I just rewatched John Seely Brown’s short video “Tinkering As A Mode of Knowledge Production” http://bit.ly/l0usP3. I recommend it. Tinker is such a good word. A quick dictionary check found: to fiddle with, adjust, fix, try to mend, play about with, fool with, futz with; tamper with, interfere with, mess about with, meddle with. Ask yourself; in what classes in school did you get to tinker? If not, literally, with things, then with ideas. If you are a teacher, ask yourself how students get to tinker in your class. If not, why not? Thinking about what Brown has to say reminded me about a former student who certainly qualifies as a tinkerer. I’ve written about him before on this blog: http://bit.ly/m647GW. Tinkers, the fixers of things, were itinerants. How can we make student tinkerers itinerants across the curriculum, beyond the curriculum, and ultimately curriculum creators?
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Hi There, I just spent a little time reading through your posts, which I found entirely by mistake whilst researching one of my projects. Please continue to write more because it’s unusual that someone has something interesting to say about this. Will be waiting for more!
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