Mechanical dissections are a practice that allows learners to discover the often hidden design of objects.
Activities & Practices
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Field NoteWhen a Ship is not a Ship—It’s a Sabre-toothed Cat! A Story of Maker Empowerment and Collective Agency
When a Ship is not a Ship—It’s a Sabre-toothed Cat! A Story of Maker Empowerment and Collective Agency
Ilya Pratt, AbD Oakland Leadership Team member and Design+Make+Engage program director at Park Day School, tells a tale of maker empowerment and collective agency through the story of Kyle and the saber-toothed cat.
thinking routinesParts, People, Interactions
Parts, People, Interactions
This thinking routine helps learners slow down and look closely at a system. In doing so, young people are able to situate objects within systems and recognize the various people who participate—directly or indirectly—within a particular system.
publicationsSlow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation
Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation
Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.
publicationsMaker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds
Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds
The Agency by Design guide to implementing maker-centered teaching and learning
Maker-Centered Learning provides both a theoretical framework and practical resources for the educators, curriculum developers, librarians, administrators, and parents navigating this burgeoning field. Written by the expert team from the Agency by Design initiative at Harvard's Project Zero, this book
- Identifies a set of educational practices and ideas that define maker-centered learning, and introduces the focal concepts of maker empowerment and sensitivity to design.
- Shares cutting edge research that provides evidence of the benefits of maker-centered learning for students and education as a whole.
- Presents a clear Project Zero-based framework for maker-centered teaching and learning
- Includes valuable educator resources that can be applied in a variety of design and maker-centered learning environments
- Describes unique thinking routines that foster the primary maker capacities of looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity.
A surge of voices from government, industry, and education have argued that, in order to equip the next generation for life and work in the decades ahead, it is vital to support maker-centered learning in various educational environments. Maker-Centered Learning provides insight into what that means, and offers tools and knowledge that can be applied anywhere that learning takes place.
activities and practicesTake Apart
Take Apart
Mechanical dissections are a practice that allows learners to discover the often hidden design of objects.
thinking routinesImagine if...
Imagine if...
This routine first encourages divergent thinking, as learners think of new possibilities for an object or system, and then encourages convergent thinking, as learners decide upon an effective approach to build, tinker, re/design, or hack an object or a system.
documentation and assessment toolsInquiry Cycle Tool
Inquiry Cycle Tool
The Inquiry Cycle is a tool to support teacher and student learning—and to make that learning visible—all the while exploring the capacities associated with the Agency by Design framework for maker-centered learning.
Field NoteMaker Empowerment: A Concept Under Construction
Maker Empowerment: A Concept Under Construction
Agency by Designer project Director Shari Tishman introduces the concept of “maker empowerment” as a potential outcome of maker learning experiences.