Getting Back to Hands-on
Posted by Madeline Slovenz Brownstone on August 17th, 2008
Last year, due to the fact that my technology classroom was shared by five different teachers, I had to change my 7th and 8th grade curriculum from MYP Design Technology to MYP Computer Technology. Part of me was very happy with the shift–all my students’ work was online and hence, on my lap when I was home evaluating their work, in class there was no mess, no debris, no tools to put away, no materials to manage. At first, I was happy and wondering why I hadn’t made that shift a long time ago. As the year wore on, I was feeling something was missing, and it was. Hands-on projects that were materials-based, projects that developed skills in handling tools and materials that inner-city kids rarely have experience using. So, here I sit, re-configuring my curriculum to get back to hands-on but be containable in a room that is shared my many different disciplines when the NY Times runs an article about Adobe corporation bringing hands-on experience to it’s software developers.
Part of corporate resistance to experimenting with hands-on activities comes from the difficulty of measuring the value of paying employees to, say, build a go-cart or a radio set while in the office. Yet educators say the benefits, even if intangible, are clear. “All your intelligence isn’t in your brain,” Mr. Burnett says. “You learn through your hands.”
At Stanford, the rediscovery of human hands arose partly from the frustration of engineering, architecture and design professors who realized that their best students had never taken apart a bicycle or built a model airplane. For much the same reason, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a class, “How to Make (Almost) Anything,” which emphasizes learning to use physical tools effectively.
“Students are desperate for hands-on experience,” says Neil Gershenfeld, who teaches the course.
–G. Pascal Zachary, in “Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands“ NY Times August 17, 2008
At the end of my 7th grade course last year, students asked if they would be building things next year. I sensed that they were yearing for the physical pleasure of working with their hands, and I am too. This year we will get back to Design Tech, for sure. I feel better already.
Image Credit: by andrew_j_w/,
Original at: http://flickr.com/photos/andrew_j_w/2642202581/sizes/s/
