Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of
all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

- Maker Faire website

Maker Faire was attended by kids of all ages this weekend. And this year, for the first time since it began in 2006, Maker Faire offered a sneak preview to 500 teachers, students, and homeschool families during Education Day on Friday [my preview post].

Maker Faire embodies a few Map trends besides Do-It-Yourself. The homegrown, grassroots aspect of many of the projects point to both A New Localism and Distributed Innovation. One of the themes of Maker Faire is that if you can’t open it up and change it, it’s not yours - there’s a definite preference for open-source software and the ability to open everything up for tinkering and modification, suggesting Open Economy Principles and Deep Personalization.

And the Unbundled Education, Visible Community Learning, Kinetic Learning in Context, and Personalized Learning Plans opportunities at Maker Faire are endless! This event is all about participation and exploration and self-discovery of physical, tangible, eye-opening experiences.

I took a video camera to Education Day and went back for more fun and learning on Saturday. Here are a few videos and photos of events and exhibits:

In this video, kids play with a walking, talking robot that really loves their attentions:

This quick video shows an example of one of the homemade costumes on display by attendees:

In these two videos, several hundred spectators gathered to watch a pair of labcoated Makers drop a whole bunch of Mentos candies into a whole bunch of 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke to create a beautiful and messy display of physics in action. Part I includes the introduction and explanation, and Part II is the demonstration.

Part I:

Part II:

Every corner of the San Mateo fairgrounds held some new, weird, clever surprise - from the steampunk tractor and house on wheels to power tool drag races to robot wars to giant tesla coils and homemade musical instruments. And everywhere I looked, kids were running, skating, pedaling, and motoring from one wonder to the next.

Unfortunately, the same kids (and adults) that eagerly spent their weekend engaged in experiential learning are the same kids that are bored at school studying some of the same topics. With money channeled towards satisfying standardized experiences, few schools are able to provide learning experiences that are personalized, creative, engaging, and interactive.

The founders of Maker Faire recognize this problem. From the press release:

With budget cuts hitting schools nationwide, classes like shop, art and home economics are sadly disappearing,” lamented Maker Faire founder Dale Dougherty. “As a result, today’s students are less capable of working with their hands. These hands-on skills are absolutely vital to engineers, scientists, mechanics, chefs, and hundreds of other essential professions.”

Maker Faire combines the best elements of science fairs and live demonstrations, and invites spectators to get hands-on and become Makers - creators and shapers of their world and of their learning. These are the children that will flourish in a future of VUCA Communities and Extreme Diversity, and successful in the future that no child passed through our industrial press of education can hope to match.

As one high school student asked, “This is so much fun. Why can’t we do this kind of stuff every day?”

Hang in there, kid. You can do this kind of stuff every day - but you’ll have to wait until after you take that test and get out of class. Or until Maker Faire 2009.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Event, Grassroots Economics, Strong Opinions Strongly Held. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.