Creating with Technology

I've owned a house for twelve years. Living in a small community with an overheated economy, if you want any work done around your place, this means a wait of approximately a year if you need a carpenter or any other type of skilled trades work done. This means that if you need something done, you need to figure out how to do it yourself. Having a father - in - law who could build a boat from 5 toothpicks and some tree sap of course helps as well. But I've learned a lot, and given the patience (which, after dealing with junior high kids all day is sometimes in short supply) I can build or fix almost anything I need to.

Over this same time period, I've seen a true resurgence in the interest of many people in the hands on creation of new gadgets and technologies. Make and Craft magazines and the Maker Faire exploded into our culture. Their blogs and podcasts are a source of constant new ideas if you are looking to build something. As well, I've read several times about the amazing tech shop that is in San Francisco. An amazing looking place, they were recently featured on boingboing tv:

This reminds me of a discussion I had a few weeks ago with a superintendent about technology. While making divisional technology plans, he wondered about the concentration of interest there has been around technology and computers. I asked him more and he said that he felt that technology education has revolved too much around computers and not enough around construction and science type projects; even simple ones like the building of kites, rockets, and balloons with kids.

Has there been a break in technology and education?

Are we concentrating too much on information related developments and not enough on the creation of new things? Kids love building stuff. Many schools run great robotics programs and Lego Mindstorms sets are loved by students worldwide. But by far, most of these things are done after school or at lunch hours as an extracurricular group or club. Have we been biased against these types of hands on projects and this type of education because we consider it to be "vocational" and this reduces our interest in it?

In our time, there are many high paying jobs relating to the handling of data and information. But there are many other developments and changes for those who can be innovative and creative with the "stuff" of technology: switchboards and circuit boards, memory chips and processors. When I taught younger grades one thing my classroom always had in it was something I called a take apart table. I would get old appliances and computers, old VCRs and broken coffee makers and put them in this place. With a few simple tools, kids could tear these things apart and discover a few new things. But moving into older grades, I've lost this space in my classroom. Yet being small town kids, my students often come in and talk about tearing apart old snowmachines and other engines that exist in their sheds and garages, they are interested.

This might be another important way to harness technology and education.

Tags: technology, classrooms, make, craft, boingboing, lego, mindstorms