Agency by Design
Educational initiatives that emphasize making, design, engineering, and tinkering have been gaining traction in schools and organizations across the country. While maker-centered learning is not a new concept, recent and emerging trends suggest a new kind of hands-on pedagogy—a responsive and flexible pedagogy that encourages community and collaboration (a do-it-together mentality), distributed teaching and learning, and crossing boundaries.
Agency by Design (AbD) is a multiyear research initiative at Project Zero investigating the promises, practices, and pedagogies of maker-centered learning experiences.
Curiosities, Collections, and Curating: Considering Maker Portfolios
AbD researcher Jessica Ross elaborates on her role in the Open Portfolio Project by asking the question: What advice can we offer young makers as they document their making throughout their lifetimes?
Looking Closely: A Capacity of Sensitivity to Design
Students from King Middle School in Portland, Maine, explain the importance of looking closely in a maker-centered classroom.
Video by Alex Coppola
Documentation Templates
This tool is connected to the Agency by Design Making Moves. The Making Moves identifies three maker capacities that support a sensitivity to design, along with their associated learning moves. Here you’ll find three observation sheets, one for each of the maker capacities: Looking Closely, Exploring Complexity, and Finding Opportunity.
Mapping Systems
The practice of mapping allows learners to build and demonstrate their understanding of the parts, people, and interactions that comprise a given system.
Learning Walk
This practice supports co-inspiration and the cross-pollination of ideas during maker-centered group work.
Maker – Person, Identity, or Culture?
Agency by Design project manager Jen Ryan examines the use of the word maker and offers an alternative reframing for an emerging field.
Memorable Making Experience
A conversation starter and reflective activity for introducing young people and adults to making.
Partes, Personas, Interacciones
Esta rutina de pensamiento ayuda a los estudiantes a ir lentamente y observar de cerca un sistema.