An interview on Making with
An interview on Making with
Making is creativity at its best. It’s where problem solving, imagination, and a practiced set of skills come together to produce something new. Making is also very much about un-making, or in other words, understanding how to deconstruct something. So many times we’ve taken something apart in order to understand how it works, and from there developed new ideas around how to rebuild it, or create something entirely new!
Makers can be anyone with a curious mind and capable hands. They get a thrill from understanding how things work. It’s not about telling, it’s about showing.
The act of making takes great ideas out of your head and puts them physically into the real world where you can touch them, test them, and make them even better. It gives these ideas a life and purpose, sharing intellectual wealth and development with the whole world.
We're really fascinated right now by online design tools like CAD and Blockly. Right now, practically anyone can go online and download a design, customize it, program it, and cut it out. You don’t have to be a designer to design, so more and more people have the option to make their own cool stuff rather than having to buy some generic item at a store.
We have to connect learning with doing. Often kids are taught ideas, theories and facts, but they’re not given the opportunity to then test these out in a real way meaningful to them. Making requires hands-on learning and project-based learning, two highly engaging approaches that apply new knowledge directly to a task at hand. What would you rather do: be asked to learn something with no immediate connection or outcome, or be presented with a project you’re really excited about and then led through the skills development and knowledge required to complete that project? It’s an easy answer! That interest, excitement, and immediate application makes knowledge sticky, and that’s what making does for education, it makes it stick.
Different people make different sorts of things. However, the process of making is an activity that can bring diverse members of the community together through shared experiences, helping one another, and even making together.
Making brings more people to the table as creators of a world we want to live in, versus consumers of a world we observe. Big problems require a lot of people throwing time and talent at moving the needle, so the more people activated and invested, the better shot we have at big change.
Each interviewee can nominate who they would like to hear from next in the series and this is who Brent selected
John is a maker, technical/artistic problem solver, teacher, builder of quirky electro-mechanical contraptions, husband, and father of two. He hosted the Make: Television series on PBS, has worked in CG animation for 20 years, is now a producer at Disney Research, and writes f...