Young Children, Maker Literacies and Social Change

Although making—that is, playing, experimenting, expressing, connecting, and constructing with different tools and materials towards personal and collective ends—has characterised the everyday activities of many children and adults across cultures for ages, there seems to be no doubt that novel digital technologies and media are transforming and re-mixing more traditional maker activities, with new opportunities for communication, collaboration, learning, and civic engagement [...

Learning to Imagine

For the purpose of this discussion, we posit that there are essentially four overarching reasons we educate. They are: preparing students for democratic participation, providing access to knowledge and critical thinking, enabling all students to take advantage of life's opportunities, and enabling students to lead rich and rewarding personal lives. None of these can be achieved fully without attention to the role of imagination. While we acknowledge that not all would agree with our definition of purposes, our comprehensive vision, we believe, can serve our children and our society well

Makerspaces for Newcomers’ Language and Literacy Learning

In this paper, I present ways that makerspaces could support children’s language and literacy learning and engage young participants in this digital age. In addition, I argue that makerspaces could be a place for newcomer children to embrace their funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) and use them as a foundation to language and literacy learning

JRC Thinkers ‘N’ Tinkers Makerspace - Concept Note

In this concept note, we make the case for creating an in-house makerspace oriented towards the engagement of citizens in technoscientific innovations: the JRC Thinkers ‘N’ Tinkers Makerspace. The idea behind the makerspace is to have a space located in the premises of the JRC that promotes critical thinking and tinkering about technoscientific issues relevant for policy files focusing on their societal implications. We view it as a safe space where we can promote dialogues with civil society through engagements that move beyond discursive methods.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio

Futures of Work: Perspectives from the Maker Movement

The work presented in this report attempts to explore other realms about the future(s) of work beyond the strongly driven narrative of digital transformation. We have addressed one particular grassroots community, the Maker Movement, which is de facto enabling new models of education, collaborative work, and manufacture. Movements like the Maker Movement can be inspirational of policy making in areas of great complexity and uncertainties as work, employment, jobs are. We suggest that debates about futures of work need to mobilise the imagination, insights and expectations of wide ranges of society. Policy making should be nurturing necessary studies, experiments and conversations until some resilient ideas are found.JRC.I.2-Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Polic

WaaZam!: supporting creative play at a distance in customized video environments

We present the design, and evaluation of WaaZam, a video mediated communication system designed to support creative play in customized environments. Users can interact together in virtual environments composed of digital assets layered in 3D space. The goal of the project is to support creative play and increase social engagement during video sessions of geographically separated families. We try to understand the value of customization for individual families with children ages 6-12. We present interviews with creativity experts, a pilot study and a formal evaluation of families playing together in four conditions: separate windows, merged windows, digital play sets, and customized digital environments. We found that playing in the same video space enables new activities and increases social engagement for families. Customization allows families to modify scenes for their needs and support more creative play activities that embody the imagination of the child

Proceedings of the ANR ​#CreaMaker​ workshop: co-creativity, robotics and maker education.

International audienc