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Date: 06/08/2022
Resource Category: Conference Proceedings
Children’s and parents’ spatial language use (e.g., talk about shapes, sizes and locations) supports children’s spatial skill development. Families use spatial language during playful construction activities. Spatial language use varies with construction activity design characteristics, such as the activity’s play goals. What is the connection ... »
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Date: 05/17/2022
Resource Category: Conference Proceedings
Informal educational activities, such as tinkering, can be beneficial for children’s engineering learning (Bevan, 2017; Sobel & Jipson, 2016). Storytelling can help children organize and make meaning of their experiences (Brown et al., 2014; Bruner, 1996), thereby supporting learning. We examine whether digital storytelling activities during ... »
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Date: 05/17/2022
Resource Category: Conference Proceedings
Informal educational activities, such as tinkering, can be beneficial for children’s engineering learning (Bevan, 2017; Sobel & Jipson, 2016). Storytelling can help children organize and make meaning of their experiences (Brown et al., 2014; Bruner, 1996), thereby supporting learning. Digital storytelling, in which narratives and reflections ... »
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Date: 01/13/2022
Resource Category: Report
This document is aimed primarily at Informal Learning (IFL) educators working with adult learners from disadvantaged and underserved communities, who wish to: exploit the inclusive nature of Tinkering to create engaging and relevant STEM learning experiences for adult learners and their families better understand how and why collaboration and co- ... »
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Date: 12/01/2021
Resource Category: Research Case Study
Making experiences and activities are rich with opportunities for mathematical reasoning that often go unrecognized by both participants and educators. Since 2015, we have been exploring this potential through the Math in the Making initiative. The work focuses particularly on children’s museums and science centers, many of which have developed ... »
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Date: 11/04/2021
Resource Category: Conference Proceedings
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting. Our overarching goal is to better understand the particulars of how and why youth co-make in life-based and STEM-rich ways with families and communities, such that we can better infrastructure community-based maker programs in support of youth learning and well-being. ... »
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Date: 11/04/2021
Resource Category: Conference Proceedings
Our project focuses on iterative improvements to a cardboard-focused maker exhibition to engage more families in engineering practices. This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting. ... »
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Date: 08/15/2021
Resource Category: Project Descriptions
For many youth, gaining access to quality STEM (science, technology, engineering mathematics) experiences is a challenge. Inequity and underrepresentation of youth of color in STEM persist. The makerspace movement holds great promise in broadening participation in STEM among youth from underrepresented communities. Makerspaces are defined as ... »
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Date: 07/08/2021
Resource Category: Peer-reviewed article
Using a design-based research approach, we studied ways to advance opportunities for children and families to engage in engineering design practices in an informal educational setting. 213 families with 5–11-year-old children were observed as they visited a tinkering exhibit at a children’s museum during one of three iterations of a program posing ... »
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Date: 06/01/2021
Resource Category: Project Descriptions
Recent studies have advocated for a shift toward educational practices that involve learners in actively contributing to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as a shared and public endeavor, rather than limiting their involvement to the construction of previously established knowledge. Prioritizing learners’ agency in deciding ... »
Date: 06/08/2022Resource Category: Conference ProceedingsChildren’s and parents’ spatial language use (e.g., talk about shapes, sizes and locations) supports children’s spatial skill development. Families use spatial language during playful construction activities. Spatial language use varies with construction activity design characteristics, such as the activity’s play goals. What is the connection ... »
Date: 08/15/2021Resource Category: Project DescriptionsFor many youth, gaining access to quality STEM (science, technology, engineering mathematics) experiences is a challenge. Inequity and underrepresentation of youth of color in STEM persist. The makerspace movement holds great promise in broadening participation in STEM among youth from underrepresented communities. Makerspaces are defined as ... »