The Art of Tinkering Workshop
October 8-10, 2024
This workshop is a three-day Professional Development session designed to support educators develop a practice and ethos of a tinkering pedagogy. This approach will support a new lens when designing activities, developing facilitation strategies, and building environments that can support your teaching and learning goals.
Discover tinkering as an approach to learning
Exploration, investigation, and making are at the heart of the tinkering approach, and many existing activities can be tweaked to support this kind of engagement. In this workshop we will provide tools for both practitioners and leaders to develop a tinkering practice that suits their goals and programs in order to make them more “tinkerable.” We will delve deep into the fundamental qualities of the approach, and developing a practice of reflecting and iterating. Here is what you can expect from three days spent with us.
Experience the tinkering process as learners
We have carefully designed and planned a curriculum of core activities that you will engage in as a learner. They showcase the range of phenomena, tools, and approaches that tinkering can span, but more importantly they are designed to support reflective conversations about the nature of tinkering, its fundamental qualities, and its relationship with art, science, and technology. They also build upon each other so that by the end of the workshop you will have gained skills to take your own tinkering practice to the next level.
Reflect on each experience as educators
Practicing tinkering is important, but each activity that we share is intended to reveal an important aspect of the tinkering teaching process.
We will dissect, deconstruct, and reflect upon each activity, and the learning that they support, through a series of carefully crafted prompts and discussion formats. Ultimately we are interested in surfacing what types of learning are best supported through making and tinkering, and how we can identify them clearly. Finally, we will share a framework we have developed through a partnership between researchers and practitioners that is a powerful tool to look at learning through tinkering.
Develop strategies for implementing tinkering in your practice
Whether you are a practitioner, leader, or administrator, we want you to come out of the workshop empowered with a set of practical tools to shift your practice further toward tinkering. The workshop is structured in ways that support a critical examination of your current practice and identify areas for growth, then brainstorm concrete ways to address those issues.
Participate in a global community of tinkering enthusiasts!
Develop long-term connections with your fellow workshop participants through our global network of tinkering educators; we typically have a mix of folks from different backgrounds and working in different contexts: school teachers, museum educators, after school practitioners, librarians, etc. Exploring tinkering in a variety of situations will offer different points of view and a more well-rounded understanding of this approach. You will also gain access to the larger community of practice that brings together a global network of educators discussing and sharing practical tips and broader issues around tinkering.
Cost and registration
$1,500 per person (50% off for teachers working in Title 1 schools) for three days of intensive collaborative work led by a team of Tinkering Studio educators and developers, with years of experience running workshops internationally. The fee includes:
- Breakfast, lunch, and snacks each day
- The Art of Tinkering book
- Supplies and materials for the workshop
- Access to our Materials database
- Digital activity guides
- Access to other relevant tinkering resources
This cost does not include travel, accommodations, and meals outside of the workshop.
Upcoming workshop dates: October 8-10, 2024. Please email Ernest Aguayo at eaguayo@exploratorium.edu with any questions about the workshop.