Over the last few years I have learned a lot about failing and learning in my professional and educational lives. I have created an infographic which is pictured below, showcasing an overview of my educational journey since I graduated high school. I have overcome a lot in the last five years, between transferring schools, switching majors, learning through a pandemic, and finally deciding to take a different path and get my masters after graduating. Not all of these decisions/ events have been easy and I have failed through many of them. But I have also learned a lot through my failure. I am now entering my first professional setting, starting a job at a corporate company. With all that I have learned through my failures (and successes) these last five years, I feel very much prepared to enter this world. While failing is scary in a professional context, I know that it is okay and allowed if handled the correct way. I have also come to learn that failing is okay and you can learn much more from failures than you learn from succeeding. I have not dealt much with the aspect of making in a professional context, but where I have witnessed learning through creating and innovating is through my MAET (Masters of Arts in Educational Technology) program. As you can see from my blog posts, I have started to create a lot, both digitally and physically, and looking ahead I will be continuing to learn through creation. One of the most important aspects of learning through creation that I have not found anywhere else is that “making and learning reinforc[e] one another in a never-ending spiral” (Resnick 2017). By receiving, listening to, and implementing feedback from peers/ colleagues/ instructors, we drive the creative cycle further. Feedback leads to the implementation of new ideas, sparks new thinking, and pushes learning even further. This “maker” education was not common when I was in grade school, or even in my undergraduate courses. It has taken me until graduate school to get a taste of this style of learning. My hope is that more and more educators will begin to implement this style because if it can have this much of an impact on a 21 year old learner, I imagine it would have even greater impacts on 10 year old learners. Touching more on the idea of “maker” learning, some of the articles I read this week really made me think about why more educators do not use this style of teaching/ learning more. When I look at the values of our society and look at the values of maker education, they do not necessarily align. In Richard Culatta’s TED Talk, he brings up multiple challenges that we face as a nation related to education. The first one is that all learners are treated the same despite unique needs. While Culatta discusses how technology can solve this, I related this to maker education and saw the ways that learning through physical creation could aid in providing all students with a learning experience created for and tailored to their own needs. The education system today places value on fast paced, uniform learning but it has proven to be ineffective. If the values of the system changed and allowed for more maker education, I believe there would be a large change in the ability of students to learn. Piaget and Papert believed that “knowledge is actively constructed by the child in interaction with her world” (Ackermann, 2011). These two theorists point out not only the importance of maker learning, but also its relation to constructionism and constructivism. In both my educational and professional contexts I have seen the emphasis placed on growth for success. Being involved in the educational technology world, my colleagues all value progression, learning from mistakes, learning through creation, and creating a more progressive and equitable learning environment for students. This week I have been able to reflect on how I can advocate for maker learning in my professional setting, and have seen the ways that my company is already succeeding here. References: Abb, M. (2022). Growing Through Education [Photograph]. Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget's constructivism, Papert's constructionism: What's the difference. Future of Learning Group Publication, 5(3), 1-11, doi:10.1.1.132.4253 Resnick, M. (2017). Lifelong kindergarten: Cultivating creativity through projects, passion, peers, and play. The MIT Press. http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/CulturesCreativityEssay.pdf TEDxTalk. (2013, January 10). Reimagining learning: Richard Culatta at TEDx Beacon Street [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0uAuonMXrg&feature=emb_logo
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