(2012-06-04) Dougherty Learning By Making

Dale Dougherty on Learning by Making (Maker). *At an educational workshop where I made my case for making, there were a number of rather skeptical educational bureaucrats who kept asking how we assess or measure something that’s experiential. How do we measure engagement? I was rather frustrated, to be honest. How do we know children are learning if we can’t test it? I put it back to them: “How do we know what we’re testing is real learning?” I continued to think about the questions for several months. Then one day I had it in a sentence. “Making creates evidence of learning.”

As I walked around the middle school with the principal, we were looking at rooms that could be used to create a Maker Space (Hacker Space) for students. We walked into an empty room that once was the metal shop (Shop Class). It was perfect. I could imagine it having tools and materials and workbenches. I could imagine groups of curious kids being active, social, and mobile. She said her students would be very happy. “They never get asked to create anything,” she told me.*