16. Learning Science By Making

Chapter 15 talks about learning by trying things out and gradually overcoming small failures. Chapters 12 through 14 look at a lot of stories of working scientists, engineers, and mathematicians and explore how many of them started out by taking something apart or doing something to see what would happen. In this chapter, we discuss how to harness some of this to teach various subjects, either in a formal classroom or elsewhere. We admit that we have not ourselves taught K-12 students directly. However, we have been consulting on how to use the technologies described in this book and as such have helped teachers and administrators think about how to effectively deploy 3D printing, Arduinos, wearable tech, and the like in a formal educational setting. We have interviewed teachers at several schools for this book (and reported on some of those interviews, particularly in Chapters 5, 8, and 10), and so you have seen some of our anecdotal evidence. We also discuss learning by making at the community college level as a case study in Chapter 11.