Makers in the Making

Photo: @NeONBRAND

My dad is a mechanic, and as I would describe him, the ultimate "Maker." Growing up, I rarely remember our family ever owning anything brand new. Instead, my dad would often bring home used cars, bicycles, lawn mowers, appliances, etc. and fix them up on his own. He even designed and built a contraption or two when we were into sports, including a homemade pitching machine. Why buy it, when you can make it? A familiar colloquialism we would hear from him regarding these trash-turned-treasures was, "Ain't nothing wrong with that!" He was the ultimate do-it-yourself-er, and this was a trait that he passed down to both my brother and me.

Today, my brother makes use of this trait as an IT specialist contractor, tinkering for a living. As for me, I'm more of a "digital" tinker-er. As an educator, I rarely find materials that are"just right" for whatever task I am working on, so more often than not, I create my own. Michael Tan (2019) might refer to me by saying I feel "safe with unorthodoxy" (p.81). My husband jokes with me that if given option A or option B, I will choose option C every time. He's right. And I think I might have to thank my dad--and the tinkering opportunities he created--for that.

When we were kids, my brother and I would spend time with my dad at his garage during the summers while my mom was at work. Often, we'd ride our bikes around the neighborhood, stop in to visit nearby relatives, climb the apple tree, or dare each other to touch the electric fence nearby. At some point, though, we became old enough to use some of the items lying around the garage to tinker, and my brother designed a vehicle that we nicknamed, "The Guenther Mobile." Using pieces and parts of old bicycles and scrap sheet metal from my dad's stash, he created a piece that lives on in family lore to this day. This vehicle represented the ultimate "learning-by-hacking: successive taking apart and repurposing" (Tan, 2019, p.82). The Guenther Mobile was a pedal-less tricycle, of sorts, where the operator would lie on his or her stomach, low to ground, hands outstretched to steer. A simple handbrake lever would slow the back wheels when needed. Simple? Yes. Fancy? No. Incredibly fun? You bet.

A rendering of "The Guenther Mobile"

The nature of the Guenther Mobile allowed for multiple riders, if you maneuvered just right, and we would position it at the top of nearby hill and jump on, experiencing the rush of wind and the thrill of suspense to see how far we could ride. Real-life PBL took place when we found out that the handbrake wasn't enough to slow the weight of two riders, speeding precariously down a hill toward a highway. I quickly learned to drag my feet from the back of the super-speeder with as much friction as possible to slow us enough to dump the trike in the grass on the side of the road, allowing us to live to ride another day. It was thrilling, it was invigorating, and it was all taking place with very little adult supervision.

That's the thing about the Maker Movement. According to Sylvia Martinez (2017), "One of the most interesting things that schools learn from having a maker space is how capable students really are when given the opportunity" (p.10). Instructors could take a cue from my dad and just let the kids play. Martinez and Stager (2013) refer to this idea as "Less Us, More Them" (Location 3683). Teachers may want to intervene--or worse, feel compelled to intervene in order to avoid a lawsuit. Nothing quite sucks the fun out of tinkering like being served papers.

In today's often very litigious society, it can be easy to squash the innate creativity that resides within the Maker Movement with too many rules, regulations, and waivers. However, as Martinez and Stager (2013) point out, "Be careful that safety rules don't become curriculum. Rules and safety procedures are important but they don't make children safe--careful behavior does" (Location 3842). In my example, while I don't remember my dad giving us any specific ground rules as we partook in our many Guenther Mobile adventures, his advice was always the same: "Use your head and be careful."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_WQOqKldm4

And for the most part, we did both of those things. That isn't to say that there weren't a few scraped knees or bloody elbows from time to time, but it was all part of PBL for us. If we scraped a knee because we wrecked after trying to take a turn too sharply, we didn't do that again. Instead, we trekked back up to the top of the hill and tried again, using a slightly different approach. It was real-time hypothesis testing.

It can be hard to find the balance of how to ensure safe Maker Spaces without squashing creativity, but perhaps the simple advice from Martinez and Stager (2013) is the best place to start: "Make sure your first aid kit and fire extinguisher are current and accessible" (Location 3842).

With that being said, here's a toast to the next generation of Makers in the Making: get tinkering, wear a helmet, and "remember that the most exciting times are when you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen" (Martinez, 2017, p.10).

References

The Feed SBS. (2017, May 1). Maker Movement: It’s about creating rather than consuming. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_WQOqKldm4

Martinez, S.L. & Stager, G. (2013). Invent to learn: Making, tinkering, and engineering in the classroom. https://www.amazon.com

Martinez, S. (2017). Q&A with Sylvia Martinez, co-author, “Invent to learn: Making, tinkering, and engineering in the classroom.”T H E Journal, 44(2), 10.

Tan, M. (2019). When Makerspaces Meet School: Negotiating Tensions Between Instruction and Construction. Journal of Science Education & Technology, 28(2), 75–89.