Maker Education: experiences from schools and beyond

Rodrigo Rodrigues da Silva, Gilberto Vieira, Gabriela Agustini, Miguel Chaves For a few years now, schools and other learning environments around the world have been implementing maker spaces, hacker spaces and other co-creation spaces as novel learning environments. Project-based and student-centered learning are some of the methodologies with particular interest in children and young adults education that emerge almost naturally from those spaces. This session aims at sharing experiences, challenges and lessons learned from implementing non-traditional subjects in creative learning spaces in schools, alongside the perspective from less formal learning spaces as a counterpart. We will be asking and answering questions like: How can we bring those practices to contexts with limited financial and material resources? How can we empower local educators to bring those practices to their communities or develop their own student centered and project based learning environments? How can we make those learning environments more diverse and inclusive? How does maker education intersect with cultural innovative practices such as "gambiarra" in Brazil, "hacking" in North America and Europe and "jugaad" in India and Pakistan? The panelists come from similar backgrounds in maker education but work on different fields and contexts, therefore bringing diverse perspectives on the topic, ranging from private schools to public institutions and cultural centers.After attending this panel, educators, innovators and policy makers will have a broader understanding on the adoption of maker practices in the education field.