Kids and Caretaker Workshop, GoodLab, Berlin
The workshop was held as part of the open workshops’ series of the goodlab, the sustainability makerspace of the digital education Startup “junge Tüftler:innen”. The target audience for these open workshops are families, caretakers with kids. The Critical Making workshop was attended by eight adults and eight kids in the estimated age between
8 – 15 years.
In the following, we will describe our most striking observations gathered from participants’ interactions during the workshop and summarize the key conclusions.
Variegating levels of tech understanding by participants can greatly affect experience.
Among the participants were a senior man with his grandson. The senior immediately complained about technical aspects of the torch kit and expressed that he does not think that this is going to work. He made it clear that he is experienced in electronics and questioned the technical concept of the torch. He asked the workshop tutors questions regarding the technical setup and was visibly unsatisfied with their answers. The senior then asked for tools to measure some parameters of the electric circuit to find it out for himself. At the end of the workshop, they were the only participants without a working torch and blamed it on the unprofessional design. During the workshop, the tutors observed they never asked for help and also did not follow the instructions because “they knew how it should work”. It was apparent that while all other groups around them were having fun and played around with the copper tape, they blocked themselves by their tenseness.
Working with constraints can be frustrating.
In the beginning, a similar observation was made with another pair of participants, a father with his daughter. The middle-aged man immediately asked for more tools to build the torch. He was visibly disappointed when we could not provide them, and it seemed like we failed his expectations. After a while into the workshop, however, it seemed to engage more with the concept and eventually started helping other groups. They both had a great time.
Asking for help is key for all ages.
In general, what could be observed was that the caretakers took the lead while building the torch. They seemed to think that their kids were not capable to build the torch on their own. Some kids also left to stroll around, showing signs of being visibly bored because their caretakers were basically building the torch for them. However, some of them asked frequently for help before even trying themselves.
This article describes our encounters and findings from a series of workshops that were designed to explore ways to integrate Critical Making within the educational system as part of the project’s participatory action research methodology.
Keen to learn more? Read about our team’s encounter at the network meeting of mobile FabLabs in Brandenburg.
Critical Making 