Online Tools: Opportunities to Catalyze P–20 Learners’ Collaboration and Creativity and Lessons Learned from Makerspaces

Learners in P–20 settings with diverse abilities, interests, and racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds are ready to share their identities, skills, and knowledge in myriad ways. High-quality online tools can help by encouraging sharing that spans various modalities, disciplines, and communities. In addition to creating traditional academic products, learners can apply skills and knowledge from different disciplines and cultural contexts to create and publish visual art, video, audio, 3D models, and other products. In my experience as a teacher educator, teacher in P–12 public schools, and a parent of children attending public schools, I have seen learners thrive when using the following online tools:

• Artsteps.com Artsteps.com is an online platform for building and sharing virtual environments. These virtual environments can be for art exhibitions or other virtual events. There are both free and paid versions.

• Flip.com

Flip.com is a free online platform for video recording, editing, and sharing.

• Scratch.mit.edu

Scratch.mit.edu is a free online platform for the Scratch block-based visual programming language, which can be used to make sharable applications like games, animations, and musical instruments. Learners can choose to share the applications they create. Others can use the shared applications and, if they choose, copy and modify the applications’ codes to customize them.

• Soundtrap.com

Soundtrap.com is an online platform for audio production, also known as a digital audio workstation. Learners can collaborate to create and share podcasts, music, or other audio products. There are both free and paid versions.

• Tinkercad.com

Tinkercad.com is a free online platform for 3D design, where users can design and share 3D objects for virtual environments or 3D printing.

Online tools like those named above are helpful, but not sufficient, in creating equitable learning environments. Consider, for a moment, these kinds of tools in the context of makerspaces, which can be virtual or physical places where people of various ages and backgrounds develop digital and analog technological literacies. The maker movement has grown over the past two decades, with makerspaces becoming more common in public places and schools.[i] [ii] [iii] Makerspaces are “communities of practice”[iv] that can support creative, interdisciplinary, collaborative learning built around making activities as well as other social activities.[v] While makerspaces have potential as places for all students to collaborate and create, they can also be technology-centered, reproduce racial and gender stereotypes, and prioritize products over people.[vi] [vii] Eckhardt et al.[viii] and Lachney and Foster[ix] recommend that makerspaces improve diversity by employing culturally responsive pedagogy and making sure participants communicate and collaborate to engage diverse voices day-to-day, not just during special events.

To identify characteristics of successful learning environments, Zagal and Bruckman[x] compare a makerspace network started in the 1990s, the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network, to what they and Seymour Papert[xi] consider an ideal learning environment: Brazilian samba schools. They say learning environments should take on “characteristics of successful samba schools,” which are “flexibility to outsiders,” “existence of a public event,” and “diversity of membership (socio-economic, age, expertise, and race).” In my experience, I have seen these characteristics of learning environments support learning when structures are in place to facilitate collaboration.

Some structures for collaboration, including accessible platforms for sharing and feedback, are provided by the online tools named above. Learning environments that are open to outsiders, have public events, and have members of diverse identities and backgrounds can provide contexts in which the online tools named above can be catalysts for meaningful collaboration, learning, and creation. P–20 schools, after-school programs, and other learning environments can engage students, families, local experts, and online social networks to cultivate and celebrate learners’ expressions of their identities, skills, and knowledge using these online tools.

[i] Dougherty, D. (2012). The maker movement. Innovations, 7(3), 11-14. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/499244

[ii] Halverson, E., & Sheridan, K. M. (2014). The maker movement in education. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4), 495-504. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.4.34j1g68140382063

[iii] Peppler, K. A., & Bender, S. (2013). Maker movement spreads innovation one project at a time. Phi Delta Kappan, 95(3), 22-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171309500306

[iv] Halverson, E., & Sheridan, K. M. (2014). The maker movement in education. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4), 495-504. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.4.34j1g68140382063

[v] Peppler, K. A., & Bender, S. (2013). Maker movement spreads innovation one project at a time. Phi Delta Kappan, 95(3), 22-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171309500306

[vi] Chachra, D. (2015, January). Why I am not a maker. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-i-am-not-a-maker/384767/

[vii] Vossoughi, S., Hooper, P. K., & Escudé, M. (2016). Making through the lens of culture and power: Toward transformative visions for educational equity. Harvard Educational Review, 86(2), 206–232. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.86.2.206

[viii] Eckhardt, J., Kaletka, C., Pelka, B., Unterfrauner, E., Voigt, C., & Zirngiebl, M. (2021). Gender in the making: An empirical approach to understand gender relations in the maker movement. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102548

[ix] Lachney, M., & Foster, E. K. (2020). Historicizing making and doing: Seymour Papert, Sherry Turkle, and epistemological foundations of the maker movement. History and Technology, 36(1), 54–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2020.1759302

[x] Zagal, J. P., & Bruckman, A. S. (2005). From Samba schools to computer clubhouses: Cultural institutions as learning environments. Convergence, 11(1), 88–105. https://doi-org.avoserv2.library.fordham.edu/10.1177/135485650501100107

[xi] Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic Books.

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About the Author

Graham Johnson is an Adjunct Professor and Field Specialist in the Graduate School of Education at Fordham University. He will graduate with a PhD in Innovation in Curriculum and Instruction from Fordham University in May 2024. His research interests include arts education, STEAM education, special education, creativity, power, and culturally responsive and sustaining education. He was a music and special education teacher in New York City public schools for thirteen years, designing and implementing music and interdisciplinary courses at elementary, middle, and high school levels.

Contact: gjohnson53@fordham.edu