This week, I had the privilege and joy of participating in The Exploratorium’s Art of Tinkering Workshop. The three day session is all about what it means to tinker, and how to apply the mindset of a tinkerer in an educational setting. Having taught project- and problem-based learning for years, it was fascinating to compare and contrast these methodologies. In conversation with another educator, we also discussed the complex Venn diagram of: tinkering, engineering, art, and craft. There are lots of overlaps, but they also remain distinct in some interesting and subtle ways.

Over the course of the workshop, we did a lot of tinkering ourselves! We built electrical switches, made marble run machines, composed light/shadow boxes and constructed a giant chain reaction machine! These pictures show the array of light/shadow boxes we all made, both from the front and the back. You can see that the results were varied and really cool. And they were all made out of items that you could easily describe as “junk”! My group used a crystal plastic cup and a body-building trophy as its star players.

Throughout the workshop, we also spent a lot of energy reflecting on the experience, and I want to share my key takeaways here.

First, tinkering is fun. While I certainly had moments of frustration (more on that later), all of the educators and facilitators spent our days laughing, high-fiving and getting to know one another. Tinkering is self-directed, open-ended and low stakes, which really enabled each of us to bring our best selves to the experience.

The workshop brought up two key dichotomies for me, and balancing them is key not just to tinkering experiences, but to facilitating educational experiences in general. The first, is CONSTRAINTS v. FREEDOM. I came into the experience thinking of these as a zero sum game: adding constraints restricts freedom, granting freedom means removing constraints. Having spent the week tinkering, I now see how these two ideas act in concert. How, paradoxically, adding constraints can increase freedom and access. One common reflection from educators in the workshop was experiencing decision paralysis; people weren’t sure where to start on a project. Surprisingly, adding a constraint opened up their creativity, rather than restricting it. A specific example was on marble machines. Saying “build a marble machine – have fun!” seems like it would be low on constraints and high on freedom. In reality, it’s too open-ended. Adding the constraint of “you want your marble to take as long as possible to reach the ground” anchors the task in a concrete, measurable goal and opened the door to getting started.

The second dichotomy that we thought a lot about was PROCESS v. PRODUCT. In tinkering (as in project-based learning) the most impactful moments occur during the process: bringing a partner’s idea into reality, fixing something that stopped working, navigating the emotional roller coaster of success and failure. However, so much of what sticks around in long-term memory comes from the product. What did I make in the end? How does it compare to my goals? How does it compare to everyone else’s work? As educators, I think it is crucial that we not just espouse “process over product” but model and emphasize that in the structure of an educational experience. One way that the workshop facilitators did this was, during share outs, having each group highlight one thing that they wanted to work but didn’t. A suggestion I made to the facilitators, which I do in my classroom projects, is to do a celebratory share out before the deadline. This lowers the stakes for presenting your work, since no one is finished yet, and de-emphasizes the “wow factor” that many finished projects have (and others don’t). It also gives groups a chance to not just learn from one another, but to borrow ideas and implement them in the project itself.

On that note, my biggest takeaway from the experience was building and renewing my empathy for students and their experience in the classroom. On the first morning, the facilitators strongly encouraged us to put aside our teacher selves, and experience tinkering as a learner. My overwhelming feeling as a student in the workshop was one that I know is common among students: envy. Throughout the workshop, we had extended blocks of tinkering time on each project, and I had a hard time not comparing my work to those around me. I experienced a lot of negative self talk in those moments. Phrases like “mine sucks” or “I’m a bad partner” or “we’ll never have one as good as theirs” were constantly running through my mind. As an adult who has grappled with this for decades, I was able to put those thoughts aside and stay optimistic and focused. A middle schooler might have a different response to those feelings. When facilitating a tinkering or project experience for kids, it’s really important to honor and help students navigate those feelings.

I could say a lot more about material curation, laying out a space, or how to provide support during a tinkering experience, but I’ll stop here for now. It was an amazing few days at The Exploratorium! I am so excited to put these new ideas into practice in the Synapse Math Center, and beyond!