaffolding system for designers to build interactive scaffolds for ABM & P with simple commands that can react to learners’ emergent interactions and a model's emergent behaviors. To explore the design affordances of this system, we implemented scaffolds for eight agent-based models with three design paradigms: content-agnostic, exploration-oriented, and programming-oriented. With log data collected from out-of-school, online learning contexts, our quantitative analysis shows that exploration-oriented and programming-oriented scaffolds did better to engage learners in constructionist ABM & P activities. We discuss implications for other constructionist learning designers.
In this paper we present an ongoing research project aimed at evaluating the impact of the Mind- and Makerspace (MaM) in Bruges, Belgium. The MaM is envisioned as an open space where students, schools, social organizations, entrepreneurs, companies and citizens are stimulated to develop a creative, exploratory and entrepreneurial attitude to contribute to a sustainable society. To achieve these objectives the MaM offers infrastructure, network, knowledge, methodologies and coaching. The MaM was founded by Howest University of Applied Sciences and intended as an open education system, aiming to detect and empower talents of any individual. The main goal of this impact research is to investigate whether the approach works, under what circumstances and what change it brings for its users and partners. This research project aims to contribute to an accessible impact measurement methodology as well, that can be used by other social entrepreneurs.
In recent years, an increasing interest in establishing and engaging with makerspaces in the context of formal educational settings in primary and lower-secondary schools in Denmark has grown. Initiatives to establish makerspaces as formal learning spaces in Denmark can be linked to international concepts and thoughts about FabLabs, Hackerspaces, and the Maker movement. A mapping of educational makerspace initiatives aiming for students in primary and lower-secondary schools in Denmark has been conducted as part of a larger evaluation of 17 educational makerspace establishments in Danish municipalities. This paper presents early findings from the evaluation. The overall aim of the evaluation is to gain knowledge about makerspace settings as learning environments and the potential and challenges such settings pose to pedagogical practice.
