Getting Started with
Tinkering & Making
A presentation deck for training educators
on the Project MASH approach to
Tinkering & Making, from The
Exploratory.
90-minute version
Today’s explorations
Understand What Tinkering and Making Is.
Experience A Tinker.Make.Innovate. Activity
Discuss how you can incorporate Tinkering
and Making into the classroom
What is tinkering?
Tinkering is to engage with materials,
tools and ideas to construct knowledge
of their possibilities.
Tinkering is open-ended and encourages
self-motivated engagement in learning
What is making?
Making is learning by DOING. Making
develops the capacity for innovative
problem solving by engaging students in
hands on and creative skill building projects
that incorporate science, technology,
engineering, art, and math subjects.
Making is social. Making provides
opportunity to collaborate and develop
effective communication skills.
Making develops a growth mindset that
demonstrates how grit, flexible thinking,
perspective-taking, perseverance and
embracing failure leads to achievement
and success.
Learning environments that are rich in
tinkering and making require students to
develop the dispositions of designers
and innovators and build in them the
confidence and competence to solve
real world problems.
Tinker.Make.Innovate. is a three-step
process developed by The Exploratory
that combines tinkering, making and
design thinking to provide students the
opportunity to build the skills they need
to propose and devise innovative
solutions to complex challenges.
Tinker Phase: Developing Engagement
Make Phase: Building Skills and Knowledge
Innovate Phase: Demonstrate skills and
knowledge by inventing a solution to a problem
TINKER: Spy vs Spy
TIME 10 Minutes
GOAL Assess what you know about electricity and circuitry
and what you want to know about electricity and circuitry.
During this activity, you will construct your own
knowledge of how electricity and circuitry work by playing
with
Squishy Circuits and Circuit Blocks.
MAKE: Circuits Blocks/Squishy Circuits
TIME 30 Minutes
GOAL Construct a fundamental understanding of simple
circuits and parallel circuits
PROVOCATION
What kind of animal could you make that could be a
fun spy character. Use Squishy Circuits to add 2
LED
lights and maybe a buzzer.
PLUSSING SESSION:
Circuit Blocks/Squishy Circuits
TIME 10 Minutes
GOAL Share Ideas, Get Ideas, Get Support, Give Support
During the plussing session, you will come together
as the whole group to:
Share your experience with the circuit blocks
and the squishy circuits.
Share what worked and what didn’t work.
What you would do differently next time?
Ask questions of other participants.
Reflection Activity
What other provocations might you use for the
squishy circuit activity?
How else might you use the squishy circuit
activity in different subjects/topics?
Common Core and NGSS
TIME 10 Minutes
What connections do you see between
tinkering
and making and the skills identified in
the
Common Core standards?
Which Next Generation Science Standard
could you see fulfilled by the circuit blocks and
squishy
circuits?
Tinkering and making offer an approach to
teaching and learning that is at the heart of Project
MASH, a social network for educators, students,
and the organizations that serve them.
Visit www.projectmash.org for student activities
and projects from The Exploratory and others that
rely on these and other unique teaching strategies.