ENVIRONMENT

Revolution in learning happening through ‘high-tech play’

Terry Platz
For the Poughkeepsie Journal

Editor’s note: Dr. Stephen Uzzo, New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) Vice President, Science and Technology, is a researcher and developer of public programs and experiences on complex science at NYSCI and principle investigator for its newly opened “Connected Worlds” exhibit, the largest, most complex responsive environment ever created for a museum. Uzzo will appear July 16 at Beacon Institute’s Center for Environmental Innovation and Education at Denning’s Point in Beacon.

Brain imaging and other emerging computing technologies are showing compelling evidence that hands-on learning allows for deeper understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). With our nation’s concerns about keeping pace with the world’s workforce of STEM-related fields, what is the potential for the “Maker Movement” to replace the current model for learning in schools?

Although we know, that the brain is shaped through our experience, when it comes to sorting through incremental impacts of specific activities, such as making, we can’t just point to a spot on an MRI brain image and say, “there is that bit of learning.” Instead we have come to realize that thinking consists of a series of very complex networks of activity that affect many parts of the brain. Learning has many shapes and is more like a little society of creatures that interact in certain ways, and when we add to this how the nervous system interacts with the environment, we have a very big messy system.

Simply put, we know making and learning are intimately linked, and have been for a million years of human history, but knowing very specific effects on the brain will still take some time. As far as replacing the current models for learning used in schools, which is certainly needed, I think making is one important dimension. But the new model for education must emerge from understanding how people learn, both through understanding the brain and how we interact with our environment and each other. We have a long way to go for this, but the increased interest in how the brain works and how making affects learning are very important first steps.

Were the “Maker Movement” and other high-tech play revolving around hands-on learning to become the foundation of how we teach children in our schools, is it conceivable that a whole population of geniuses might emerge from those who had floundered with traditional academics?

There is a danger in drawing conclusions prematurely about the human dream of achieving a quick pathway to genius. Although a number of companies are profiting from the public’s desire to be smarter, the genius is in how as a species we survived after being cast out of the trees into a treeless savannah filled with hungry predators a few million years ago. We survived through wit and cooperation, mainly, as social beings: together we are geniuses as a species.

We have to recognize that it is this “crowd genius” that has allowed us to create and amass the important culture we have developed as human beings. What we CAN do is recognize that we know how to learn, but have just been looking for it in the wrong places. Schools are remarkable in that they are the only place where a group of different people spend hours together in the same room. The potential for ideas to emerge in group learning is missed because we forbid the very kind of social interaction in schools that leads to the kind of group genius I just mentioned. We can and must re-imagine schools as places for intense social interaction, innovation and creativity, and give up on the notion that we can characterize the complexity and dynamics of human learning through a number or letter.

Terry Platz is the director of communications of the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries of Clarkson University. Contact her at myvalley@poughkeepsiejournal.com; visit www.bire.org

If you go

What: “The Extended Brain: How Doing Makes Us Smarter” with Dr. Stephen Uzzo from the New York Hall of Science. He will talk about how a revolution in learning is happening through hands-on science museums, the maker movement, virtual games and “high-tech” play.

When: 7 p.m., July 16.

Where: Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, Clarkson University Center for Environmental Innovation and Education, 199 Dennings Ave., Beacon.

Admission: Free and open to the public. Advance online registration is requested.

Information: Visit www.bire.org