Students from King Middle School in Portland, Maine, explain the importance of looking closely in a maker-centered classroom.
Video by Alex Coppola

Students from King Middle School in Portland, Maine, explain the importance of looking closely in a maker-centered classroom.
Video by Alex Coppola
Synthesizing recent conversations between AbD and the Oakland Leadership Team, AbD researcher Andrea Sachdeva proposes a values-based stance on documentation and assessment in maker-centered learning.
The Agency by Design Inquiry Cycle has been designed to support educators in the processes of designing, documenting, assessing, and reflecting on maker-centered learning. This tool was collaboratively developed over time, and formally prototyped with cohorts of maker educators in two locations: Oakland, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this paper, Agency by Design researchers Jessica Ross and Edward P. Clapp loosely use the structure of the Inquiry Cycle to describe the iterative process of developing this tool, along with some suggested implications for practice. Throughout the piece, we share the experiences of our teacher partners as they grappled with this tool—tweaking, hacking, and remixing it—as they explored its potential for designing, documenting, assessing, and reflecting upon their work in the maker-centered classroom.
这个思维习惯鼓励学生慢下来,仔细地观察一个系统。通过这样帮助学生更好地认知具体系统里无论是直接相关还是不直接相关的人物。
An easy reference handout of the Agency by Design Framework for Maker-Centered Learning.
Participants at the Arts Education Partnership National Forum consider the role of the arts in maker-centered learning experiences.
The maker movement is no doubt still trending. But what’s driving this resurgence in the inclination to make? And is it a part of a larger socio/economic shift to a shared, participatory culture?
这个思维习惯鼓励学生先练习把思想发散,为一件物品/系统思考各种新的可能性。然后再鼓励学生把新想法融合起来,决定一个有效率的方法去建立,修缮,打破物件/系统原貌,或者是重新设计一个物品/系统。
This tool is connected to the Agency by Design Making Moves. The Making Moves identifies three maker capacities that support a sensitivity to design, along with their associated learning moves. Here you’ll find three observation sheets, one for each of the maker capacities: Looking Closely, Exploring Complexity, and Finding Opportunity.