Tinkering

P631:Tinkering

Something happened to me as I progressed through the institutions of schooling--  I lost my ability to play, tinker and explore.  I used to have it.  Truly, I was a maker of macramé, a player of Barbies, Lincoln logs, and model horses, outside I rode ponies, built forts, and designed haunted hikes, and games.  I’m not sure when these skills went by the wayside, but I’m certain that there wasn’t “time for it” in my schooling. The rush of life consumed me into adulthood until this moment in time, when I finally realize that I have lost my creativity and tinkering skills. Maybe tinkering hasn’t been prioritized in our culture?  Did my formal schooling somehow deprogram me? Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) noted that despite it’s benefits, “tinkering is often undervalued in today’s society, particularly in formal education systems.  Schools tend to emphasize the value of planning, teaching students to analyze all options, develop a strategy, then carry out the plans.” (pg. 166)  I became a planner but let go of the maker in me.  

Reading about constructionism, making, and Marcos in the Tinkering Studio at the San Francisco Exploratorium (Petrick et., al., 2013), while also exploring DIY projects and 3-D printing this week, has inspired me to rethink how I spend my time, and further… rethink how children spend their time in schooling spaces.  Through this process I am thinking about ways that researchers and educators can ensure that another generation of children don’t get stripped of their curiosity and desire to design, produce and create.  Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) contend that, “tinkering is more important todays than ever before…success in the future will depend not on what you know, or how much you know, but on your ability to think and act creatively—on your ability to come up with innovative solutions to unexpected situations and unanticipated problems. ‘ (pg. 166)

Petrick et. al., (2013)suggest that “visitors to the tinkering studio are invited to slow down, sink in, and spend time working with phenomena and materials to begin to conceive of design and make things themselves.”(pg. 51)  This idea of slowing down is important, I think.  In rethinking educational spaces, it must be noted that one of the biggest pitfalls of the standardization of curricula is the pressure it puts on teachers to rush through everything in order to “hit all the standards”.  It is no surprise that within “in-school” spaces there is a perception that there just isn’t time to slow down to tinker and explore.

I believe that the hustled pace of school and thus the tension between in-school and out-of-school learning comes from the accountability culture and the politicians need for measurable standards has driven in-school learning away from a curricula that values time to design, explore and create.  This accountability culture is in-turn defining what counts as learning in the school spaces.  Learning becomes something prescribed, that draws on facts and skills and knowledge gained that is easily measured on tests.   Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013)agree that the project-based, experiential approach to learning is, “somewhat out of favor in many of today’s education systems, with their strong emphasis on content delivery and quantitative assessment.”  Contrast this with Petrick et. al.’s definition of what learning looks like. They explain that when we see intentionality, innovations, solidarity, and engagement, “developing in the space or the learners, we know that people are on a trajectory of learning. They are drawing on their resources; they are taking risks with their ideas; they are operating on the edge of the understanding.  They are engaging in the different investigative practices of designers, scientists, artists, makers, and engineers.” Using this definition of learning to frame making or tinkering learning helps one see that it is also possible to measure learning in other ways besides quantitative assessments recommended by many educational mandates.

I went to the maker space this week to make a 3-D elephant for my daughter’s new slime business.  She loves elephants and is donating proceeds from slime sales to  Save the Elephants.  When I walked into the mill I knew nothing about 3-D printing and the task seemed daunting.  As I reflect on my process in the Mill, I realize that my elephant making process was a great example of what is involved with tinkering. Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013 ) define tinkering as, “a valid and valuable style of working, characterized by a playful, exploratory, iterative style of engaging with a problem or project.”  They explain further that tinkering involves trying out ideas, making adjustments and refinements and doing things over and over.  This somewhat explains what happened with the elephant.

To start, I chose the elephant that I wanted to print.  I decided to make it smaller than it’s original form because it was going to take too long.  So on the computer, I saved the elephant image to the SD card and then took out the card and put the card in the 3-D printer. Within the first few minutes of actual printing, we realized that the elephant may be too small to work.  Parts of it were wobbling a lot and therefore we hit the abort button.  I had to return to the computer and increase the size.  Then the next problem hit.  The elephant wasn’t stable enough on it’s back.  This caused me to hit the abort key a second time and troubleshoot.  The third attempt to 3-D print  involved changing the position of the elephant (in the computer) to lay on it’s side.  I also added scaffolding and more interior support (moving from 30% to 45%).  When I began printing this time, it seemed much sturdier and I watched as it passed over the form repeatedly.  Success after much adaptation and some failure.

Through making my 3-D elephant, I learned that I can do just about anything, even things that seem way out of my experience. I learned that it is easier to take on a completely new endeavor with the support of someone who knows his or her way around technology better than I do.  Natalie was a great resource and support system when things got hard.  I learned that 3-D printing can be a great example of tinkering, as I had to revise, restart and adapt my elephant over the course of two days. Finally, I learned how to use the 3-D printer! This project’s design meets many of  Resnicks’ and Rosenbaum’s core principles for guiding design.  3-D printing gave immediate feedback, I could see the results and the process, it was easy to get started, and easy to connect and there are multiple possibilities for explorations. 

Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) contend that “the maker movement builds upon a broader cultural shift toward a do-it-yourself approach to life, where people take pride and pleasure in creating things personally rather than only consuming mass-produced goods.” (pg. 163) I am looking forward to continuing on this path to producing more than I consume.  In addition, I hope to continue to rethink the possibilities for making and tinkering within formal education settings.  It is a great way to push back on standardization.

Resnick, M., & Rosenbaum, E. (2013).Designing for Tinkerability

Petrich, M., Wilkinson K., & Bevan, B. (2013). It looks like fun, but are they learning? In  M. Honey & D. Kanter (Eds.), Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators. New York and Abingdon, Oxon., Eng.: Routledge.

DIY Project

 Friday, February 16^th marked the beginning of Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dog.  Because both of my children were born in China, the Lunar New Year is a holiday that we celebrate.  Typically, transitioning into the New Year, we do traditional activities like spring cleaning, buying new outfits, getting haircuts, and hosting a big feast.  When it comes to Chinese food, we have always been consumers not producers.  Last year, for the feast, we went out to a local Chinese restaurant, and over the previous years we purchased Chinese food from restaurants then served it at home.  One of the most important traditional foods served during the New Year feasts are dumplings. This year with the “instructables maker challenge” looming, I decided to move away from my previously consumeristic tendencies, and to take up the what Peppler and Bender (2013) describe as the orientation to “produce rather than consume” (pg. 24) …and I set out to make 200 of our own dumplings from scratch to serve at our feast! 

According to Peppler & Bender (2013) “maker activities organically invite cross-generational and cross-cultural participation.” (pg. 27) This was true for our dumpling making endeavor, as it became a family and friend affair.  The idea of making a day of it and gathering friends and family is how dumpling making is done in China as well.  Typically friends and family will gather to work together to make dumplings and this togetherness is part of the process. 

            According to a Travel China guide (travelchinaguide.com):  The most important food during Chinese New Year is the dumpling (jiaozi). Made with flour and stuffed with different fillings, dumplings are usually eaten on the Eve. Because their shape resembles the Yuanbao (a kind of money used in ancient times), dumplings are eaten to bring wealth in the coming year. People, typically in northern China, have a custom to stay up on the eve of Lunar New Year to wrap jiaozi before midnight and eat them on the first hour of the Lunar New Year. This is also because ‘jiaozi’ sounds like a word meaning ‘bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new.’

            To begin our DIY adventure, we first checked to see what types of dumpling tutorials were offered on Instructables.com.   We settled on a tutorial that seemed to offer clear directions along with some videos.  I knew that in Chinese cooking typically there aren’t measurements and times for cooking, it is more intuitive and so we found a recipe that was a mix of intuition with some measurement guides.

     With the “recipe” in hand we began shopping at the new International Market located by Kroger.  We found most of the ingredients there except for the ground pork.  After a quick trip to Kroger to pick up the pork, we headed home to begin! 

     We washed then laid out the Chinese chives and realized that we didn’t know how to cut them, so we found a Chinese chive cutting tutorial on YouTube and watched that before we made the first cut.  

We cut them up and then it was time to add the pork to a large bowl, the directions said to add water to the pork until it was soft, so we added little bits of water and stirred until it seemed like the right consistency.  Our tutorial said that it was important to only stir the pork in one direction. Next we cooked four scrambled eggs, chopped green onion, grated ginger, and measured rice wine and soy sauce.

All was added to the pork and then we stirred and stirred until my daughter had the great idea to put the pork mixture in my Kitchenaide!

      Part two was the true test of our DIY gumption… We had to wrap each and every tiny scoop of the meat mixture into a delicate dumpling wrapper and meticulously fold them.  We didn’t know how to do this and again turned to another YouTube video to find a dumpling-wrapping tutorial.  We found a great one and learned three folds, the braid, the triangle and the fan.

     This was not a task for the feint of heart.  It took most of the day.  As friends came and went we taught them the art of folding the dumplings and we got better and better at it until our dumplings looked pretty professional and we were down to making one dumpling every 45 seconds. 

     There are not set times for cooking dumplings.  They are done using the “three boils method”.  This means you add the dumplings to boiling water and wait for the water to boil again with a lid. When it comes to a boil again, you add one cup of cool water and put the lid on again and wait for the second boil. When it boils for the second time you add one more cup of cool water and bring to the third and final boil.  When it begins to boil for the third time, you remove the dumplings and serve with dumpling sauce! Delicious.

     This process wasn’t easy… it was tricky at times--the toughest part was the folding of the dumplings.  This process took some time and lots of “fails”.  Yet, my daughters and I worked through this.  We persisted because making dumplings was important to us. I found it interesting to read about the tensions around fun vs. hard addressed by Blikstein & Worsely (2016). They consider how, “Both Papert and Freire and their disciples were advocating harnessing the passion of the learner to do the hard work needed to master difficult material.” They continue by writing that, “In fact, early constructionists were not interested in pitting serious against playful, but instead finding ways to live at the intersection of the two.” (pg. 4).  This DIY project really was a blending of interest driven work with hard work and persistence for my daughters and me.  At times it WAS hard but we got through it by helping each other and with the support of online resources as our guide

     This interest driven passion for learning so present in DIY project is exactly what is missing from many classrooms today. Yet, where is the room for interest driven work under narrowing standardization? How do teachers motivate kids to get through the hard work without harnessing their passions?  I argue that in many public schools, they don’t.  Rethinking education doesn’t mean throwing out standards, it means getting to the standards in varied ways that include student choice, design, and creativity.  It is up to research and educators involved in maker spaces to show teachers and policy makers the benefits of making in education.  As Blikstein & Worsley (2016) write, “We have the opportunity to give to millions of children a new entry point into the world of knowledge and science, and give them a much richer palette of expressive media for their ideas to come true, creating much more sophisticated ‘objects to think with’. ” (pg. 11)
      An additional benefit to the DIY project was this sense of togetherness that I mentioned earlier.  Having a project drew our family together and created a memory that I am thankful for. This was a great example of how collaborative learning can be, how engaging it is to learn something new when you have a genuine interest in it, and how in this time/place in our society we can teach ourselves to do just about anything if we have an internet connection.  We just have to change our mindset from consumer to producer.