Tinkering Fundementals (Coursera)

A while ago I was researching making and tinkering and came across ‘ Tinkering Fundementals: A Constructionist Approach to STEM Learning‘ and thought why not sign up. It had a scheduled start date so I’ve had a while to wait for it! In the mean time I’ve been trying out a few other courses and getting the equipment ready from the provided list.

The course started last week so be prepared for many tinkering posts 🙂

The course looks at tinkering as an approach to learning and I think will make me think more about what tinkering is and means to me as well as how to do it and lots of activity ideas – most are based on circuits which I’m looking forwards to because I hope it gives lots of engaging ideas rather than the dull activities I have come across before. I found circuits particularly dull when I was in school so anything to liven them up and make them a bit more engaging would be great.

As part of the course we are to keep a tinkering journal – Week 1 questions what our ideas of tinkering are and our past experiences.

To me tinkering is a bit like play. It involves (generally) open ended activities that people can do and explore ideas and build on prior knowledge as well as developing new knowledge by trial and error. There is not necessarily a set outcome from the activity but people are free to try out their ideas and amend them as much as they wish.

From a teaching/ public engagement perspective I’d expect to be a sort of facilitator, providing a considered and supportive environment for people to tinker in. Not necessarily there to tell people how to do something (unless it was a set skill – e.g. soldering) but to question and make people think for themselves, give people ownership of their tinkering and to support share examples if needed.

I hadn’t really thought about it before as ‘tinkering’ but a lot of the things I do could fall into this – at home and at work – from the crafting and sewing I do (especially editing (tinkering?) the patterns I use/ create) to the activities we have run on gallery at work.

I think I’m going to enjoy this course. 🙂

DIY Science

I’m a big fan of being able to try things out at home. Many people think that science is something that happens behind closed (laboratory) doors by people in white coats, but actually science is all around us. When we explore things and try out new ways of do things we’re experimenting. To me science is about having curiosity about the things around us and exploring and investigating how and why things work and how we can test things out and maybe even make them better.

I thought it would be fun to share some of my favourite things to try at home (and some new things I might try out too). Most can be done using things that you probably already have around the house. Some of these posts will involve making things – this is all very well but the real fun is in the testing out and seeing where you can take an idea!