The Tinkering Fundamentals course will offer educators and enthusiasts an opportunity to develop a practice of tinkering and making. We see tinkering as a serious endeavor—one that is generalizable across content and especially good at interweaving disciplines in a way that leads to complex projects and individualized learning opportunities. Tinkering has recently been introduced into the educational field as a potential driver of creativity, excitement, and innovation in science learning. It is seen by many as an effective means to engage in exploring STEM concepts, practices and phenomena. Tinkering typically blends the high and low tech tools of science along with a strong aesthetic dimension that supports children’s (and adults’) self expression. NB: This is a hands-on course, so you will need several tools and materials to do weekly activities. You are welcome to purchase only what you don't already have—or even better try to scrounge them from surplus stores! We have put together a list of recommended materials, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/motion-materials For over a decade, the Exploratorium has been developing science-rich tinkering activities for both children and adults. We see tinkering as a fun yet serious endeavor—spanning many disciplines and content areas and fostering connections between art, science, and technology. Learners follow their own path to understanding by investigating tools and materials and exploring questions that interest them. This opens up a wide range of possible answers rather than any specific “right” one, particularly for teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) subjects in the classroom. This course centers on activities related to Motion and Mechanisms, which offer a wealth of opportunities for thinking through making. In this course, we won’t just show you how we develop tinkering activities; we’ll also delve into why. We’ll focus on three important aspects: activity design around specific materials, facilitation strategies, and environmental organization. We’ll also share some guiding principles and learning indicators we’ve developed that can help you integrate tinkering into your elementary and middle-school science program. Whether you’re new to making or a seasoned tinkerer, we hope this course will help you take the next step! OUR APPROACH TO TEACHING This is a hands-on workshop, not a lecture-based class. Participation is essential! We want everyone to be making and tinkering together: trying things out, asking questions, sharing ideas, and reflecting together as a community. This is a wonderful chance to tinker and learn alongside people from all over the world and from all walks of life, so don’t be shy! PLEASE NOTE: We have put a great deal of effort towards creating a supportive space that encourages exploration. We’ll give you a few ways to get started; prompt you to share your own observations and experience as learners, designers, and facilitators; and hopefully spark interesting conversations and discoveries along the way. While it’s not a requirement, we encourage you to take this class with a friend or colleague, or meet with other people in your area: having support or doing activities with others will enhance your experience and help you stay engaged. This project was funded by generous support from Overdeck Family Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
Inspiration: Arthur Ganson
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From the course by Exploratorium
Tinkering Fundamentals: Motion and Mechanisms
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From the lesson
Chain Reaction
A Chain Reaction machine is a deceptively simple concept, but one that allows for an incredibly complex and deep investigation into something we experience every day: the relationship between cause and effect. It brings all of a tinkerer’s skills to bear to improvise, build, troubleshoot, and imagine a problem and its solution!
Meet the Instructors
Mike PetrichDirector, Informal Learning Center- Karen WilkinsonDirector, Tinkering Studio
Luigi AnzivinoProfessional Development Lead
Tinkering Studio
[MUSIC]
The work that I do, the ideas that I have are really all,
it tied to the way something moves.
The gesture of objects and space.
That's always been very interesting to me.
That's been a foundational aspect of my desire to want to make
things is to celebrate and explore and to delight in the motion of things.
It's a very organic process of
exploration with every piece.
Partly because before I begin the sculpture,
I don't know exactly how to solve a problem.
So one of the joys and desires in making the piece,
in the first place, is manifesting in making physical
something that has been an idea that I have in my mind.
How does that work?
How is that going to feel?
What will it do?
If it's too clear, then there's not enough mystery, and
I may not make it, so there's always the unknown which is really interesting to me.
I would say that it's very connected to just childlike
play because that is also at the heart of it.
For me, is that it's just playing.
It's really just playing.
There is a goal, but the play is somewhat open-ended.
It's just play for the sake of play.
And then there's something as a result of, there's an object that
comes out of this process of interacting with the physical world.
I think naturally, I tend to want to go to unknown
places because that's interesting to me.
I think that when I'm stock,
it's because I'm not relaxed in the flow,
and I'm trying too hard.
So what I do when I'm stuck is I try to relax and
maybe move away from it, and things will percolate.
And generally, when I'm not sure of what's the next step,
because the building process and
the designing process is very organic, and it's very natural.
And when I'm in that very deep flow,
there's no way to be stuck.
Stuck just doesn't exist because the flow exists.
So stuckness is not being in the natural flow.
The process of making things for
me began when I was very young, because I was very shy.
I didn't really know how to communicate with people.
I would occasionally stutter.
I was really afraid a lot, and I found solace, and
I found myself in
private places, like in my basement, I could make things.
I found that I could make things for people as a way of expressing what I
felt about them, and I cared for them, and it was a safe way of communicating.
So very early on, I became a maker of things
as a way of communicating safely, or as a survival.
It was survival because I couldn't actually communicate that way.
I don't put the mechanisms in the box,
because the mechanism is an actor in the play.
It's a very important actor in the play,
because I don't want it to be a magic trick.
I don't want there to be any mystery as to how this is working.
Because if I make it a mystery,
then that becomes the idea, like that's the part of the subject.
How is it working?
Well, I'm not interested in that question, in this case.
I'm interested in how does it move, and how does it feel when it's moving?
Because that is the point of contact, that's the connection.
So the fact that everything is visible is critically important.
If you want, you can look at every part of that machine, and
you can see electric current coming into this little motor that's turning it.
And everything is there, everything is crystal clear.
But then, what is it doing?
Why is this little chair walking, so like in this way,
with this gesture, in circles, on a stone?
What does that mean?
When I made Thinking Chair, it was really a self portrait of my
own walking meditation in the woods near my studio when I was in Massachusetts.
I would go to the woods and walk our dog, and there was a particular
rock out cropping that I found myself coming to on the path.
And I would get to this rock outcropping, and
I would just begin to walk in small circles around this rock outcropping.
And every time I would make a circle,
it was I would be in a different place mentally.
I was in the same place physically, but it was a walking meditation.
And one day, I had the thought,
I want to make a piece that's really just a self
portrait of me on my walking meditation.
Many pieces start off where I am the puppeteer
exploring the motion of an object.
Like when I found this little abandoned doll on the side
of the road off of Highway 101 in California.
And I brought it back, and I started to manipulate it, and
it was just like, my God, I got so taken by the motion of this doll.
So here I am, the puppeteer.
The doll is the puppet, and
then I'm imagining what kind of machine would be required
to move this doll in this way to evoke these feelings.
There are never really any mistakes, there's always information learned.
That's how I see it.
For example, Margo's Cat was
a very circuitous piece in terms of its evolution.
Margot's Cat first started off as an idea for a little wire machine.
I imagined a little hand crank, a little delicate wire machine, and
then way up on top, there'd be this tiny little chair, and
then something that would, and a wheel.
And the wheel will be turning, and
there'll be things on the wheel that will cause the chair to move.
I found my way to making this physical piece
that we have and using a doll's house chair,
which seemed to be about the right size and scale.
And I found that if I put the chair
on the end of a long counterbalanced arm, and
the counter weight of that arm was a disk.
Then, I connected the disk to an axle which is holding the chair,
and limited the motion of the arm to only up and down.
Then a very interesting thing would happen.
Making the cat move in as simple
way as possible with the most absolute repetition.
The most straightforward monotonous mechanical repetition
in this case of the cat helps to illuminate the beautiful
organic randomness of the motion of the chair.
The first studio that I had was a desk in the living room of my apartment.
Right after I graduated from college,
I was living in this beautiful little solarium of a carriage house, and
it was really the only just a living room, and a kitchen, and a bedroom area.
But I set up my soldering table there, and so it was living room/workshop.
It was just one table.
So this studio is a chance for me to really set up and,
I think, work in a way that I've always wanted to but never have,
in that I'm giving myself the opportunity to set up
the work space in an efficient logical way, so
I can be more productive and more efficient with my building.
So right now, I'm taking my whole life of experience of making things and
looking at every process.
I'm thinking, okay,
what is the most efficient way to structure this part of the studio?
Where should I put these tools,
machine shop tools that need to be cleaner over on one side?
Wood tools that are messier are way over there.
Welding tools are in a different area, design sitting area.
Just thinking about that, thinking about processes.
There are many things that I have done over and over again without thinking and
not really paying attention to how much time I wasted.
And I will say that, yes, I've made a lot of pieces, but
I've also not been efficient with my time over the years.
And part of that, I think, is that I haven't really respected my process.
I haven't really given it the respect that it deserves to like, okay,
this is what I do.
So now, I'm really trying to honor the working process.
I love the constraints of the physical world.
I love the reality of what the physical world will show me and tell me.
And I love the exchange between my imagination,
which can be all over the place.
And how I think something will move, and how I think something will feel.
And then when it gets built, it shows me exactly what it does.
So all of my decisions are now made manifest, and it speaks back to me.
As it speaks back to me, then I observe and think, okay, well,
that's not moving the way I want, so I'll have a response.
So it's very much a conversation.
The making of every machine is really a conversation
between the physical world and my imagination.
[MUSIC]
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