The ability for teachers and learners to contribute, learn from each other and remix is a powerful shared experience for all involved. The process provides opportunities for individual interpretation and expression of ideas. Through the introduction of the Lynx patchwork quilt project, the FabLearn Fellows were given just this opportunity and tasked with designing at least one tile or patch using the lynxcoding.club software.

Too often creative activities are delivered through meticulous step by step instruction resulting in whole class facsimiles of the same product, this not only stifles creative expression but limits the potential to explore individual ideas.

The patchwork quilt project provided little instruction but gave parameters to work within, everyone needed to create just one ‘patch’ the patches should be a uniform size and the ‘turtle’ should return to the bottom left corner of the patch. This allowed contributors to utilise each other’s code to achieve a quilt created using the designs created by the group.

The project allowed for individual expression and the end product was the result of everyone’s contribution. As the Fellows shared the code used to make their patch we were able to overcome challenges by learning from each other’s discoveries and move forward with our creations.

More often than not the computer is utilised in the classroom in an attempt to ‘program the child’ this approach is very much an opportunity for the child to program the computer. The visual feedback provides a fun and accessible way to try out codes, the ability to copy commands into ‘procedures’ was an intuitive way to build complex patterns.

When using the software I sometimes found that the code I had created generated unpredictable results encouraging me to go back to the procedures and try and debug where the issue was. Sometimes I even found myself turning my head or body to simulate the movement of the turtle.

The variety of interpretations of the brief was enriched by the Fellows introducing cultural elements to their designs, traditional tile designs and patchwork quilt production methods introduced us to cultural elements and provided insight into each other’s heritage.

This ‘modular’ approach to projects provides the opportunity for everyone to contribute to a bigger idea or finished product, all can be involved creating a rich environment for collaboration and the cross contamination of ideas. To hear that Lars’ students in Denmark had utilised some of my initial code was a great feeling and demonstrates the community aspect of this approach.

Although the contribution of ideas to create a collaborative piece of work is a technique I have employed to creative activities in the past the use of Lynx provides a new context to the approach, the ability to utilise, combine and modify each others code creates a scenario that emulates a developers use of repositories such as Github.

https://lynxcoding.club/

‘Currently, it is important that teachers and students understand that they can contribute to the effective use of technological innovations in different formats and on different occasions, as well as new ways of using them in activities and projects in the classroom.’ Debora Garofalo – Teaching Collaborative Programming – a Creativity Adventure Using Lynx

With the constant shift that we are experiencing in technology it is extremely difficult to keep up with all of the developments. Snippets here and there can attempt to address these changes however this approach is time consuming and can often seem futile in the face of the ever changing technological landscape.

‘Many people do share this sense of urgency for school improvement… yet, somehow they keep pushing in the wrong direction. Why?’ Lior Schenk –  Fablearn Fellows Webinar

One approach of schools is to seek external support in the form of resources or specialist teachers to fill ‘the gap’ this approach only serves to broaden the divide and deskill staff. The core subjects and the changes in the national curriculum are of primary concern and as a result non-core subjects such as music and computing are considered less important.

Gary Stager recently reminded the FabLearn Fellows of a quote from Papert:

‘The phrase ‘technology and education’ usually means inventing gadgets to teach the same old stuff in a thinly disguised version of the same old way’ Seymour Papert 1971

My son was recently sent home from school as someone in the class Covid ‘bubble’ had a positive covid test. Having to self isolate for ten days, my wife and I embarked on the juggling act that is ‘home learning’ with a six year old. The double edged sword of trying to spend meaningful ‘learning’ moments with our child whilst attempting to meet the demands of our full time jobs is disappointing at best, for all involved.

Like many families, my wife and I work full time from home and have done so since the beginning of the UK lockdown. Through the access to Google classroom, the days continued with a drip feed of .pdf documents to his inbox. The fatigue of endless worksheets not only filled him with dread but the addition of ‘payed for content’ added an extra blow to proceedings. Listening to badly recorded voice overs and slick slide animations for a day is enough to make the keenest enthusiast’s toes curl, let alone ten days.

The disconnect between access to technology and the ideology of the media ensures that our generation has been marginalised. The irony of the situation is that we have in our pocket right now the ability to collaborate and learn. Instead most people choose to observe other people and compare themselves to them.

Gary Stager also reminded us to ‘Reject the notion that some people don’t want to learn, if you’re awake you’re learning, they just might not be learning what you want to teach them.’This idea reminds us of our responsibility as educators to make our teachings relevant. It can be difficult to face the reality of technologies that are constantly fighting for our attention. This is a problem not just for our learners but for educators too. How do we embrace new discoveries and compete against highly funded manipulative forms of media, could I be looking at this in the wrong way?

The continuous development of staff in the mainstream education system is centred around core subjects that have little correlation with each other, each stands alone in a silo, a discipline independent of one another. Meanwhile the ‘glue’ or common factor is slowly erased from existence. Creative subjects are regarded as a sideline, a hobby, something that won’t amount to anything or result in any real gains. This opinion is perpetuated by the reduction of funding for education and the oversimplification of ‘entertainment’ through reality TV and media.

‘One might even consider the popularity of reality television as a manifestation of our desire to make things and have authentic learning experiences with experts’ Sylvia Libow Martinez, Gary Stager Ph.D – Invent to Learn

The event of reality television has given rise to the idea that we can all become celebrities, the idea of becoming ‘rich’ is observable and enticing. Why listen to teachers when ‘you’re gonna be a millionaire’, let’s not think about the now, let’s be in the ‘when’. In the meantime the diet is supplemented by endless scrolling; entertain me, let me watch, I will judge and move on. I’m going to be something. Has this form of oppressive media replaced our desire to learn and in turn halted our path to liberation?

Reality television can suggest to us that we should behave in a certain way, laugh at the same things and look the same way, we perceive the world through a production’s lens. Any deviation from the ideology presents an opportunity for ridicule, this teaches us that to exist we should ‘conform’ to the norm. Money, access to money, perceived wealth, coercion and manipulation play a huge part in today’s society; this is something the modern education system is not currently equipped to navigate. At the same time small time ‘education resource’ companies compete with big media; Instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook that all churn out terabytes of manipulative content a minute, fresh for human consumption.

‘Does a focus on entrepreneurship serve to create things of value for a common good? Or does it rather serve to feed a pipeline of workers for elite corporations?’ Lior Schenk – Fablearn Fellows Webinar

Education’s interest in entrepreneurship is perhaps an attempt to keep up with corporate globalisation. This is the currency that we are told we should aspire to. This message is enforced by tech firms that dictate how we should use our technology. The ‘sealed unit’ electronic devices with huge computing power that we carry around with us bear little resemblance to the ‘mud pie’ that Papert dreamt of.

‘I am talking of a world in which children have free access to a computer. They decide where to go with it and what to do with it’ Papert – Intelligent Schoolhouse – Readings on Computers & Learning

Gary Stager’s statement ‘if you’re awake you’re learning, they just might not be learning what you want to teach them’ rings true, maybe a solution is to acknowledge how social media affects communities. We must find a way to use the technology that is widely available to perpetuate learning instead of allowing it to program us and our children and as Papert did ‘try to deviate this force a little’.

A particularly interesting aspect of being part of the Fablearn Fellows group is to have first-hand experiences of activities that we could offer to our children.

Last month’s project was to make a collaborative quilt, in which each component has to make one or more frames. The design of each frame has to be written with Lynx. Lynx is a cloud-based programming environment derived from Logo. I had never used this platform before and I did not know the syntax. The programming space at first approach was quite spartan but over time I was able to discover its potential and I really appreciated it.

When I start learning new software or a new language I always prefer to use a part of code already made from which to start and that I can modify. This allows me to understand the syntax rules and to find out which part of the code does what by analyzing different outputs depending on the changes I make.

For this reason, when I introduce a new project in the classroom, I always try to propose to kids some already built inspirations whether it is software, such as scratch projects that can be modified or used only as inspiration, or construction projects. I noticed that initially, the guys rely a lot on the suggested products but once they become familiar they tend to discard the prototype and build something completely different and that more reflects their tastes and abilities.

This approach was also useful on this occasion, I started from a piece of code created by another fellow to modify it gradually and try to create my frame.

The next step was to join the different frames and create a quilt. I particularly like this aspect because even if at a distance, distributed all over the world, we were able to create something together, I felt part of a community-led by a project that unites us. It is a very topical issue, that of remote collaboration, which teachers have heard particularly in the last year and a half. I believe that projects of this type can involve and make students collaborate even if they are not physically close.

In developing the activity, cooperation between peers was also born spontaneously, several times someone shared their code in which they asked for support to find an error that they could not identify and the group supported them avoiding the frustration of failing. I analyzed a peer’s code, and that has made me acquire a greater knowledge of the tool and led me to reflect on how different people have built codes with different characteristics.

The works of others have inspired further ideas for other frames and I believe that this “contamination” is very positive because even if someone initially does not feel able to design or build their own project, thanks to the projects of their companions they can find their own dimension. Often, when we work face to face, I find it very useful to let mates pass between the tables to find opportunities or to help those in difficulty.

The final step is to show your work to the group, which is fundamental for two reasons: Firstly, sharing generates greater self-confidence and leads to reflect and find inspiration from the work of others, secondly, to tell what happened and how, activate the metacognitive functions that lead to a greater awareness of self, of logical and creative processes that are triggered. Mitch Resnick inserts sharing as one of the phases of the creative learning spiral followed just after by the reflection phase.

Just like my students I had an initial phase of disorientation in which I did not know the platform and still had no ideas on what to do. There was a period of latency, of searching for inspiration, and then I started to build something.  The comparison drawn from the works of the other fellows was fundamental to be able to finish my project.

My project

References

RESNICK, M. Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play. The MIT Press, 2017.

I have reflected a lot on what the PhD, educator, author and speaker Gary Stager told us in his webinar.

Professor Stager, the founder of Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute for educators  has helped students of all ages in six continents not only to embrace learning by making, but also the power of computers as intellectual labs and vehicles for self-expression. In addition to that, his work has also helped leading professional development in the world’s first laptop schools and teaching students from preschool to doctoral programs. Professor Stager is currently the curator of the website “The Daily Papert” which helps educators to understand the huge influence his colleague, Seymour Papert had in the field of education.

His relationship as well as his synergy with Professor Papert’s ideas, mainly the ones about constructionism, make me reflect on the importance of the scrap robotics work which has demystified the teaching of programming and robotics here in Brazil. In doing so, we have dealt with many paradigm breaks which concern the process of experimentation and student experiences in an environment that is challenging and capable of conceiving playfulness as a gateway to the maker movement and the teaching of programming and robotics.

The robotics work with scrap was conceived in 2015 at *EMEF Almirante Ary Parreiras and it happened because of the need to regard school through technology teaching and with the premise of working with the maker culture as a gateway to teaching  programming and robotics. *(EMEF Escola Municipal de Ensino Fundamental – Municipal elementary school)

When starting the diagnostic assessment during the Technology and Innovation classes with students from the 1st to 9th grade (more than 1000 students), 70% of them reported that garbage was a problem in the community because on rainy days it prevented them from going to school, due to flooding, and also that the dirty water brought diseases such as dengue and leptospirosis.

So, initially we proposed to have outdoor classes in order to understand the issue related to the garbage in the community and, during the walk in the community, to collect recyclable materials to develop the robotics work with scrap.

At first, I heard from the students “that robotics was not something for public school students”, because they did not think they could work with that. The situation was solved with a lot of talking and dialogue and through the opportunity given to them to become the protagonists of their own learning.

To overcome the challenges it was necessary to allow myself to learn from the process and to exercise active listening with the students, building and showing them the steps of this project that consisted of public classes and community awareness about garbage and proper disposal and in the path through the community, collection of recyclable and electronic materials, weighing and separation of materials; sale of recyclable materials not used in the work; exercise of creativity and critical thinking with the construction of prototypes and, finally, a technology fair, a second moment with the community and the opportunity for students to be protagonists by reporting their constructions and learning. Lessons related to the learning from Papert and Professor Stager!

All the project’s steps were built with the students, who had total freedom to create and build their prototypes from non-recyclable materials and over three years they have improved and found solutions for the community referring to the constructionist model, positively interfering on the students’ level of learning, leading them to present more complex levels of cognitive development in the search to solve real problems in the educational territory, with the teacher in the role of creative facilitator by providing an environment capable of providing connections individual and collective, and it is necessary to revolutionize education by transforming them into great potential for meaningful experiences and learning.

Is the ideal school possible? What is the role of technology to this purpose? And how can teachers promote a meaningful learning atmosphere? This text shares an experience in a high school in Brazil from the perspective of reading and reflecting on the article by professor Paulo Blikstein, Travels in Troy with Freire: Technology as an Agent of Emancipation.

The ideas of Paulo Freire and Seymour Papert are the fuel for this discussion, and the Maker Movement, through new technologies, is the engine that can lead us to a school where teaching and learning processes become significant.

Ideally, the implementation of maker education in schools would be well planned, with very clear objectives, and that is what we need to reflect on. Here, the Cheshire Cat ^[1] offers an emblematic saying: “If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there”.

Although we find different social and educational realities in the world, Paulo Freire’s pedagogy has the power to address all learning contexts. Among his contributions, the Generatives Themes are well known. That is a pedagogical methodology that aims at making students perceive themselves as agents of change. Generatives Themes can be a good start to implement actions that result in meaningful learning.

Providing students with an atmosphere of belonging, sharing, innovation and meaning are principles shared by Lev Vygostsky and Seymour Papert. When students collaboratively develop a project with a common goal, exchanging experiences, debating on best practices, agreeing on some points and disagreeing on others, their collective and significant construction generates active learning spaces and stimulates the quest for new knowledge. In this sense, new technologies are important tools for an emancipatory education.

“Another means is for individuals to design devices, systems, or solutions, using knowledge from science and technology, and then use language to improve these devices through critical interaction with fellow designers.” (BLIKSTEIN, 2016)

At Polo Educacional Sesc (Picture 1), a boarding high school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a project was developed at their Maker Space aiming at encouraging the use of available technological tools to develop and carry out activities in alignment with the school curriculum. The project proposed the following reflection to students: how can Digital Fabrication resources, made available at our school space, provide the development of low-cost learning objects for science teaching?

Picture 1 – Polo Educacional Sesc is a private boarding high school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, offering free-of-charge, top-level transformative global education to low-income students from all over Brazil. Unfortunately, before going through this life-changing educational program, many of these students were in schools that lacked educational and technological resources, laboratories and often, teachers.

It didn’t take long for the students to detect a problem: many resources for experimental science teaching are very expensive, which makes them quite inaccessible to many schools. So, they thought they would need to understand how the prototyping supplies from the Maker Space at the school could contribute towards the cause.

As they researched, an experiment similar to a Linear Air Track was identified by the students as a potential project to be developed. (A Linear Air Rail is a perforated rail connected to an air blower. This device can be used to experimentally study important concepts in kinematics, such as speed and acceleration. It is an aid to the teaching of physics and mathematics). In Brazil, this experiment costs around US$ 1000, which makes it impossible for many institutions to afford.

With these thoughts in mind, the youngsters involved in the project decided to develop a Track with Sensors that would measure the speed of a Mousetrap Car, thus generating performance tables and graphs. They developed this track so that other students from their own institution or from other educational spaces with few resources would be able to create these cars as an object of learning. The only source of energy for the prototypes is a mousetrap, and the cars can have different designs (Pictures 2). Thus, by placing their model on the track and activating the trap, students can measure the performance of their creation.

Pictures 2 – Mousetrap Car Modeling Workshop

Although the Track with Sensors is different from the Air Track, mainly because it has friction between the car and the track, the students still needed to use concepts of maths, physics, basic electronics and C ++ programming skills to develop the project.

With an Arduino Mega, 9 LED arrays, 8 ultrasonic sensors, a 16X2 LCD screen, wires, MDF wood, creativity and the help of a Laser cutter, students produced a solution for less than $ 100 (Video 1).

Video 1 – Track with sensors for Mousetrap Cars

Reinventing an existing technological experiment to reduce its cost dramatically was the path taken by the group of students who participated in the project. They knew that many schools, like the ones they came from and studied in previous years did not carry out  experiments with their students due to a sheer lack of resources. Empathy was an important mobilizing agent of transformation.

“Freire’s focus on humanism and Papert’s emphasis on the creation of personally meaningful artifacts are highly complementary” (BLIKSTEIN, 2016)

As Blikstein (2016) points out, an authentic Generative Theme has the power to provide engagement and “true emancipatory knowledge must make people feel like agents of action and change in the world”.

The Track with Sensors project showed that, when students had the opportunity to engage in an action that could promote change, they identified a problem (which was part of the academic life of some of them) and then, developed a solution for it (Pictures 3).

Pictures 3 – Track with Sensors

This is what is expected of education: that it may provide changes in the student’s life but also that this student, when in a privileged situation, can commit to promoting changes in other spaces that have fewer resources and possibilities. Education has that power. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are the mechanisms and students are the agents.

Maker Education, mediated by technologies, happily enables this type of interdisciplinary reflection.

The illustration of technology as a Trojan horse in the school reality is spectacular. In fact, it does have the Trojan horse power, as it allows students to marvel at the awareness that they are also an agent of change in society.

“Students appropriate the Trojan technology as authentic means to liberate themselves from the incarceration of traditional pedagogy. Once deschooled, students shake off the dust and engage in authentic inquiry and construction.” (BLIKSTEIN, 2016)

*****

Special Acknowledgment: I would like to thank Paulo Ceotto, specialist at Sesc’s International Advisory Office for his invaluable contribution in the translation and adaptation of this article. He can be reached at pceotto@sesc.com.br.

^[1] From Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Papert’s fascination with gears relates to his childhood learning development due to his interpretation of mathematics in the gears’ inherent mechanical properties needed for them to function correctly. Nevertheless, that fascination existed because gears also had a direct relationship with understanding how automobiles operate, which was a topic of immense interest for Papert when he was young. This assimilation with the model of gears is what engaged him with mathematics and made him feel comfortable with equations.

Being currently involved in various education initiatives in Puerto Rico, I can identify that I did not have that assimilation with specific models to relate to the understanding of my immediate context or my learning experience when I was a child. Probably, I also made that disassociation between my topics of interest and what I was thought to be practical at the moment of finding those models, perhaps not surprisingly, due to how I was exposed to mathematics and sciences in my early childhood.

It was later on, when I was studying architecture as an undergraduate student (when I started to discover my preferred design methodologies), that I started viewing the buildings and the products that I was designing as systems, structures composed of complex parts. I discovered my fascination with technology and its applications as tools to solve problems. I was ultimately inclined to explore design through science, mathematics, and emerging technologies, therefore having to understand and learn topics like programming, parametric design, and digital fabrication. Those tools required me to be proficient in certain skills that I was not interested in learning before, for other reasons that weren’t focused on passing an exam. Nevertheless, I was always attracted to the science and mathematics disciplines (in their pure/ traditional forms), just not in a playful way of engaging my interests in general. Interestingly, my inclinations towards creative fields were always imparted to me as something unrelated to mathematics. It was when I was exposed to having to solve real design problems in my adulthood that I had to revisit and ‘relearn to make’.

While the constructionist theory focuses on the importance of tools, it also stresses the idea of context. The immediate context of the person learning is vital to assimilate cognitive skills and apply actual action to acquiring or developing knowledge. Understanding this as an educator is essential at a personal level due to my experience in organizing skills and knowledge to solve problems. Curiosity on trying to find out how things operate is something I can observe in students when working on projects in our workshops and classes. The immediate context of some of the students and participants I engage within Puerto Rico is an economic crisis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and a current pandemic. Perhaps a significant challenge (and opportunity) I have been dealing with in recent years is to provide the processes and spaces for individuals to find their “gears” in this context. Learning also becomes an experience of self-reliance, and being a maker becomes an advantageous skill for problem-solving.

After I finished to reading “The Gears of My Childhood” by Seymour Papert, it made me think of what I learned from this article during my masters degree. In Thailand, this article  is widely discussed especially among constructionists in Thailand.

From what Seymour had learned from gears, I had found liberation of thinking and learning. Observation of one’s interest becomes tacit knowledge of that person. New knowledge gets inside your mind and connects with one’s existing knowledge. This type of learning is such an individual process that one is the person who experience it and construct one’s own knowledge. Moreover, I’m impressed with the power of computer and I agreed that computer can help us see simulation and feedback very quickly. It speeds up the process of corrections.  

However, in some cultures, especially in Thai conventional schools,  the schools often make students insecure to explore and express what they think. This is a mindset that everything has only one correct answer. This instills the mindset in our students that being correct is good and mistakes are bad. If someone makes mistakes, the teacher will cross out the wrong answers with a red pen or will give a zero score.  This makes students can’t learn from mistakes because they do not want to make any mistakes even on computer and eventually they become person who lack of confidence to try things on their own. 

From my constructionism teaching experience, I’ve found each student connect, understand, and create their knowledge in different paths and also at different levels. It depends on their background experience, observation skills, and how well they can connect the new knowledge to old knowledge.

For me, the essential parts of learning are not only arranging hands-on learning experience for students, but also providing opportunity for students to make decisions on their own, to try things, and learn from mistakes. To me, those are the first step for students to gain confidence and feel comfortable enough to try things and  construct their own knowledge.