Designing seamless learning activities for school visitors in the context of Fab Lab Oulu

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p>Maker culture has expanded from its traditional niches (people with an interest in computers, programming and the digital world in general) to other, more general fields such as education, business and government. However, “despite the interest in the Maker Movement and its connection to formal and informal education, there has been little research concerning the direction it is taking, the opportunities it could present for education, and why” (Papavlasopoulou in Entertainment Computing 18, 57–78, 2017). In this chapter, we developed a pedagogical framework for seamless learning in Fab Lab activities based on the multiple levels of interactivity that different tools, activities and the contexts enable. The aim is to use age-appropriate activities and appropriate tools, as suggested by Blikstein (FabLab: Of Machines, Makers and Inventors. Transcript, Bielefeld, Germany, pp. 173–180, 2013). In this chapter, we introduce the theoretical principles of the framework—computational thinking, computational making and design-driven education—as a model to teach twenty-first-century skills. We also illustrate the pedagogical principles with a case study in a primary school (K-12) as an example of designing integrated educational activities to align with the maker activities being performed in the Fab Lab context.</p></div>