toy hack

My toy hack project was relatively humble compared to the previous one—the scribbling machine. Due to some misunderstanding of the goal of the project, I deviated a little bit at first by dissecting my pedometer. I did find out how it works with its tiny circuit. When the metal piece attached to a thin string touches the metal part below, it forms a circuit so that the number of steps caused by your movements can be counted.

But then I realized that I brought a wrong “toy” to the MILL because I couldn’t combine it with other toys to create a meaningful new contraption. As a result, I would have to make do with a simple Hello Kitty “beauty pageant” out of a MacDonald’s Hello Kitty collection toy, which was drawn by a cute chopper without its rotor blade, since there was not many choices left for me to “hack” from.

But a simple hack project does not prevent me from reflecting on the implication of tinkerability. Similar to other tinkering projects I have done, toy hack is also a process of conversation with the materials. We have to “improvise with currently available materials to build or repair objects” (p.165) in this project. We start the project totally without a plan, but tinker from the “bottom up”. I had at first no idea what I could conjure up until I saw several Kitties, still kept intact in their original plastic wrapping. Then I came up a vague plan of doing something with it. After I found that there was a mini ruler folded within a hollow of the toy, I began to wonder what I could do about it. Then I kept looking into the box to see if there was anything I could use to stretch the idea. The process involved being stuck and unstuck too, with new ideas created out of a negotiation with tools and materials that were available. This is corroborated by Resnick and Rosenbaum’s (2013) observation of tinkerers with respect to their bottom-up approach: “tinkerers have a general goal, but they are not quite sure how to get there. They might start with a tentative plan, but they continually adapt and renegotiate their plans based on their interactions with the materials and people they are working with (p.165).”

Then, what exactly can we, or our children benefit from this bottom-up approach of learning as opposed to the traditional pre-planned top-down instructional practice prevalent in today’s school education? This enables me to link a small incident recently happening in our department. As there is a need for a faculty, LCLE is looking for a desired candidate. We were encouraged to attend the job talks presented by the job hunters. One of them talked about her research based on a maker space, built free for the neighborhood kids, most of whom were from low-income families. After the talk, I had a short conversation with a colleague of mine. She was a elementary school teacher before, and she very much questioned the “theory of the maker space” on the ground that if there was no instruction or minimal facilitation given to the children and just let them do whatever they like to do, that would be equal to the exoneration of the teachers’ responsibility. I didn’t argue with her but secretly wished that she could take this course to know more about the value of tinkering. As is pointed out by Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013), tinkering is still undervalued in today’s formal education systems where the emphasis is attached to “planning, teaching students to analyze all options, develop a strategy, then carry out the plan (p.166).” Planning can contribute to the skill of organizing our thoughts, behaviors and activities, but it is also necessary for us to see the importance of fostering our children’s ability to think and act creatively, the ability to “come up with innovative solutions to unexpected situations and unanticipated problems (ditto)” because we are facing a world that has been increasingly characterized by uncertainty and rapid change. Tinkering allows children to be better prepared to deal with uncertainties and changes in their future world of exploration. 

Reference

Resnick, M., & Rosenbaum, E. (2013). Designing for tinkerability. In M. Honey & D.E. Hunter (Eds.), Design, make, play: Growing the next generation of STEM innovators (pp. 163-181). London: Routledge.