Sylvia Libow Martinez - Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom

Table of Contents

Invent To Learn:

Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom

Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager, Ph.D.

Constructing Modern Knowledge Press

Copyright 2013 by Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary S. Stager

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical without permission in writing from the publisher. All trademarks, servicemarks, registered trademarks, and registered servicemarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective owners.

Constructing Modern Knowledge Press

Torrance, CA 90503

www.InventToLearn.com

EDU039000 EDUCATION / Computers & Technology

EDU034000 EDUCATION / Educational Policy & Reform

ISBN: 978-0-9891511-1-5

E-book version 1 (May 2013) This book is available in print at Amazon or InventToLearn.com for volume purchasing.

Copy editor: Carla Sinclair

Illustrator and cover design: Yvonne Martinez

Reviews

Learning is often confused with education. Martinez and Stager clearly describe learning learning through engagement, design and building. The best way to understand circles is to reinvent the wheel.

Nicholas Negroponte, Founder MIT Media Lab and One Laptop per Child

Rarely does an education book come along that provides a cogent philosophical basis and an understanding of learning, thinking and teaching, as well as providing practical guidance for setting up effective digital-age learning and making environments. Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stagers Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom provides both the background and a path for educators to create engaging learning opportunities to help students not only develop skills and strategies that will prepare them for a complex world, but empower them to use their creativity to solve problems, ask questions, and continually learn. This book articulates what we know in our hearts is best for our students to allow them to play, experiment and invent as they learn. I encourage you to immerse yourself in this book, share it with your colleagues, and together start experimenting with creating maker learning environments and watch the magic happen!

Holly Jobe, President, International Society for Technology in Education

Educators will be hard pressed to find a more essential, important book for making sense of not just the exciting, game-changing maker technologies that are currently exploding around us, but of the absolutely powerful learning opportunities they present for our students as well. Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager are a teachers perfect guides into this fast growing, innovative world of creative problem solving and construction using an array of new, innovative computing devices, many of which fit in our pockets. Even more, Invent to Learn creates a required new context for modern learning, and it offers an accessible roadmap for re-imagining schools, classrooms, and personal practice. Its a must read for those wanting to remain relevant in their students learning lives.

Will Richardson, Author of Why School? How Education Must Change
When Learning and Information Are Everywhere

Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager have been passionate advocates for the need for children to learn by doing, making and building for over twenty-five years. With the explosion of the Maker Movement, there is finally a movement built around their ideas. Invent to Learn is a must-read for any teacher, parent or student who wants to define their learning as more than just answers on a test. The ideas and resources in this book will inspire anyone to start making powerful artifacts of their learning.

Chris Lehmann, Principal, Science Leadership Academy

Introduction

Playrooms and games, animals and plants, wood and nails must take their place side-by-side with books and words. Angelo Patri

The words written nearly a century ago by the great American educator, Angelo Patri, could not be truer today. (Patri, 1917) For generations, children enjoyed classrooms rich in the objects of childhood as well as opportunities to use such materials in formal and informal ways. Play and experimentation were prized as the work of childhood.

Until recently, teachers studied how to create interdisciplinary projects in which the playful inclinations of children were leveraged in the construction of meaning. Elementary classrooms had centers where children could explore with deliberate materials and get lost in the flow of learning something in depth. Primary teachers were polymaths who not only taught the 3 Rs, but also brought the academic subjects to life through the arts.

Through the mid-1980s, learning to play the piano, make puppets out of Pop-Tarts boxes, create handmade math manipulatives, and teach physical education were requirements of those qualifying to become elementary school teachers. The Piagetian idea that to understand is to invent (Piaget, 1976) shaped how teachers taught and how children learned.

The past few decades have been a dark time in many schools. Emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing, teaching to the test, de-professionalizing teachers, and depending on data rather than teacher expertise has created classrooms that are increasingly devoid of play, rich materials, and the time to do projects.

Fortunately, theres a technological and creative revolution underway that may change everything.

No one would argue that computers have changed every aspect of life over the past few decades. As computers become smaller, more powerful, and cheaper at the same time, they become embedded into objects and tools, changing the way that people interact with tools. For the first time, smart tools allow people to design their own objects and quickly fabricate them in the real world.

Online communities serve as the hub of a digital learning commons, allowing people to share not just ideas, but the actual programs and designs that they have made. This ease of sharing lowers the barriers to entry as newcomers can easily use someone elses code and design as building blocks for their own creations.

Amazing new tools, materials, and skills turn us all into makers. Using technology to make, repair, or customize the things we need brings engineering, design, and computer science to the masses. Hundreds of thousands of adults and children alike are frequenting Maker Faires, hackerspaces, and DIY (Do-It-Yourself) websites. A growing library of print literature in magazine and book form, and even reality television, inspire learners of all experiences to seize control of their world. Fortunately for educators, this maker movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. The active learner is at the center of the learning process, amplifying the best traditions of progressive education. This book helps educators bring the exciting opportunities of the maker movement to every classroom.

Dale Dougherty, the founder of Make magazine, says:

Childrens seminal learning experiences come through direct experience with materials. Digital fabrication devices such as 3D printers and physical computing, including Arduino, MaKey MaKey, and Raspberry Pi, expand a childs toy chest and toolbox with new ways to make things and new things to make. For the first time ever, childhood inventions may be printed, programmed, or imbued with interactivity. Recycled materials can be brought back to life.