Maker education — a combination of progressive, project-based pedagogies and environments rich with materials and technologies to help children create and invent — seems like a perfect antidote to the feelings of powerlessness induced by the COVID pandemic. Or as University of New Mexico computer scientist Leah Buechley put it at the recent ninth annual FabLearn Conference, “The most important component that constructionism brings to communities is the emphasis on student agency, engagement and interest.”
In welcoming 370 attendees from 31 countries, Teachers College faculty members Paulo Blikstein and Nathan Holbert, who co-chaired the conference along with Buechley, said that the conference’s theme, “Making as Resistance and Resilience,” was chosen in 2019 to address the “turmoil, chaos and change of that year.”
“Little did we know how much more…
