What is the Maker Movement?
“The maker movement is about making things that you care about, things that are meaningful to you and others around you.” (Resnick, 2016).
It’s about being more than just a consumer, as we humans like to engage with objects. Dougherty (2012) highlights the tinkering skills of yesteryear and a trend to rediscover these skills, this is all part of the maker movement.
Creating such as cooking, mechanics, gardening, clothes making, pottery, woodwork, IT development, knitting and hacking all personify the maker movement.
Good for Learning?
“When you’re making something, the object you create is a demonstration of what you’ve learned to do, thus you are providing evidence of your learning” (Dougherty, 2012).
- Learning hands on
- Constructivism
- Social learning
- Participative
- Networking: collaboration of professions to bring an array of specialist knowledge.
- Creative learning
- Solves real world problems
Maker IT Tools
Possibilities
- Learning: create it, understand it and develop it, rather than just understanding functionality. Especially important with technological advances and commonly our use of the interactive or front end part (ever opened up your phone to look at the inner workings?).
- Imagine when creating a guideline or testing technology in your healthcare setting if a collaboration of IT, engineer, scientists, inventors and other specialists contributed to the idea generation and creation processes.
Resources
D. Dougherty (2012) The Maker Movement. MIT Press Journals.
The Edge (NHS): The Maker Movement: A Model for Health Transformation? .
Resnick, M. (2016) The Maker Movement Isn’t Just About Making and Electronics. EDSurge.
