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Kids Inventing to Learn
by Ed Sobey
Who are the most eager lifelong learners you know? Some of the most eager are people whose lives or careers depend on their learning skills. These include inventors, scientists, and artists. Each applies what they learn to their creative pursuits. Their passion for creativity and discovery fuels their quest for understanding.
We believe that people, especially kids, learn optimally when we transform them from students into inventors, scientists, and artists. Once the transformation occurs, they take responsibility for their learning and exhibit a passion that didn't exist before the transformation.
The "we" is Kids Invent! at California State University, Fresno. We've been around since 1997.
Axioms of inventing to learn
Without thinking, learning doesn't occur. The longer students think about a subject, the more they will learn. So our job is to get them to think about the subject for as long as possible.
To get students to think about the subject, we challenge them to solve a problem. We want to get them to invest their creative energies in solving it. Once they do, they will protect their investment by learning whatever it takes to meet the challenge.
We challenge kids with the problem of inventing new toys. They get to pick what type of toy they will invent. Once they envision the toy, they own the problem and take responsibility for learning what they need to make it. Our responsibility becomes to help them find resources and learn skills, and to ratchet up expectations by introducing new elements of the challenge as they proceed.
We chose toy inventing because kids are experts on toys and the problem of inventing toys grabs their attention quickly. Also, toy inventing allow us to foster learning in several disciplines: technology, science, and business. Kids Invent Toys is an outreach of the Craig School of Business at CSUF. In other programs we have successfully applied the concept of inventing to learning a single discipline, science (see Young Inventors at Work! Learning Science by Doing Science in the references below).
Optimal learning
We believe learning occurs optimally in the open environment of an inventor's laboratory. In such environments kids learn because they want to learn, and they exert their incredible energies both to complete their projects and to learn the skills and information they need. The principle role of the educator in this environment is to provide appropriate challenges. Challenges that engage people have set characteristics. They sound like fun; inventing toys certainly achieves that. The challenge must be doable within the skills, resources and time available. But, the challenge can't be a slam-dunk or follow a cookbook solution. School science labs often fail because they aren't inquiry based, at least not based on the questions the students have. In too many labs, students follow the recipe to see if they get what "you're supposed to get." If not, they did something wrong. Hardly the environment that leads to "accidental inventions" like Teflon and vulcanization.
The challenges must have clear goals. In solving the challenges, teams must have control over their designs and methods. Without control, it is your solution, not theirs.
Feedback is immediate. Participants know when they have a great new idea and don't need external evaluations to feel good about their project.
It is not a coincidence that these characteristics of the inventing laboratory are the same as those for any enjoyable experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience) describes the nature of enjoyable experiences, experiences that people do for the sheer joy of doing them. He calls these "autotelic" experiences or optimal experiences. Our goal is to make learning an autotelic experience.
By structuring the learning environment as an inventor's laboratory, we provide students experiences they want to continue. That is, they don't want to stop working on their inventions and don't want to stop learning the skills and knowledge they need to make their inventions work.
Activity
Kids Invent Toys has been applied most often as a week-long summer program, but is now being used as an after-school and in-school curriculum. You might expect kids (in grades 4 - 8) to go home at the end of each Kids Invent Toys day and either kick back with some tube time or play with friends. Instead, we often hear from parents and the children that they spent the evening working on their invention. Sometimes they recruit friends, parents or other adults to help. We claim that recruitment expands the learning beyond the participant to everyone who helps at home.
So kids who spend seven hours a day in camp inventing go home and work more on their projects. The time they spend thinking about their project and learning extends far beyond the time they spend in camp. Some, but certainly not all, continue working after camp has ended.
Learning
What do kids learn? We are convinced that they can learn nearly anything, and learn it optimally, when structured in terms of inventing and creative problem solving. With Kids Invent Toys the learn how to use hand tools, how to make oral presentations, how to create web pages, how to design display ads, how to write business plans, how to invent, how to structure group creative problem sessions, and how to work in teams. They also expand their self-confidence in understanding technology and they learn about intellectual property rights and the toy industry. In a week.
Evaluations
Student oral and written evaluations of their experiences are overwhelmingly positive. Parents gush. We recognize the need for formal evaluation and invite interested parties to contact us about undertaking this project - it will be a grand challenge.
Further Reading and ReferencesCsikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow - The psychology of optimal experience. 1990. Harper and Row.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity - Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. 1996. Harper Collins.
Eichelberger, Barbara and Connie Larson. Constructions for Children. Dale Seymour Publications. 1993. A variety of fun project ideas for younger kids.
Pfiffner, George. Earth-friendly Toys. John Wiley. 1994. Ideas for making toys and games from recyclable stuff. Sobey, Ed. Inventing Stuff, Dale Seymour Publications. 1995. Provides background on the inventing process for kids with information on brainstorming, making mockups, and what to do with completed inventions.
Sobey, Ed. Young Inventors at Work! Learning Science by Doing Science, Good Year Books, 1999. Activities to challenge students in upper elementary and middle schools, and stories about inventors.
Sobey, Ed. Invention Contests: How to Enter and Win, Enslow Publications, 1999. The guide to entering invention contests.
Sobey, Ed. Fantastic Flying fun with Science, McGraw-Hill, 1999. Building flying toys and demonstrations of the principles of flight.
Sobey, Ed. Wacky Water Fun with Science, McGraw-Hill, 1999. Science demonstrations and water toys to build.
Related books with science activities:
Sobey, Ed. Just Plane Smart, McGraw-Hill, 1998.
Sobey, Ed. Car Smarts: Activities for the Open Road, McGraw-Hill, 1997.
Sobey, Ed. Wrapper Rockets and Trombone Straws: Science at Every Meal, McGraw-Hill, 1996.
Ed Sobey lives in Redmond, Washington. He develops science and inventing programs for use in classrooms, informal learning centers, and television. He has directed five museums, including Inventure Place, and teaches Museum Management at the University of Washington. Contact him at sobey@gte.net .
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