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Stanford FabLearn's Paulo Blikstein on the efficacy of maker ed: It's about process, not products

May 26, 2016
EdSurge
"There are some metrics that are recipes for failure,” says Paulo Blikstein. "One of them is to rely too much on test scores. There is math in music, for example, but learning music doesn't necessarily increase math scores."
By 
Patricia Gomes

The first time that Stanford assistant professor Paulo Blikstein studied the impact of maker activities on students' learning — way back in the early 2000’s — the Maker movement wasn't known as such yet. There were researchers out there who were interested in the concept, especially at MIT, but there wasn't a common language to discuss its pedagogical principles, and the cost of technology was still a barrier to experimentation in classrooms.

Back then, Blikstein was busy organizing Maker workshops for low-income students in Heliópolis, one of largest and, at that time, most violent Brazilian slums. With cutting edge technologies such as robotic kits and electronic circuits, as well as simple materials like cardboard and ribbons, he challenged the kids to solve real-world problems. In a 2011 TEDx talk, he shared, "They start to look at technology not as something magical, but as something that can be used to improve the life of others.

Fast forward to 2016 in Palo Alto, CA, 6,500 miles north of Sao Paulo. Blikstein is now the director of FabLearn, a program that engages a community of educators in disseminating best practices and resources around how to integrate the principles of Maker ed into formal K-12 learning. He has also become an advocate forequity and diversity in the Maker movement, studying what works and doesn't work in the project-based learning approach.

In an interview with EdSurge, Blikstein talks about efficacy in the Maker movement. He argues that success depends on what is being measured, that assessments should focus on the process and not products, and that school districts have finally embraced the pedagogy of Maker spaces. The problem now, he adds, is to prove that they are scalable and sustainable.

Read the interview with Paulo Blikstein on the Edsurge website. 

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