Category Archives: maker culture

What happens at an MIT hackathon

A nice summary video from The Atlantic, that showcases ‘what happens at an MIT hackathon.’ For me, what distinguished this video/event from the other typical coding/tec hackathons is that the event was called Hacking Arts. Their mission was to “ignite entrepreneurship and innovation within the creative arts.” Interestingly, most of the technological artifacts seemed like it would be more commonly found in a makerfaire.

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Makeology – books about maker education

Kylie Peppler, Erica Halverson, and Yasmin Kafai have edited two volumes (so far) about maker education.

The first book, Makeology Volume 1: Makerspaces as learning environments, focuses on “making in a variety of educational ecosystems, spanning nursery schools, K-12 environments, higher education, museums, and after-school spaces.”

The second volume, Makeology Volume 2: Makers as learners, “highlights leading researchers and practitioners as they discuss and share current perspectives on the Maker movement and research on educational outcomes in makerspaces.”

Both books were part of my literature review and were helpful as a snapshot of what’s happening in maker education in 2016.

Wired documentary on Shenzhen

An interesting documentary from WIRED called Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware. In particular, has some segments about maker culture/maker faires in China.

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The National Week of Making


[image from makered.org]

In June 2014, President Obama’s Nation of Makers initiative was launched and has resulted in the White House hosting a Maker Faire and the declaration of June 17-23, 2016 (THIS WEEK) as The National Week of Making. Maker Education emphasizes a multidisciplinary model of education that respects all subject areas in both academic and vocational education, evolving the tradition of a general education through making and creating with technology.