Introduction for the Special issue on ‘Maker technologies to foster engagement and creativity in learning’

摘要

Making is a relatively new concept applied to describe the increasing attention on constructing activities to enable entertaining, engaging and efficient learning. Making focuses on the process that occurs in digital and/or physical spaces that is not always learning oriented, but enables qualities like problem solving, design thinking, collaboration, and innovation, to mention few. Contemporary technical and infrastructural developments, like Hackerspaces, Makerspaces, TechShops, FabLabs and the appearance of tools such as wearable computing, robotics, 3D printing, microprocessors, and intuitive programming languages; posit making as a very promising research area to support the learning processes, especially towards the acquisition of 21st Century learning competences. Collecting learning evidence via rigorous multidimensional and multidisciplinary case studies will allow us to better understand and improve the value of making and the role of the various digital and physical spaces. Drawing from our experience with the recent workshop of making as a pathway to foster joyful engagement and creativity in learning (Make2Learn), we present the state-of-the-art developments as well as the four selected contributions of this special issue. The paper further draws attention to the great potential and need for research in the area of making to enable entertaining, engaging and efficient learning.