Regional network bringing innovation to the classroom
It began in a corner of The Children’s Museum as a small space where children could get their hands on sewing machines, LED bulbs, swatches of cloth and other common and not-so-common materials and explore, discover and create. Today, the “MakeShop” is a permanent room-sized exhibit, the popularity and teaching potential of which have far exceeded Jane Werner’s expectations.
Perhaps just as important is how the museum’s executive director came up with the idea in the first place. She got it from a Carnegie Mellon University assistant professor of entertainment technology, Jesse Schell, whom she met while networking with southwestern Pennsylvania educators, researchers, computer experts and others interested in applying their skills to innovative ways of helping children learn.
“We stole the idea from Jesse,” said Werner. “I had $5,000. I decided we were going to take the do-it-yourself, hands-on movement we were interested in and combine it with technology and see what happens when they bump up against each other.”
A lot of that has gone on over the last five years. What began within the Grable Foundation as a notion of bringing together the multidisciplinary talents of the region to rethink the way children are educated has blossomed into the Spark Kids + Creativity Network, an organized movement under the stewardship of the Sprout Fund.
Several metropolitan regions have rich cultural, civic and research institutions. But the idea in southwestern Pennsylvania is to get them to do what they typically haven’t done on their own – collaborate in a strategic way to create imaginative learning opportunities that are relevant to the technology-savvy children of the 21st Century.
The model that evolved includes a focus on formal and informal learning environments, research and development and entrepreneurial support. The network of collaborators has grown from a loose, organic movement to include some 60 community organizations and more than 100 active members ranging from video game designers to school superintendents. “We’re truly hitting our stride,” said Kathy Lewis Long, Sprout Fund executive director.
In recent years, the initiative has received national recognition both for its collaborative model and the projects that have emerged from those partnerships.
In the post-industrial Monongahela River valley, for example, the Elizabeth Forward School District teamed with CMU to create an Entertainment Technology Academy where students study the history of gaming and learn to design and program their own educational apps and video games. It’s part of a broad effort to reinvent traditional learning environments in the district that includes a new interactive library. In the Pittsburgh Public Schools, a kindergarten teacher worked with an artist-in-residence from the CMU Robotics Institute to create a classroom program that teaches young students about electricity and how to express themselves with technology by taking apart electronic toys and reassembling the components into new circuits.
The Children’s Museum MakeShop has become a blend of old and new technologies over the years with simple robotics and circuit boards sharing table space with sewing machines and clock-making kits. But, as the museum discovered, the program’s value lies not in the materials but in the relationships among children, parents and staff which working with the materials inspires.
“It’s remarkable,” Werner said. “People will sit down around a table and they will be hand-sewing something or soldering blinking lights, and they’ll work in parallel and feed off of one another – conversations you don’t usually find in museums.”
Those lessons, she said, are redefining the museum’s approach to learning. “I’ve been in exhibit design and managing museums since the 1980s, and I have to say this is the most excited I’ve been about the direction of the Children’s Museum.”