Maker Education is Our New Way of Learning

Knowledge. According to the dictionary, knowledge means facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It also means awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

Learning. In ancient time, learning means listening to men with wisdom in the hope that the wisdom is transferred to the pupils. We also know learning as a process of gaining wisdom, and wisdom means knowledge.

There are many different ways of learning. There are many different stages of learning. And naturally, each person has different pace of learning too. Some people are visual learner, some are auditorial learner. Some people needs fully hands-on learning, some just simply knowing the theory and go along with it. Either ways, there is one thing that every learner needs to learn: FAIL.

As homeschooler’s mom, fear of failings is something that I’m facing everyday. Fear to fail in providing a good living or good education for the kids. Fear to fail in knowing weather homeschooling is indeed the right choice for my kids. I even fear to fail in admitting myself is fearing of all those.

But today I went to the Maker Conference at Singapore Maker Extravaganza, and get strongly reminded. That we do need to learn to fail. I need to let my kids learn to fail. It is from their mistakes and failings, they’re learning. Our failings will ended up as failure unless we learn to get back up and try again. Socrates once said “Falling down is not failure. Failure comes when you don’t get up where you have fallen”. My kids’s failings can be their stepping stones to their goals. As they’re failing, they know how to modify their ways. As they’re failing, they know what works and what doesn’t.

Along with our homeschooling journey, I realize that teaching and learning is no longer a simple linear process in which kid’s failure or success is measured by scoring numbers showing what the kids know and what they don’t. But learning has become a complex multilayered process that includes positive emotions about trying, building resilience, relationships, interests, disturbances, and regardless of all of those, still continuously searching ways to their goals.

My kids do not learn to solve problems over a short period of time, sitting behind desk or just in front of a computer. They need to adapt in social needs and situations that replicate real life. My kids deserve opportunities to fail as well as to become innovative, creative and resilient. My kids will get facilities, resources and opportunities they need to learn to communicate their ideas to others.

Being a maker will let the kids learn to fail. Being a maker, will let the kids grow as self-sufficient learners. Maker education is the new way of learning.