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  1. Eli Tucker-Raymond
  2. https://www.terc.edu/display/Staff/Eli+Tucker-Raymond
  3. Research Scientist
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. TERC
  1. Brian Gravel
  2. Assistant Professor
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Tufts University
  1. Ada Ren
  2. Research Assistant
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. TERC, MIT
  1. Aditi Wagh
  2. Postdoctoral Researcher
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Tufts University

Investigating STEM Literacies in MakerSpaces

NSF Awards: 1422532

2017 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades 9-12, Informal / multi-age

This video describes the Investigating STEM Literacies in MakerSpaces project (STEMLiMS). The project attempts to capture the literacy practices of making space participants across all ages and then use those practices to better inform the design of expansive learning environments. We describe how STEMLiMS uses the concept of Meshworking to advance young people's networks of expertise. The premise is that if people do not have access to information then there is no point in being literate. So, we are trying to answer the question: How do we expand young people's awareness of and access to information in making spaces?

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Discussion from the 2017 STEM for All Video Showcase (13 posts)
  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Lead Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 15, 2017 | 10:59 a.m.

    Hi everyone,

    Welcome to our video about our project STEMLiMS! Let us know if you have questions or comments specific to the video or to the project more generally!

     

  • Icon for: Deborah Silvis

    Deborah Silvis

    Graduate Student
    May 15, 2017 | 11:38 a.m.

    So great to see how you're designing around meshworking and making! What would you say about how lines in the meshwork look in year 1,2,3? Are things getting more or less entangled for participants I wonder?

  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Lead Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 15, 2017 | 03:17 p.m.

    Hi Deborah,

    Good questions...I would say that each year we have worked with less experienced people-who-make (Y1-adults who do it for a living, Y2-youth with varying amounts of experience, and Y3-a high school classroom where many youth had relatively little experience-especially in school) so in that way the lines have become less knotted. However in year 2, youth were working intensively with each other and their mentors and so those knots, particularly over the span of a single project, were more entangled than what the adults were doing in Y1, when maybe they would check in with others, get advice, and go back on their way. In Year 2, youth were constantly interacting with their own college mentors, with information from different places (e.g. adafruit, youtube videos) and with different adults. So the other thing I think we need to be thinking about is the idea of time (and meshworks) as multiscalar.

  • Icon for: Pati Ruiz

    Pati Ruiz

    Facilitator
    Dean of Studies, CSHNYC
    May 16, 2017 | 09:43 a.m.

    Hi, thanks for sharing your project! I liked exploring your website, too. Is there a place where I can find the STEM literacies you developed and mention in the video? I didn't find the link on your website.

    I also really like your explanation of meshworks and the focus on the very important question of "What can you teach someone else?" Your question "How do we expand young people's awareness of and access to information in making spaces?" is one that I am very interested in. I like your focus on helping participants develop their meshworks and am interested in learning more about any models or frameworks that you might find useful in working with participants. How can robust meshworks be modeled for students and how can they be given examples of their value?

    Thanks again for sharing! I look forward to hearing more about this project in the future!

  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Lead Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 16, 2017 | 10:53 a.m.

    Hi Patricia,

    We have written about the STEM literacies framework in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and it just came out in the May/June issue: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jaal.612/full. This paper shows the framework  applied to some experienced makers we interviewed at the beginning of our study.

    We have other papers on different literacies under review...stay tuned!

    Yeah, we have the same questions! We are iterating on an ongoing activity with youth in the high school to develop their meshworks. At this point, students seem best to be able to identify relevant sources of information, including people, when they run up against specific problems. Then, they know where to go if they have that problem or similar ones again. 

  • Icon for: Rowena Douglas

    Rowena Douglas

    Facilitator
    Program Officer; Asst. Executive Director; Director for PD
    May 17, 2017 | 06:23 p.m.

    Fascinating project!  Can you explain the fundraising literacy?  Is this an adult only literacy and if not, how does it apply to high school kids?

  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Lead Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 17, 2017 | 07:28 p.m.

    Hi Rowena, 

    Well, we debate whether fundraising is a literacy or not, but it certainly is a genre of literate practice. And then there are sub-genres. For instance, many makers make something that other people think is cool and then the maker realizes maybe they have something marketable and become  entrepreneurs through crowdfunding sources like kickstarters. Creating a kickstarter is its own kind of genre. As one of our participants put it, he came to realize that kickstarter was really about learning how to tell the story of your product. At the informal youth site we studied that is in the video, they have groups of teens kick off projects with "kickstarters," or pitches, telling the story of their project to a panel of "industry experts." At the high school, we have offered students the option of creating a "kickstarter" as part of a final assessment. There are other genres for sharing as well that students have done including how-tos as videos posted on youtube and as posts on instructables.com, a site dedicated to such things. We have not concluded the year, so we'll see!

     

  • Icon for: Lisa Samford

    Lisa Samford

    Facilitator
    Executive Director
    May 17, 2017 | 06:47 p.m.

    Really interesting and multi-dimensional project. I mirror Patricia's comment:

    Your question "How do we expand young people's awareness of and access to information in making spaces?" is one that I am very interested in. I like your focus on helping participants develop their meshworks and am interested in learning more about any models or frameworks that you might find useful in working with participants.

    Where are you going to go with this now that you have concluded year 3? Do you have plans to take this to middle school students, or to develop strategic approaches for educators to integrate this into the maker space?

  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Lead Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 17, 2017 | 07:34 p.m.

    Hi Lisa,

    Right now, we need to analyze all this data! We will share results in a way that has implications for teachers. So, we hope to be working with teachers on a broader scale and looking more closely at teacher learning. We'd also love to go back and reanalyze the year one space through the lens of meshworking. As you can tell by our representations in the video, this idea is emergent for us, but we think it can be robust for arguing the importance of relationship building with young people.

  • Icon for: Kathleen Schenkel

    Kathleen Schenkel

    Graduate Student
    May 18, 2017 | 10:25 a.m.

    Hi STEMLiMs Team! I really appreciate how you use meshworking to represent the distributed expertise needed for making. I also love the question of "What can you teach others?". What a great way to recognize individuals for what they know and to help them share that expertise with others. 

  • Icon for: Brian Gravel

    Brian Gravel

    Co-Presenter
    Assistant Professor
    May 18, 2017 | 10:39 a.m.

    Thank you, Katie! We have learned a lot from you and your colleagues at MSU and UNC Greensboro!

    We're very interested in this idea of sharing knowledge and expertise in making spaces and activities. Given the multimodal and multidisciplinary ways of working in making spaces, the range of skills and knowledge necessary to complete complex projects is often outside of one's own expertise. So, these spaces are well-suited for the sharing of knowledge, skill, and perspective among participants. We argue making spaces present opportunities for meshworks to knot together lines of youth’s lives: family, religion, crafting, school; and domains of expertise within hybrid activities like making. By creating representations of the meshworks existing in these spaces, we aim to support youth in developing personal infrastructures along which ideas, knowledge, and expertise can travel and be shared with others, both within these spaces and in other spaces in youth's lives.

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Kathleen Schenkel
  • Icon for: Minjung Ryu

    Minjung Ryu

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 21, 2017 | 09:53 a.m.

     Very interesting and important work! The framing that position the youth as expertise of their own ideas/information is empowering. The Meshworking seems to be a great tool to analyze youth collaborative learning. I wonder if there are different kinds of networks developed and, if so, some networks were more privileged than others. 

  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Lead Presenter
    Research Scientist
    May 22, 2017 | 11:09 a.m.

    Hi Minjung,

    Yes, we see it as a support for youth and also as a analytic frame for analyzing their interactions with others and information seeking practices. What do you mean by different "kinds of networks?"  I think depending on the strength of relationships, proximity, and goals different meshworks are formed. Certainly in my professional life I also tend to develop relationships with a few people that I go back to over and again. I also tend to privilege those who I hold in higher esteem. I think this translates to the classroom as well. We've found that students tend not to take advice from people who they don't think are as knowledgeable as they are. And in the case in the video, the team would often ignore the advice of the college mentor who you see describing how to power the LED. When an older, retired, and male engineer would say the same thing, the high school youth would follow his advice and the college mentor would throw up her hands in disgust. 

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.