The practice of ‘flipping’ the classroom is intriguing because it opens the door to correcting the inversion we perceive in institutionalized learning environments. Flip the lesson plan, flip the teacher, flip the facility, flip the school-- I’m speaking about inversion in the sense of Plato’s cave allegory, everything is not only a shadow, but it is inverted. What should be up is down, and what seems like what’s best is often not.
Happily, I have been able to structure my learning environment in a student centric, project based manner. In some ways I have flipped the facility --a performing arts center-- the learners are responsible for designing and actualizing all aspects of the performance venue. But looking deeper into the structure of my ‘center’ I know it is heavily and essentially driven in a top down manner. Of course. This is an academic facility and it has programs to fulfill. In and of itself this is a vital and fantastic learning environment; hands on, connected, blended, experiential, problem-project and place- based. Flipping the institutional order, on the other hand, would look very different. It would move from a push scenario to a pull one. A truly flipped ‘center’ would be a place for learner driven programming and creation-- a place where learners can follow their collaborative vision quest and personal learning journeys. The users would drive which way the programming went. A very exciting scenario. But this is a very different scenario from most learning environments, classrooms, telecentre’s, etc.
Inverting the order of the learning environment is necessary for a truly ‘flipped’ learning environment, not simply learner actualized, but learner driven. This is the step to “Education 3.0” that Jackie Gerstein talks about. One way of characterizing this is along the lines of the constructivist approach, literally -- making of all kinds, is learning. Tuning my lenses, and looking at the ‘center,’ the learning environment as a makerspace, suddenly reveals new insights. The potential of what goes on, and what could go on, in a learner driven makerspace is opened up exponentially. A makerspace is user driven and follows a path guided by the materials at hand or provided. Naturally the place that this activity, the making, occurs in has an equally important role to play as the participants and the materials.
So I ask myself, what would this performing arts center look like if it was a ‘makerspace’? You can ask yourself about the learning environments you work in: what would the telecenter look like as a makerspace? What if it was driven by pulling in the things the users wanted, not pushed upon by what the salesman provided?
Makerspaces have been excited by the explosion of hackable electronic media and devices, such as the Raspberry Pi. While ICT’s are a critical component of the proliferation of makerspaces and hackerspaces, making is not confined to this. In a more ecological way the many interconnected systems that support a place of any kind all are made. The choice remains with the user. Making the makerspace, making the electricity, making the food, making the decisions of what to make should revolve around the needs of the users. In this way, the telecentre is very similar to a makerspace. The difference is that currently the computers and ICT infrastructure are programming the users, as they do in most schools. In a learning environment 3.0, the users would be pulling in what they wanted to learn and know-- making what they wanted or needed, programming devices that met their interests. Program or be Programmed.
The innovation that allows us to morph our learning environments into 3.0 learning (making) environments is user generated ‘vision’ in a connected world. This is precisely what my center or your classroom or a telecentre could become-- a connected learning environment where making occurs driven by the interests of the learners. And they will be most interested! The learning environment I teach in, a performing arts center in a small rural college, cannot shed its circumstances. It is part of an institution and the programmatic top down, curricular obligations that determine its nature and purpose. The tsunami of change in education encourages me to follow the needs of the learner. Using the educational philosophy of the makerspace, I appreciate my learning space in an entirely new way. I am looking for ways to enhance the making and to liberate the curiosity of the makers and the making that occurs within it.