Tinkering School
| Tinkering School | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| California | |
| Information | |
| Motto | think, make, tinker |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Opened | 2005 |
| Website | Tinkering School |
Tinkering School is an educational program created by Gever Tulley in California and is a registered trademark of Tinkering Unlimited. Tinkering School uses an engineering context as a metaphor for life: providing children real tools to solve real problems in the real world. Tinkering School says that it is about recovering some of the intellectual and physical freedom of childhood in previous generations, but it isn’t an exercise in nostalgia; it is very much about empowering children with interpersonal, problem-solving and technical skills that will help them succeed in the 21st century. Tulley feels that children benefit from playing with things that some parents consider dangerous. He believes it makes children more adept and safer to have real experiences.
One aspect of Tinkering School is a sleepover summer camp where children come and participate in projects. The projects are based on exploration and experimentation. Making use of various materials, students are encouraged to develop projects through which they develop skills such as creativity, communication and working in groups. The children spend an entire week inventing solutions, working on projects, testing their creations, and also having fun.
A core aspect of the Tinkering School pedagogy is the idea of a "projectory." A simple mashup of the notions of “project” and “trajectory," a projectory is a project that leaves the child on a trajectory that extends the experience beyond the end of the project. This is combined with the notion of “escape velocity”. The escape velocity of a project is a measure of the participant's engagement and the resistance that the project offers to further exploration after it is built. A perfect project is one that has very high engagement (which you can measure by how easily distracted they are during the project) and very low resistance to further exploration.
Several affiliate programs have focused their activities on day camps and weekend workshops, rather than sleepover summer camp. While the projects themselves may be smaller, the projectories are no less impactful.
Computer scientist Gever Tulley founded Tinkering School in 2005, hoping to learn how children become competent, and explore the notion that children can build anything, and by building, learn anything. A core principle is to put tools in the hands of 8 year olds, and, using real tools and real materials, building big things. Since 2005, the kids have built all manner of projects, from a roller coaster with 100 feet of track, to a bridge made of plastic shopping bags, to a sail-powered railroad car.
Collaborators are the adult participants in the projects. They provide support, guide the project, and collaborate with the children in the discovery of a solution.
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Wikipedia