February 1, 2024 • 32 mins
Matt Zigler is the author of a new book for educators titled "3 Modes of Making." He talks about imitation, modification and innovation as three different modes of student projects, which can develop different maker skills. Matt is an artist and educator who has been running the makerspace at Bullis, an independent school in the DC area. He brings a background in art and creative practice to the makerspace and his school. it's not that every student is going to be an artist but every student should develop a creative practice, regardless of subject or area of interest.
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Dale (00:11):
Welcome to MakeCast, I'm Dale Dougherty.
I am here with Matt Zigler.
Matt is an artist and educatorwho's written a new book for us
called Three Modes of Making andwe'll be talking about that book
today and his experiences as anartist and educator and how he's
brought that to a makerspace ata school.
He's talking about things in anew way, maybe for some of you.
(00:34):
I wrote a piece on makered.orglast week and talking about how
some maker programs start as aclub, some as a class.
There's kind of a third categoryfor a makerspace is a hub where
a lot of things happen both inand out of that hub, but you're
not just working with students,you're also trying to train
(00:56):
other educators in this model.
What Matt's book, I think, has afocus on the process.
of making, and how do you leadthat as an educator or as any
adult working with kids on this.
Rather than teaching someone, Iuse a coach model quite a bit in
my thinking how do you coachkids to make?
(01:18):
How do you help them?
What are you trying toaccomplish there?
The second thing that Matt Ithink covers really well is that
some teachers are very scaredabout is when you give students
the opportunity to do projects.
How do you manage that?
How do you think about it?
What kinds of projects are theygoing to do?
When I heard Matt give thispresentation at the Make:
(01:39):
Education Forum, I thought he'dreally nailed something that
nobody had really talked aboutbefore.
For some projects, the goal isto imitate something that exists
or perhaps follow instructionsthat someone else shared with
you.
Second was imitation to modifysomething.
And the third he callsinnovation, which is really to
do something new, original andideally something that has value
(02:01):
to other people.
Matt, welcome to Make:cast.
It's good to see you.
Tell us a bit about yourbackground and where you are
today.
Matt (02:09):
So my background is I've been a teacher really since I
got out of college.
I've been, I was an art teacherfor most of my career.
It's coming up on half of mycareer.
I guess that, that will shiftand then eventually.
Did a little bit ofadministration and then all got
into makerspaces in a smallindependent school in North
(02:30):
Carolina was my first experienceand then got hired to run the
Bullis School BitLab, whichBullis is an independent school
outside of DC.
They were building a$23 millionSTEM building and the biggest
chunk of that was a makerspaceand a Fab Lab.
They created a position to justcoordinate that space.
(02:53):
And I was lucky enough to gethired to do that.
So that's what I've been doingfor the last seven years.
And it's really been a greatopportunity to try to look at
creativity and how to help kidslearn how to be creative and
what creativity is.
From a thing that's pretty new.
And, with art.
(03:13):
I love art and I enjoy doing myown art, but you're hemmed in
art education with a lot ofhistory, a lot of best
practices, a lot of this is howyou teach art, sort of stuff
that's out there.
In the makerspace, it's veryfree.
There's not a whole lot of thatout there at the moment.
And it gives you a lot ofopportunity to work with kids
and a wide array of differenttypes of projects and see
(03:36):
creativity in all of itsdifferent ways.
And that's really been the mostexciting part for me.
Dale (03:41):
Teaching creativity is a kind of problematical phrase, in
a way.
Matt (03:44):
Definitely.
Dale (03:45):
And it's really something you're trying to bring out or
help kids discover and give themopportunities to touch that.
And I think an art teacher hassuch an interesting background
for this.
Some people balk at doing art ina class, right?
And others love it, right?
And you have those two poles,you're trying to get them to
(04:05):
engage in the experience and notthe outcome and not to judge
that label artist or things likethat.
Even just like musician, theseare things that maybe you grow
into that, but you don't startoff calling yourself an artist
or musician, you just startdoing it.
Matt (04:22):
Yeah, there's a famous quote from Picasso that every
child is an artist and the trickis just how to remain one as you
get older.
Replace the word creativity withartist in that and I think it's
even more true.
You don't have to spend muchtime around young kids with
whatever they've got around, acardboard box or some crayons.
They'll just start building ormaking and that's an impulse
(04:45):
that I think we all have andthings get in the way,
particularly when you get intohigh school, I think that really
8th grade, 9th grade, thingsbecome very regimented in
education and trained out of usto be creative in a wide range
of fields.
People tend to assume that'swhat art and music are there
(05:06):
for.
It's so that there is some roomfor creativity in the schools,
and it doesn't belong anywhereelse.
And I really disagree with that.
In my work in the makerspace, asyou mentioned, as a hub, I have
students and teachers comingfrom every content area with
creative ideas of projects thatthey want to do.
It's hard to imagine a fieldthat doesn't involve some
(05:30):
opportunity to be creative andthe people who are able to find
the creativity in their jobs,enjoy those jobs more and often
have greater opportunitieswithin those organizations
because they are seen as peoplewho can come up with ideas and
pursue them.
Being able to really talk aboutcreativity and creative process
for students and have them seethe value and practicing that in
(05:55):
high school so that they couldapply it to whatever their area
of interest is in life.
That way you don't have to feellike, oh, I'm supposed to be an
artist when I come out of thisclass.
That's not the goal
Dale (06:07):
I really like the word practice; it's something you do
in sports, but music and otherthings, but more importantly,
rather than being told topractice, it's discovering your
own practice and how you dothings, how you think, and
that's the essential part ofcreativity.
It's like how you approach aproblem or how you even think
about yourself.
(06:29):
And I really appreciate thatoften art education tries to
make a real connection to theperson, the student, in a way
that sometimes I think sciencedoesn't.
Science is a subject; it hasinformation; it has facts; it
has theorems.
We'll test you on that, right?
Rather than, science is a way ofthinking.
(06:50):
Science is a way of looking atthe world and interacting with
that world.
I've always felt like artteachers could help science
teachers become better by movingthem off of that subject and
more towards the experience ofthe thing.
How do we know these things,right?
Matt (07:06):
It's funny that you bring up science.
Both my brother and my father,both PhD biologists.
I remember way back when I wasstarting to think about this
book and some of this stuff thatwent into it, I asked them, can
you remember an experience thatyou had in high school that
inspired you to want to becomescientists and neither of them
(07:30):
had anything from school?
Their interest in becomingscientists came from things
outside of school.
My dad grew up on a farm and hebecame interested in animals and
zoology and there was noexperience that he had in school
that said science is reallyinteresting.
You might want to pursue this.
It was like a thing he had to doand the real inspiration came
(07:51):
from outside influences, whichis sad.
I feel like it doesn't have tobe that way.
Dale (07:55):
No, it doesn't, but I will say that they can usually trace
it to some set of experiencesthey had, whether they're in
school.
It usually wasn't, I had a greattextbook in the seventh grade.
But sometimes it can be aninspiring teacher.
Matt (08:08):
Absolutely.
Dale (08:09):
That opens the door.
I've talked to makers,scientists, it was something
they were exploring on theirown.
They were curious and they foundan area that.
They just couldn't stop thinkingabout it and that led them, back
into school or into education inways that they might not have
been there.
Matt (08:25):
Yeah.
How do we improve the odds thatthey will have that experience
or an experience in school thatthey can think about when
they're in college deciding whatit is that they want to do.
I think that projects really arethat thing because like you said
rather than give the genericscience curriculum, if you allow
them to pick a topic that theywant to do scientific
(08:46):
experimentation on, now they'reapplying these scientific
skills, the methods, theexperimentation, collecting data
on something that is actuallyinteresting to them.
Ideally, that's real life.
Dale (08:58):
Yeah, as I say, you make it personal.
And and it's something thatunlocks their motivation, which
I think is the key thing.
Suddenly it's theirs.
How did you come up with thisframework for the three modes of
making?
Matt (09:11):
I really was thinking about my own experiences as a
young artist and how I learnedthings and the different types
of activities that the bestteachers that I had gave and
what I gained from them.
You brought up the question oflike teaching creativity.
How does that even work?
It's hard to point at somebodydoing something and say, Oh,
(09:33):
they're teaching creativity.
The kids are being creative.
That doesn't mean that I'mnecessarily teaching them to be
creative.
So really what I think you'retalking about is facilitating an
environment where creativityhappens and then you talk about
what's happening.
And that's the best way that youcan do that.
And so I, there's always timeswhen you're copying other
(09:56):
artists or you're copying otherwork that you're seeing and the
goal of that.
is to try to understand whatthat artist did so that you can
decide, which parts of thatartist's style or subject matter
are things that you want toincorporate into your own work.
And then, obviously you don'twant to copy all the time.
At some point, you need to goout and look at things that are
(10:19):
out there and start to modifyand bend them to your own tastes
and add your own spin on things.
And then finally, once you feellike you have.
All those tools in your toolbox,then you can go out and start to
experiment and try new thingsthat may fail because you don't
know the outcome ahead of timeand that's what in the
(10:39):
makerspace would use that wordinnovation and so I saw that
happening so clearly in thetypes of activities that people
were doing in makerspaces andteachers that I was talking to
were trying to get at And itseemed like it is helpful to be
able to point to certain skillsthat are better, that are easier
(11:02):
to practice in those differentmodes.
If you're just saying everythingis making, and these are the
skills that we're practicingwhen we're making, it's hard to
pinpoint times when you can talkabout like, how do you set a
good goal?
Setting a goal when you aretrying to come up with something
that's brand new is verydifferent than setting a goal
when you are trying to learn aspecific technique.
(11:25):
When you're able to point outthose differences, you can more
easily pinpoint how you can talkto students about how do you set
a good goal, what is ameasurable goal, or when you are
making a blueprint and modifyingan existing piece of furniture,
or building something for aspecific part of your living
room.
(11:45):
Then that's different than ifyou have to sketch an idea for
something that you don't knowthe dimensions of, you don't
know the constraints for yet.
So by thinking about things interms of imitation, learning
specific skills, then modifyingthe world around us to make it
our own and then innovating tocome up with new ideas to solve
(12:07):
new problems.
It allows you to targetdifferent practice, practices in
creativity that students canlean on later on when they're
doing those things on their ownprojects.
Dale (12:20):
You start with that model and you really break it down as
how to build a class or a set ofexperiences around that.
Talk to me a bit about how thatlooks like from a teacher's
point of view.
I want my kids to do projects,which I think is fundamental to
any kind of maker class ormakerspace you have.
So how do you make that happen?
Matt (12:40):
Basically when in my school, we work in trimesters.
We have nine months to be with agroup of students obviously
different schools do itdifferent ways, but I tend to
think of it in terms of twothirds of that time is working
with me as the teacher directinga little bit more.
Here's maybe a menu of optionsthat you can try if you're
(13:03):
interested in learning thistool; here's a project that I
want you to do, follow thistutorial; if you're interested
in learning this tool, here's aproject, and really having them
very quickly in a week or so gothrough that imitation
experience.
I'll be honest the hardest onefor me is imitation.
My natural mode is innovation.
(13:23):
I can come up with idea afteridea, but when I have to sit
down and follow a step by steptutorial, I am horrible.
I have bad patience; I jumpahead; I skip things because I
assume that I know what I'msupposed to do.
When I was a kid, I'd throw themanual out when I got the toy,
or whatever.
So there's some skills therethat are really important to
learn, and so we make sure to dothat.
(13:44):
Then we'll do a very quickmodification project where
students will find an objectthat they want to personalize.
So it could be something thatthey want to engrave on, or it
could be something that theywant to change its shape or
redesign the colors.
That could be a digital orphysical project.
We really focus on measuring.
On making good diagrams toreally understand that object as
(14:07):
clearly as we can so that youcan know what you can do with
it, right?
You can do some things withcertain materials, but not with
other materials.
And so I have students again, alimited set of of objects that
they can look at to try tofigure out how they want to
modify it or improve it in someway.
Then we take a couple of weeksto generate ideas.
(14:28):
We don't necessarily go into theinnovation process right away,
but we talk about how togenerate ideas, how to think
divergently, how to evaluatethose ideas, and then what would
you do to start?
If you had to try to go downthis path.
What would you try to target asyour first challenge
(14:48):
essentially?
And then we take the last thirdof the class, of the time that
we have, and I let them work onany of those things, continue
them, or even come up withsomething new, but applying
those skills that we practicedduring those earlier phases.
In the midst of that, we do alot of reflection.
So we do a lot of visualthinking strategies where
(15:10):
students keep a portfolio of notjust pictures of the projects,
though those are certainlythere, but really more
documentation of what they'rethinking as they're doing it.
So why did you pick thisparticular process to modify
this thing?
Why?
What was your goal?
How would you measure whetheryour goal was successful?
(15:32):
Have a wide array of visiblethinking strategies, some that
I've created and that are in thebook and some that I use from
like Project Zero to getstudents really to engage those
mental muscles, which they'regoing to need when they actually
start working on the projectthat they want to pursue for
three, four weeks at the end ofthe class.
(15:53):
Really cram a whole lot in atthe beginning to just do some
drills, if we're talking aboutpractices.
So we're doing a lot of drillwork, we're getting our footwork
right we're setting thatgroundwork, and then give them
that opportunity to actually putit into practice before the
course is over.
Dale (16:08):
Often thought about that as starting with a kind of boot
camp of sorts.
Here's some basic skills youneed to know.
Then, some of them you're goingto want to develop a little bit
further and be able to dosomething that's not simple.
Matt (16:21):
And it's impossible to predict exactly what.
They're going to see things thatare around them.
They're going to find thingsonline and you can't cover all
of the possible materials andtools and everything in a few
weeks.
And so really what you want togive them is some skills to then
go out and figure out how tosolve the problem themselves
(16:42):
with you as a facilitator.
It can be a little, it can be alittle, daunting at times when
you got 16, 18 kids and they'reall picking different projects.
But if they understand thatthere's a YouTube video that's
going to walk them through howto learn this particular skill
and they can spend a couple ofdays doing that and then apply
(17:03):
it to this thing that theyreally want to make, then
they're gaining some agency inthe situation.
They're empowered to figure itout for themselves.
Oftentimes, I'll have students,say that I have a question so
that, I usually have them puttheir names up on a board if
they need my help and I'llrotate around and maybe a third
of the time I get to the studentand say, Oh, no, I figured it
(17:23):
out.
I'm like.
That's the dream right there.
That's perfect.
Dale (17:27):
Self directed learning is a wonderful door if you can open
it to students because then theyhave really discovered the power
to learn on their own and solveproblems and advance not waiting
to be taught or someone tellingthem what to do.
It's also the power behindcreativity in a way.
When I saw your presentation,you had a PowerPoint and now you
(17:48):
have, what is it?
About a 175 pages or so book.
You had to develop a lot moreto, to flesh that out.
What was new that you had toreally work on there for
yourself?
Matt (18:01):
I created a lot of, maybe not created from scratch, but I
thought a lot about thedifferent visible thinking
methods that we use, a lot ofthe different ways that I have
students visually representtheir thinking.
I have Google Slides just fullof things that I've tried, some
of which I think worked prettywell, and some of which didn't
(18:24):
really illustrate what studentswere thinking about very well at
all, but I think it was anopportunity to look through all
of that and evaluate for myselfwhich of those seemed the most
effective, which were noteffective, but probably could be
with some improving and it'sbeen really helpful.
The sort of interesting thingabout the timing of it all is
(18:46):
just that, it has lined up withthe actual school year that I
went through.
I teach three courses andthey're laid out as one course
in the book, but there's like anintroductory maker class, which
I just described.
Then I teach a trimester classcalled"Making for Social Good,"
which really the idea of thatclass is designing things for
(19:08):
others.
We give kids a lot ofopportunity in the makerspace to
make their things for them,which it's easy to know what it
is that you want in an object.
But it's a different skill to beable to interview and talk to
somebody else and really gainsome empathy and help understand
what it is that somebody elsewants.
Those are a separate set ofskills that we spend a third of
(19:29):
the year on.
Then I have a more advancedclass and that's where we focus
primarily on the innovationproject, where they will take--
could be that idea that theycame up with before, and they
spend the entire trimester justworking on that one project
through a series of iterationsand prototypes.
And as I was going through thosedifferent parts of the classes
(19:50):
and writing the book and hittingthose different parts, I was
redesigning some of thoseportfolio elements and the ones
that I think work best ended upin the book, which was very
helpful to be able to come upwith.
Dale (20:03):
Are those classes different grade levels or?
Matt (20:06):
They're all mixed high school classes.
A lot of freshmen end up inthose classes, but but yeah it's
a nine through 12 high schoolclass.
Which is great, I think the kidsappreciate it because I often
don't know what grade they're inbecause it's just this group of
kids that show up.
The younger kids benefit fromhaving some of the older kids
around and it helps mix some ofthose those grade level
(20:29):
challenges that you can get.
Dale (20:31):
But year to year, would you have any of the same
students?
Like next year, would you havesome of those students still in
the maker classes?
Matt (20:39):
Yeah, I will occasionally have a student who'll take one,
their freshman or sophomoreyear, and then they'll take the
others later on.
It's relatively rare when I havea single student that goes all
the way through all three in thesame year.
Dale (20:51):
Talk about assessment.
You spend a little time on thatin the book.
It's one of these things thatit's not a multiple choice test
that tells you whether you didwell in the class.
But, again, going to art andother areas, we don't give an
artist a multiple choice test tofind out whether they did well,
so it's really just applying adifferent framework than what
(21:11):
we've typically applied inthings like math.
Matt (21:14):
Yeah.
The type of assessment that Ireally hope people get away
from, I don't know that a lot ofmaker educators use it, but that
idea of a checklist of things toinclude in your project.
That's an attempt to do thatsort of multiple choice.
If you do all these, check allthese boxes, then you get 100%.
That's really limiting becauseit's essentially encouraging
(21:36):
students not to try new things,because if they get really
interested in somethingdifferent and they waste their
time and they don't do thisreally simple thing over here,
then they actually may have donesomething amazing, but they
didn't check off all the boxes.
Rubrics are a big part ofobviously assessing any kind of
creative, subjective work,meeting expectations, exceeding
(21:57):
expectations.
I have been using the last fewyears a method where I will lay
out what I think the basicexpectations of the project are.
If you're doing this, you shouldbe able to show that you are
able to do fairly accuratemeasuring.
That you can record thosenumbers and then use them to
(22:17):
design an object.
Those are the basics and I hopethat you will go beyond the
basics.
And so if you do the basics,then you're in that like 80
percent range.
That's that B range or whatever.
If you challenge yourself, ifyou try something more complex
than what I've asked you to do,then you're exceeding those
(22:39):
expectations.
You're actually pushing beyondwhat I think you should be able
to do if you left this class.
And I think that has helped mystudents be able to focus on
trying harder and tryingsomething new because they know
they're going to get rewardedfor it, grade wise, even if it
doesn't work out.
(22:59):
Even if they try something andit's not successful, if they're
able to show in theirdocumentation, their visible
thinking, they're showing thisis why I tried this thing.
Now it didn't work out.
Maybe next time I need to do itthis way.
But this is what I was trying toachieve.
Those are risks, risk takingbehavior that's really important
for creativity, so I don't gradestudents on the actual product
(23:25):
that they make.
I grade them on what they'reable to describe how they attack
the problem, how they thoughtabout the problem, how they set
up to accomplish this task thatthey have given themselves or
that I've given them.
A big part of what I thought wasimportant in the book was to try
to give as much helpful concretestrategies for assessing
(23:47):
students in the makerspace aspossible, because I think that
is an area where a lot ofteachers struggle.
I would love not to have to givegrades at all, but we are in a
traditional education realm andyou have to do that.
Dale (23:59):
Part of this is figuring out how to give feedback in
different ways, right?
Matt (24:02):
Yes, definitely.
Dale (24:04):
That's why I think the adult, the teacher, the coach,
whatever, has such an importantrole.
That goes back to basic writingor drawing or anything someone
says you could do better, right?
Push you yourself a little bitmore, think about it a little
bit more.
Sort of encouragement ratherthan judgment.
Matt (24:20):
When I was in high school, and I had an art teacher in my
public school, and then I had anart teacher that I went to on
the weekends, private artlessons, and I talk about this
in the book, but the differencein those two educational
experiences were remarkable,right?
One of them I would have lovedto have not gone to my art class
in my public school where it wasvery regimented like here's what
(24:43):
you were doing in this piece.
Here's what it needs to looklike at the end.
Then you stack them up whoeverhad the best technical skill got
the"A" on down from there,versus going to my painting
instructor on the weekend andokay, let's go set up in this
field and start painting andthen in a half hour, we're all
going to pull our stufftogether.
(25:04):
We're going to talk about eachother's work, right?
There were no grades there, butthere was definitely assessment.
I could hear what my peers weresaying about my piece.
I could hear what my teacher wassaying about my piece.
I could respond to that and Icould say this is what I was
trying to do.
And but the difference there,you can't just throw that into
(25:25):
most high schools because I wasthere because I had chosen to be
there.
I had selected to spend myweekends doing this, so it
mattered to me already.
And when you're in high schoolas much as kids love being in my
maker class, some of them didnot have many options.
They picked it because it wasbetter than this other elective
(25:46):
option out there.
They're not necessarilyintrinsically motivated to do
great work in the makerspace.
That's where the A, B, whateverdoes come in.
In the end, you have to be ableto boil it down to that.
But a lot more of what I'm ableto do through process portfolio
is give a lot more feedbackwhere I can it's tricky when you
(26:08):
have a lot of students, butbeing able to leave a video note
or an audio note, just talkingabout what they've put in their
portfolio and help them maybesee it from a different
perspective or encourage them toelaborate in some parts of their
thinking so that they can beable to express that.
There's the idea of we don'tlearn by doing, we learn by
(26:30):
thinking about what we did,which is true.
You can develop a habit and arhythm by doing something over
and over again.
But if you want to be able toapply it strategically, you have
to have thought about why youdid certain things and whether
it worked better, whetherthere'd be something that would
work even better the next time.
Dale (26:48):
That documentation that you brought up several times of
process portfolio--not justhere's what I did at the end.
But this is how I got there.
Adults struggle doing that, ofkeeping notes and really taking
the time and feeling that it'sworth taking the time to write
those thoughts down.
Matt (27:07):
It helps because I don't grade them on their products
that they make.
I grade them on that portfolio.
And often students will notfinish the thing that, they have
this big idea and they havethree weeks to make it.
And they think that's a ton oftime, but three weeks in
one-hour classes is not reallythat much time at all.
And so most of the time theydon't actually finish
(27:30):
completely.
They may get 60 percent of theway there or whatever, but as
they are documenting, they'rethinking about that process.
And that's what I'm actuallygrading them on.
It relieves them of that worryof not finishing and it allows
them to have the emphasis puton, okay, I'm gonna, I can do a
really good job explaining whatI'm doing, what I want to have
(27:54):
happen and to be able to say, Idon't have the time to finish
this, but if I do finish it,this is how I'm going to do it.
Sometimes those kids come backand they finish it in their own
time, which is always fantastic.
Dale (28:05):
One of the things that I discovered, particularly in
public schools, and sadlylooking at students say, going
to community colleges, reallyhow few of them had the
experience of really doingprojects in high school.
I really feel that's such animportant thing for them to find
out how they learn, how theywork, to work in a group of
(28:25):
people, doing those kind ofthings..
Matt (28:28):
Maybe one step down the list of not having an
opportunity to do projects ishaving all of the projects that
you do be essentiallymeaningless.
Part of what I think my job hasreally allowed me to do is, my
job is much more like alibrarian than like a
traditional teacher.
I teach these classes, butthat's the only class I teach.
(28:49):
So the majority of my day isworking with teachers to help
facilitate meaningful projectsin their classes.
And so we don't do a whole lotof dioramas; we don't bust out
our shoe boxes and buy a bunchof stuff at the craft store,
which can be fun and engagingfor some kids.
Not every kid loves doing that,but they're not learning
(29:12):
anything through that processbecause often what they've
already done is done research,written a paper, handed that
paper in, and gotten thatdiorama with no new information
at all.
So what I do is I work withteachers to help design projects
where the students are actuallyshowing what they've learned and
(29:33):
ideally that is replacing a testor replacing a paper so that the
student really buys in then, Oh,you mean, I don't have to write
a four-page paper about this.
I can build this object thatshows my knowledge that I've
gained about this part ofhistory or about the scientific
concept or about this, this modeof language in my Spanish class.
(29:55):
Makerspaces.
I think really one of theexciting new things that they
can bring is being able tofacilitate that for a school
because teachers don't have thetime or the mental bandwidth in
most cases to be able to designreally meaningful projects that
help students learn or helpstudents show what they've
(30:16):
learned.
That's just not what their timeis able to be devoted to.
To be able to have thatlibrarian who can step in and
say, I've got this idea for you.
You tell me what it is you wantthe kids to demonstrate that
they understand, and I'll helpfacilitate this for you.
If makerspaces can do that, theybecome very sustainable in
schools,
Dale (30:36):
That goes back to that hub model discussion a bit, that
it's serving the whole school.
It's not just a separate programor activity.
I'm really happy to see yourbook in print.
I hope we can jointly get it inthe hands of as many teachers.
And you advise them how shouldyou think about it is really
important and how you organizethat space and your goals in
(31:00):
that space.
Often people are gettingassigned a makerspace without
having much training in it.
I think your book is a reallygood way we have other books
that explain 3D printing andCAD, and electronics, Arduino
and that but you have aconceptual framework for the
educator to apply to studentsusing the makerspace and
(31:22):
teachers using the makerspace ina broad way.
Matt (31:25):
That certainly was my hope.
As an art teacher, even at asmall school where oftentimes I
was getting kids in the classthat really did not want to be
there, I had to ask myself whatis this kid who's never gonna
pick up a paintbrush afterthey're done with my class, what
can they get out of this?
I've been thinking about thatquestion for a long time and
(31:48):
working in a makerspace has justmade it so much easier to allow
kids to really see the power ofhow creativity and creative
design could be applied towhatever area that they're most
interested in and that it canreally benefit them in the long
run.
And so it's been very freeingfor me.
Even though I love the artstudio and I love working with
(32:10):
students who really want to doart, but I want to make sure
that everybody gets theopportunity to feel like they
can apply their creative skillsmore productively towards
whatever they're interested in.
Dale (32:21):
I think we get hung up in this career thing of what
they're going to be at the endof their education, not what's
the portfolio of skills they'vedeveloped and habits of mind and
all those other things.
Matt, thank you for your timetoday.
Really great to see you.
I wish you the best of luck withthis book and your work in the
makerspace at Bullis.
Matt (32:41):
Thank you.
And I really appreciate theopportunity.
AmazonBasics Professional M (32:44):
You can buy Matt's book, Three Modes
of Making, on Amazon or order itfrom independent booksellers or
purchase it in PDF or print formon makershed.com.
Welcome to MakeCast, I'm Dale Dougherty.
I am here with Matt Zigler.
Matt is an artist and educatorwho's written a new book for us
called Three Modes of Making andwe'll be talking about that book
today and his experiences as anartist and educator and how he's
brought that to a makerspace ata school.
He's talking about things in anew way, maybe for some of you.
(00:34):
I wrote a piece on makered.orglast week and talking about how
some maker programs start as aclub, some as a class.
There's kind of a third categoryfor a makerspace is a hub where
a lot of things happen both inand out of that hub, but you're
not just working with students,you're also trying to train
(00:56):
other educators in this model.
What Matt's book, I think, has afocus on the process.
of making, and how do you leadthat as an educator or as any
adult working with kids on this.
Rather than teaching someone, Iuse a coach model quite a bit in
my thinking how do you coachkids to make?
(01:18):
How do you help them?
What are you trying toaccomplish there?
The second thing that Matt Ithink covers really well is that
some teachers are very scaredabout is when you give students
the opportunity to do projects.
How do you manage that?
How do you think about it?
What kinds of projects are theygoing to do?
When I heard Matt give thispresentation at the Make:
(01:39):
Education Forum, I thought he'dreally nailed something that
nobody had really talked aboutbefore.
For some projects, the goal isto imitate something that exists
or perhaps follow instructionsthat someone else shared with
you.
Second was imitation to modifysomething.
And the third he callsinnovation, which is really to
do something new, original andideally something that has value
(02:01):
to other people.
Matt, welcome to Make:cast.
It's good to see you.
Tell us a bit about yourbackground and where you are
today.
Matt (02:09):
So my background is I've been a teacher really since I
got out of college.
I've been, I was an art teacherfor most of my career.
It's coming up on half of mycareer.
I guess that, that will shiftand then eventually.
Did a little bit ofadministration and then all got
into makerspaces in a smallindependent school in North
(02:30):
Carolina was my first experienceand then got hired to run the
Bullis School BitLab, whichBullis is an independent school
outside of DC.
They were building a$23 millionSTEM building and the biggest
chunk of that was a makerspaceand a Fab Lab.
They created a position to justcoordinate that space.
(02:53):
And I was lucky enough to gethired to do that.
So that's what I've been doingfor the last seven years.
And it's really been a greatopportunity to try to look at
creativity and how to help kidslearn how to be creative and
what creativity is.
From a thing that's pretty new.
And, with art.
(03:13):
I love art and I enjoy doing myown art, but you're hemmed in
art education with a lot ofhistory, a lot of best
practices, a lot of this is howyou teach art, sort of stuff
that's out there.
In the makerspace, it's veryfree.
There's not a whole lot of thatout there at the moment.
And it gives you a lot ofopportunity to work with kids
and a wide array of differenttypes of projects and see
(03:36):
creativity in all of itsdifferent ways.
And that's really been the mostexciting part for me.
Dale (03:41):
Teaching creativity is a kind of problematical phrase, in
a way.
Matt (03:44):
Definitely.
Dale (03:45):
And it's really something you're trying to bring out or
help kids discover and give themopportunities to touch that.
And I think an art teacher hassuch an interesting background
for this.
Some people balk at doing art ina class, right?
And others love it, right?
And you have those two poles,you're trying to get them to
(04:05):
engage in the experience and notthe outcome and not to judge
that label artist or things likethat.
Even just like musician, theseare things that maybe you grow
into that, but you don't startoff calling yourself an artist
or musician, you just startdoing it.
Matt (04:22):
Yeah, there's a famous quote from Picasso that every
child is an artist and the trickis just how to remain one as you
get older.
Replace the word creativity withartist in that and I think it's
even more true.
You don't have to spend muchtime around young kids with
whatever they've got around, acardboard box or some crayons.
They'll just start building ormaking and that's an impulse
(04:45):
that I think we all have andthings get in the way,
particularly when you get intohigh school, I think that really
8th grade, 9th grade, thingsbecome very regimented in
education and trained out of usto be creative in a wide range
of fields.
People tend to assume that'swhat art and music are there
(05:06):
for.
It's so that there is some roomfor creativity in the schools,
and it doesn't belong anywhereelse.
And I really disagree with that.
In my work in the makerspace, asyou mentioned, as a hub, I have
students and teachers comingfrom every content area with
creative ideas of projects thatthey want to do.
It's hard to imagine a fieldthat doesn't involve some
(05:30):
opportunity to be creative andthe people who are able to find
the creativity in their jobs,enjoy those jobs more and often
have greater opportunitieswithin those organizations
because they are seen as peoplewho can come up with ideas and
pursue them.
Being able to really talk aboutcreativity and creative process
for students and have them seethe value and practicing that in
(05:55):
high school so that they couldapply it to whatever their area
of interest is in life.
That way you don't have to feellike, oh, I'm supposed to be an
artist when I come out of thisclass.
That's not the goal
Dale (06:07):
I really like the word practice; it's something you do
in sports, but music and otherthings, but more importantly,
rather than being told topractice, it's discovering your
own practice and how you dothings, how you think, and
that's the essential part ofcreativity.
It's like how you approach aproblem or how you even think
about yourself.
(06:29):
And I really appreciate thatoften art education tries to
make a real connection to theperson, the student, in a way
that sometimes I think sciencedoesn't.
Science is a subject; it hasinformation; it has facts; it
has theorems.
We'll test you on that, right?
Rather than, science is a way ofthinking.
(06:50):
Science is a way of looking atthe world and interacting with
that world.
I've always felt like artteachers could help science
teachers become better by movingthem off of that subject and
more towards the experience ofthe thing.
How do we know these things,right?
Matt (07:06):
It's funny that you bring up science.
Both my brother and my father,both PhD biologists.
I remember way back when I wasstarting to think about this
book and some of this stuff thatwent into it, I asked them, can
you remember an experience thatyou had in high school that
inspired you to want to becomescientists and neither of them
(07:30):
had anything from school?
Their interest in becomingscientists came from things
outside of school.
My dad grew up on a farm and hebecame interested in animals and
zoology and there was noexperience that he had in school
that said science is reallyinteresting.
You might want to pursue this.
It was like a thing he had to doand the real inspiration came
(07:51):
from outside influences, whichis sad.
I feel like it doesn't have tobe that way.
Dale (07:55):
No, it doesn't, but I will say that they can usually trace
it to some set of experiencesthey had, whether they're in
school.
It usually wasn't, I had a greattextbook in the seventh grade.
But sometimes it can be aninspiring teacher.
Matt (08:08):
Absolutely.
Dale (08:09):
That opens the door.
I've talked to makers,scientists, it was something
they were exploring on theirown.
They were curious and they foundan area that.
They just couldn't stop thinkingabout it and that led them, back
into school or into education inways that they might not have
been there.
Matt (08:25):
Yeah.
How do we improve the odds thatthey will have that experience
or an experience in school thatthey can think about when
they're in college deciding whatit is that they want to do.
I think that projects really arethat thing because like you said
rather than give the genericscience curriculum, if you allow
them to pick a topic that theywant to do scientific
(08:46):
experimentation on, now they'reapplying these scientific
skills, the methods, theexperimentation, collecting data
on something that is actuallyinteresting to them.
Ideally, that's real life.
Dale (08:58):
Yeah, as I say, you make it personal.
And and it's something thatunlocks their motivation, which
I think is the key thing.
Suddenly it's theirs.
How did you come up with thisframework for the three modes of
making?
Matt (09:11):
I really was thinking about my own experiences as a
young artist and how I learnedthings and the different types
of activities that the bestteachers that I had gave and
what I gained from them.
You brought up the question oflike teaching creativity.
How does that even work?
It's hard to point at somebodydoing something and say, Oh,
(09:33):
they're teaching creativity.
The kids are being creative.
That doesn't mean that I'mnecessarily teaching them to be
creative.
So really what I think you'retalking about is facilitating an
environment where creativityhappens and then you talk about
what's happening.
And that's the best way that youcan do that.
And so I, there's always timeswhen you're copying other
(09:56):
artists or you're copying otherwork that you're seeing and the
goal of that.
is to try to understand whatthat artist did so that you can
decide, which parts of thatartist's style or subject matter
are things that you want toincorporate into your own work.
And then, obviously you don'twant to copy all the time.
At some point, you need to goout and look at things that are
(10:19):
out there and start to modifyand bend them to your own tastes
and add your own spin on things.
And then finally, once you feellike you have.
All those tools in your toolbox,then you can go out and start to
experiment and try new thingsthat may fail because you don't
know the outcome ahead of timeand that's what in the
(10:39):
makerspace would use that wordinnovation and so I saw that
happening so clearly in thetypes of activities that people
were doing in makerspaces andteachers that I was talking to
were trying to get at And itseemed like it is helpful to be
able to point to certain skillsthat are better, that are easier
(11:02):
to practice in those differentmodes.
If you're just saying everythingis making, and these are the
skills that we're practicingwhen we're making, it's hard to
pinpoint times when you can talkabout like, how do you set a
good goal?
Setting a goal when you aretrying to come up with something
that's brand new is verydifferent than setting a goal
when you are trying to learn aspecific technique.
(11:25):
When you're able to point outthose differences, you can more
easily pinpoint how you can talkto students about how do you set
a good goal, what is ameasurable goal, or when you are
making a blueprint and modifyingan existing piece of furniture,
or building something for aspecific part of your living
room.
(11:45):
Then that's different than ifyou have to sketch an idea for
something that you don't knowthe dimensions of, you don't
know the constraints for yet.
So by thinking about things interms of imitation, learning
specific skills, then modifyingthe world around us to make it
our own and then innovating tocome up with new ideas to solve
(12:07):
new problems.
It allows you to targetdifferent practice, practices in
creativity that students canlean on later on when they're
doing those things on their ownprojects.
Dale (12:20):
You start with that model and you really break it down as
how to build a class or a set ofexperiences around that.
Talk to me a bit about how thatlooks like from a teacher's
point of view.
I want my kids to do projects,which I think is fundamental to
any kind of maker class ormakerspace you have.
So how do you make that happen?
Matt (12:40):
Basically when in my school, we work in trimesters.
We have nine months to be with agroup of students obviously
different schools do itdifferent ways, but I tend to
think of it in terms of twothirds of that time is working
with me as the teacher directinga little bit more.
Here's maybe a menu of optionsthat you can try if you're
(13:03):
interested in learning thistool; here's a project that I
want you to do, follow thistutorial; if you're interested
in learning this tool, here's aproject, and really having them
very quickly in a week or so gothrough that imitation
experience.
I'll be honest the hardest onefor me is imitation.
My natural mode is innovation.
(13:23):
I can come up with idea afteridea, but when I have to sit
down and follow a step by steptutorial, I am horrible.
I have bad patience; I jumpahead; I skip things because I
assume that I know what I'msupposed to do.
When I was a kid, I'd throw themanual out when I got the toy,
or whatever.
So there's some skills therethat are really important to
learn, and so we make sure to dothat.
(13:44):
Then we'll do a very quickmodification project where
students will find an objectthat they want to personalize.
So it could be something thatthey want to engrave on, or it
could be something that theywant to change its shape or
redesign the colors.
That could be a digital orphysical project.
We really focus on measuring.
On making good diagrams toreally understand that object as
(14:07):
clearly as we can so that youcan know what you can do with
it, right?
You can do some things withcertain materials, but not with
other materials.
And so I have students again, alimited set of of objects that
they can look at to try tofigure out how they want to
modify it or improve it in someway.
Then we take a couple of weeksto generate ideas.
(14:28):
We don't necessarily go into theinnovation process right away,
but we talk about how togenerate ideas, how to think
divergently, how to evaluatethose ideas, and then what would
you do to start?
If you had to try to go downthis path.
What would you try to target asyour first challenge
(14:48):
essentially?
And then we take the last thirdof the class, of the time that
we have, and I let them work onany of those things, continue
them, or even come up withsomething new, but applying
those skills that we practicedduring those earlier phases.
In the midst of that, we do alot of reflection.
So we do a lot of visualthinking strategies where
(15:10):
students keep a portfolio of notjust pictures of the projects,
though those are certainlythere, but really more
documentation of what they'rethinking as they're doing it.
So why did you pick thisparticular process to modify
this thing?
Why?
What was your goal?
How would you measure whetheryour goal was successful?
(15:32):
Have a wide array of visiblethinking strategies, some that
I've created and that are in thebook and some that I use from
like Project Zero to getstudents really to engage those
mental muscles, which they'regoing to need when they actually
start working on the projectthat they want to pursue for
three, four weeks at the end ofthe class.
(15:53):
Really cram a whole lot in atthe beginning to just do some
drills, if we're talking aboutpractices.
So we're doing a lot of drillwork, we're getting our footwork
right we're setting thatgroundwork, and then give them
that opportunity to actually putit into practice before the
course is over.
Dale (16:08):
Often thought about that as starting with a kind of boot
camp of sorts.
Here's some basic skills youneed to know.
Then, some of them you're goingto want to develop a little bit
further and be able to dosomething that's not simple.
Matt (16:21):
And it's impossible to predict exactly what.
They're going to see things thatare around them.
They're going to find thingsonline and you can't cover all
of the possible materials andtools and everything in a few
weeks.
And so really what you want togive them is some skills to then
go out and figure out how tosolve the problem themselves
(16:42):
with you as a facilitator.
It can be a little, it can be alittle, daunting at times when
you got 16, 18 kids and they'reall picking different projects.
But if they understand thatthere's a YouTube video that's
going to walk them through howto learn this particular skill
and they can spend a couple ofdays doing that and then apply
(17:03):
it to this thing that theyreally want to make, then
they're gaining some agency inthe situation.
They're empowered to figure itout for themselves.
Oftentimes, I'll have students,say that I have a question so
that, I usually have them puttheir names up on a board if
they need my help and I'llrotate around and maybe a third
of the time I get to the studentand say, Oh, no, I figured it
(17:23):
out.
I'm like.
That's the dream right there.
That's perfect.
Dale (17:27):
Self directed learning is a wonderful door if you can open
it to students because then theyhave really discovered the power
to learn on their own and solveproblems and advance not waiting
to be taught or someone tellingthem what to do.
It's also the power behindcreativity in a way.
When I saw your presentation,you had a PowerPoint and now you
(17:48):
have, what is it?
About a 175 pages or so book.
You had to develop a lot moreto, to flesh that out.
What was new that you had toreally work on there for
yourself?
Matt (18:01):
I created a lot of, maybe not created from scratch, but I
thought a lot about thedifferent visible thinking
methods that we use, a lot ofthe different ways that I have
students visually representtheir thinking.
I have Google Slides just fullof things that I've tried, some
of which I think worked prettywell, and some of which didn't
(18:24):
really illustrate what studentswere thinking about very well at
all, but I think it was anopportunity to look through all
of that and evaluate for myselfwhich of those seemed the most
effective, which were noteffective, but probably could be
with some improving and it'sbeen really helpful.
The sort of interesting thingabout the timing of it all is
(18:46):
just that, it has lined up withthe actual school year that I
went through.
I teach three courses andthey're laid out as one course
in the book, but there's like anintroductory maker class, which
I just described.
Then I teach a trimester classcalled"Making for Social Good,"
which really the idea of thatclass is designing things for
(19:08):
others.
We give kids a lot ofopportunity in the makerspace to
make their things for them,which it's easy to know what it
is that you want in an object.
But it's a different skill to beable to interview and talk to
somebody else and really gainsome empathy and help understand
what it is that somebody elsewants.
Those are a separate set ofskills that we spend a third of
(19:29):
the year on.
Then I have a more advancedclass and that's where we focus
primarily on the innovationproject, where they will take--
could be that idea that theycame up with before, and they
spend the entire trimester justworking on that one project
through a series of iterationsand prototypes.
And as I was going through thosedifferent parts of the classes
(19:50):
and writing the book and hittingthose different parts, I was
redesigning some of thoseportfolio elements and the ones
that I think work best ended upin the book, which was very
helpful to be able to come upwith.
Dale (20:03):
Are those classes different grade levels or?
Matt (20:06):
They're all mixed high school classes.
A lot of freshmen end up inthose classes, but but yeah it's
a nine through 12 high schoolclass.
Which is great, I think the kidsappreciate it because I often
don't know what grade they're inbecause it's just this group of
kids that show up.
The younger kids benefit fromhaving some of the older kids
around and it helps mix some ofthose those grade level
(20:29):
challenges that you can get.
Dale (20:31):
But year to year, would you have any of the same
students?
Like next year, would you havesome of those students still in
the maker classes?
Matt (20:39):
Yeah, I will occasionally have a student who'll take one,
their freshman or sophomoreyear, and then they'll take the
others later on.
It's relatively rare when I havea single student that goes all
the way through all three in thesame year.
Dale (20:51):
Talk about assessment.
You spend a little time on thatin the book.
It's one of these things thatit's not a multiple choice test
that tells you whether you didwell in the class.
But, again, going to art andother areas, we don't give an
artist a multiple choice test tofind out whether they did well,
so it's really just applying adifferent framework than what
(21:11):
we've typically applied inthings like math.
Matt (21:14):
Yeah.
The type of assessment that Ireally hope people get away
from, I don't know that a lot ofmaker educators use it, but that
idea of a checklist of things toinclude in your project.
That's an attempt to do thatsort of multiple choice.
If you do all these, check allthese boxes, then you get 100%.
That's really limiting becauseit's essentially encouraging
(21:36):
students not to try new things,because if they get really
interested in somethingdifferent and they waste their
time and they don't do thisreally simple thing over here,
then they actually may have donesomething amazing, but they
didn't check off all the boxes.
Rubrics are a big part ofobviously assessing any kind of
creative, subjective work,meeting expectations, exceeding
(21:57):
expectations.
I have been using the last fewyears a method where I will lay
out what I think the basicexpectations of the project are.
If you're doing this, you shouldbe able to show that you are
able to do fairly accuratemeasuring.
That you can record thosenumbers and then use them to
(22:17):
design an object.
Those are the basics and I hopethat you will go beyond the
basics.
And so if you do the basics,then you're in that like 80
percent range.
That's that B range or whatever.
If you challenge yourself, ifyou try something more complex
than what I've asked you to do,then you're exceeding those
(22:39):
expectations.
You're actually pushing beyondwhat I think you should be able
to do if you left this class.
And I think that has helped mystudents be able to focus on
trying harder and tryingsomething new because they know
they're going to get rewardedfor it, grade wise, even if it
doesn't work out.
(22:59):
Even if they try something andit's not successful, if they're
able to show in theirdocumentation, their visible
thinking, they're showing thisis why I tried this thing.
Now it didn't work out.
Maybe next time I need to do itthis way.
But this is what I was trying toachieve.
Those are risks, risk takingbehavior that's really important
for creativity, so I don't gradestudents on the actual product
(23:25):
that they make.
I grade them on what they'reable to describe how they attack
the problem, how they thoughtabout the problem, how they set
up to accomplish this task thatthey have given themselves or
that I've given them.
A big part of what I thought wasimportant in the book was to try
to give as much helpful concretestrategies for assessing
(23:47):
students in the makerspace aspossible, because I think that
is an area where a lot ofteachers struggle.
I would love not to have to givegrades at all, but we are in a
traditional education realm andyou have to do that.
Dale (23:59):
Part of this is figuring out how to give feedback in
different ways, right?
Matt (24:02):
Yes, definitely.
Dale (24:04):
That's why I think the adult, the teacher, the coach,
whatever, has such an importantrole.
That goes back to basic writingor drawing or anything someone
says you could do better, right?
Push you yourself a little bitmore, think about it a little
bit more.
Sort of encouragement ratherthan judgment.
Matt (24:20):
When I was in high school, and I had an art teacher in my
public school, and then I had anart teacher that I went to on
the weekends, private artlessons, and I talk about this
in the book, but the differencein those two educational
experiences were remarkable,right?
One of them I would have lovedto have not gone to my art class
in my public school where it wasvery regimented like here's what
(24:43):
you were doing in this piece.
Here's what it needs to looklike at the end.
Then you stack them up whoeverhad the best technical skill got
the"A" on down from there,versus going to my painting
instructor on the weekend andokay, let's go set up in this
field and start painting andthen in a half hour, we're all
going to pull our stufftogether.
(25:04):
We're going to talk about eachother's work, right?
There were no grades there, butthere was definitely assessment.
I could hear what my peers weresaying about my piece.
I could hear what my teacher wassaying about my piece.
I could respond to that and Icould say this is what I was
trying to do.
And but the difference there,you can't just throw that into
(25:25):
most high schools because I wasthere because I had chosen to be
there.
I had selected to spend myweekends doing this, so it
mattered to me already.
And when you're in high schoolas much as kids love being in my
maker class, some of them didnot have many options.
They picked it because it wasbetter than this other elective
(25:46):
option out there.
They're not necessarilyintrinsically motivated to do
great work in the makerspace.
That's where the A, B, whateverdoes come in.
In the end, you have to be ableto boil it down to that.
But a lot more of what I'm ableto do through process portfolio
is give a lot more feedbackwhere I can it's tricky when you
(26:08):
have a lot of students, butbeing able to leave a video note
or an audio note, just talkingabout what they've put in their
portfolio and help them maybesee it from a different
perspective or encourage them toelaborate in some parts of their
thinking so that they can beable to express that.
There's the idea of we don'tlearn by doing, we learn by
(26:30):
thinking about what we did,which is true.
You can develop a habit and arhythm by doing something over
and over again.
But if you want to be able toapply it strategically, you have
to have thought about why youdid certain things and whether
it worked better, whetherthere'd be something that would
work even better the next time.
Dale (26:48):
That documentation that you brought up several times of
process portfolio--not justhere's what I did at the end.
But this is how I got there.
Adults struggle doing that, ofkeeping notes and really taking
the time and feeling that it'sworth taking the time to write
those thoughts down.
Matt (27:07):
It helps because I don't grade them on their products
that they make.
I grade them on that portfolio.
And often students will notfinish the thing that, they have
this big idea and they havethree weeks to make it.
And they think that's a ton oftime, but three weeks in
one-hour classes is not reallythat much time at all.
And so most of the time theydon't actually finish
(27:30):
completely.
They may get 60 percent of theway there or whatever, but as
they are documenting, they'rethinking about that process.
And that's what I'm actuallygrading them on.
It relieves them of that worryof not finishing and it allows
them to have the emphasis puton, okay, I'm gonna, I can do a
really good job explaining whatI'm doing, what I want to have
(27:54):
happen and to be able to say, Idon't have the time to finish
this, but if I do finish it,this is how I'm going to do it.
Sometimes those kids come backand they finish it in their own
time, which is always fantastic.
Dale (28:05):
One of the things that I discovered, particularly in
public schools, and sadlylooking at students say, going
to community colleges, reallyhow few of them had the
experience of really doingprojects in high school.
I really feel that's such animportant thing for them to find
out how they learn, how theywork, to work in a group of
(28:25):
people, doing those kind ofthings..
Matt (28:28):
Maybe one step down the list of not having an
opportunity to do projects ishaving all of the projects that
you do be essentiallymeaningless.
Part of what I think my job hasreally allowed me to do is, my
job is much more like alibrarian than like a
traditional teacher.
I teach these classes, butthat's the only class I teach.
(28:49):
So the majority of my day isworking with teachers to help
facilitate meaningful projectsin their classes.
And so we don't do a whole lotof dioramas; we don't bust out
our shoe boxes and buy a bunchof stuff at the craft store,
which can be fun and engagingfor some kids.
Not every kid loves doing that,but they're not learning
(29:12):
anything through that processbecause often what they've
already done is done research,written a paper, handed that
paper in, and gotten thatdiorama with no new information
at all.
So what I do is I work withteachers to help design projects
where the students are actuallyshowing what they've learned and
(29:33):
ideally that is replacing a testor replacing a paper so that the
student really buys in then, Oh,you mean, I don't have to write
a four-page paper about this.
I can build this object thatshows my knowledge that I've
gained about this part ofhistory or about the scientific
concept or about this, this modeof language in my Spanish class.
(29:55):
Makerspaces.
I think really one of theexciting new things that they
can bring is being able tofacilitate that for a school
because teachers don't have thetime or the mental bandwidth in
most cases to be able to designreally meaningful projects that
help students learn or helpstudents show what they've
(30:16):
learned.
That's just not what their timeis able to be devoted to.
To be able to have thatlibrarian who can step in and
say, I've got this idea for you.
You tell me what it is you wantthe kids to demonstrate that
they understand, and I'll helpfacilitate this for you.
If makerspaces can do that, theybecome very sustainable in
schools,
Dale (30:36):
That goes back to that hub model discussion a bit, that
it's serving the whole school.
It's not just a separate programor activity.
I'm really happy to see yourbook in print.
I hope we can jointly get it inthe hands of as many teachers.
And you advise them how shouldyou think about it is really
important and how you organizethat space and your goals in
(31:00):
that space.
Often people are gettingassigned a makerspace without
having much training in it.
I think your book is a reallygood way we have other books
that explain 3D printing andCAD, and electronics, Arduino
and that but you have aconceptual framework for the
educator to apply to studentsusing the makerspace and
(31:22):
teachers using the makerspace ina broad way.
Matt (31:25):
That certainly was my hope.
As an art teacher, even at asmall school where oftentimes I
was getting kids in the classthat really did not want to be
there, I had to ask myself whatis this kid who's never gonna
pick up a paintbrush afterthey're done with my class, what
can they get out of this?
I've been thinking about thatquestion for a long time and
(31:48):
working in a makerspace has justmade it so much easier to allow
kids to really see the power ofhow creativity and creative
design could be applied towhatever area that they're most
interested in and that it canreally benefit them in the long
run.
And so it's been very freeingfor me.
Even though I love the artstudio and I love working with
(32:10):
students who really want to doart, but I want to make sure
that everybody gets theopportunity to feel like they
can apply their creative skillsmore productively towards
whatever they're interested in.
Dale (32:21):
I think we get hung up in this career thing of what
they're going to be at the endof their education, not what's
the portfolio of skills they'vedeveloped and habits of mind and
all those other things.
Matt, thank you for your timetoday.
Really great to see you.
I wish you the best of luck withthis book and your work in the
makerspace at Bullis.
Matt (32:41):
Thank you.
And I really appreciate theopportunity.
AmazonBasics Professional M (32:44):
You can buy Matt's book, Three Modes
of Making, on Amazon or order itfrom independent booksellers or
purchase it in PDF or print formon makershed.com.
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