“Tinkering is a fun way to learn about the world around you,” says Ryan in his new book “The Tinkering Workshop,” which comes out this week. Ryan’s book promotes creativity and playful experimentation with everyday materials for families, children, and educators. It’s a bright and colorful book with lots of ideas and inspiration for hands-on projects.
Tinkering is a playful way of learning, as Ryan says in this interview. A tinkering project should be open to what kids want to do, and iterative so that they can try things that don’t work as well as things that do. “There isn’t a set content goal that everyone is supposed to get to. That actually opens up many more pathways for learners to get excited about these ideas.”
I’ve known Ryan for many years from when he worked at The Exploratorium’s Tinkering Studio and I enjoyed the opportunity to talk to Ryan about his book. Ryan now lives in Germany but he will be at Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend where he will organize hands-on workshops as part of Wonderful Idea Co and talk about his book on the Make:Live Stage at 11am on Saturday. “The Tinkering Workshop” will also be on sale in Maker Shed.
Transcript
I am here with Ryan Jenkins who has a new book that he’ll be telling us about. And Ryan will also be at Maker Faire Bay Area on October 18th to 20th. And we’re looking forward to seeing him in person. He lives in Germany currently, but used to live in the Bay Area and worked at the Exploratorium.
So we’re going to be talking about tinkering.
Dale: How did you become kind of a guiding light around tinkering?
Ryan: Thanks Dale, and yeah, it’s great to be here with you. For me it definitely started in the sense that when I was growing up and when I was in school, I actually didn’t feel like I could do science.
You know, I didn’t feel like science was for me. I avoided those classes when I was in high school and university. I thought that it was very rigid, that there was only one answer, that, um, I don’t know, that it was kind of really limiting in, in the outcomes. And kind of by a whim, I applied for a job at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, working as a explainer, so helping out the school groups.
Over time, being there, working with artists and educators and makers, I started to, started to understand that science is a way of understanding the world, a way of figuring things out for yourself, um, that there is a lot of creativity and collaboration that, that goes into that, um, but I don’t know, I think for me, one of the reasons why I got into tinkering is because I felt like I couldn’t do science when I was a kid.
So whenever I hear that, like whenever I hear a kid say, Oh, I’m not good at science or, Oh, I’m bad at, you know, I say, no, let’s see if we can find a way that we can feel like this is something that is fun and interesting to do.
Dale: I would say that maybe traditionally people in science like STEM have used the word tinkering in almost a disparaging fashion. You know, they’re just tinkering, meaning they’re just doing stuff without knowing what they’re doing. There’s no hypothesis there. There’s no goal there. How do you kind of talk to people about that?
The Value of Tinkering in Education
Ryan: I would say that there isn’t one predetermined goal or one predetermined outcome, and I think for, for me and a lot of colleagues that I’m working with, what we’re really interested in learning, you know, we’re really interested in how people learn and how they get confidence and agency and feel like that these subjects are things that they can understand and that it’s fun to understand them.
There’s a reason why there isn’t a set goal. I think if I decided as a educator that we’re all going to learn this same specific thing might work for some people, but I think it would close off a lot of the learners and a lot of the people who are participating in the activity.
For me, tinkering is about setting up a learning environment, setting up prompts, setting up examples where there always is a goal, you know, there always is a problem space or sometimes they say a sandbox that people are working in, you know, that there are connections there. There always is some science or engineering idea that can be played with and can be explored. But I think to me, what makes Tinkering valuable is the fact that there isn’t a set content goal that everyone is supposed to get to. And I think that actually opens up many more pathways for, for learners to get excited about these ideas.
Dale: Going back to the Exploratorium, it was kind of a lab for tinkering, the studio there, Karen and Mike’s work that you learned under. But you were coming up with ideas that you could then use in public to interact with people. I always thought there were sort of two purposes. One was to engage students, but secondly it was to engage parents in understanding and seeing how this activity benefited their kids.
Engaging Parents and Learners
Ryan: Yeah, that is the attitude of the Exploratorium and of Mike Petrich and Karen Wilkinson, who are the directors of the Tinkering Studio that I was working in. I think whether you’re a big institution, a big science museum, or whether you’re a parent, I think it’s really valuable to be able to tell the learners, tell the kids that, hey, this is something we’re just trying.
This is an experiment. Let’s learn together. Let’s see together what’s interesting about that. And so I think that, what was really magical and productive, uh, that sounds like a weird word. I mean, What was really generative about this work that we were doing was the fact that we weren’t afraid to try experiments and we weren’t afraid to say, we don’t know.
You’re talking about parents, I think it’s really great for a parent to just be able to observing their kids, testing something out, uh, learning together, trying an experiment. Parents will learn a tremendous amount about what the kids are interested in, and what questions they have, and what ideas they want to go deeper with.
Dale: Questions are an important part of it.
Ryan: Definitely this idea that you were talking earlier about a more traditional STEM activity. Sometimes those are really focused on problem solving. The instructor will give a challenge to the
Dale: Egg drop.
Ryan: An egg drop challenge or build a bridge that has to do this much weight and this much It’s, of course, something you can get out of those activities. I think one thing that tinkering gives you that those activities don’t have so much is this idea of problem posing.
You know, how can learners, how can students ask their own questions and figure out for themselves what they really will be interested in, sinking their teeth into and trying to figure out.
Hands-On Learning and Iteration
Dale: The other thing that I remember from the Tinkering Studio and some of these open makes that we did in public during early days of Maker Faire was how you could demonstrate a mechanism. And I’m thinking of Toy Automata, so cardboard automata or, or things like that. You know, you show them how that could work and then like they build an application on it. In effect, they build their own thing that moves, what’s the maybe character they choose to build, what kind of motion they’re interested in.
And all of that kind of comes into being a form of expression, of creative expression for them. But they’re also have a real understanding now of how a basic mechanism works.
Ryan: Definitely. There isn’t this content end goal, but when people are engaged with the activities, they are learning, they are experiencing with their hands, whether it’s a mechanism, whether it’s an electrical circuit.
And in fact, because these things don’t work so well all the time, I mean, building these cardboard automata out of glue and popsicle sticks and straws, it’s kind of purposefully designed to not work exactly the way you expect. And because you have to build and rebuild, take it apart, move the weight on the other side, move the battery over here, move the mechanism.
Because you have to do so much iteration on the activity, I think you kind of understand it better, right? You have to build the mechanism one way and then you really have to do the adjustments to make it work and to make it do the thing you want it to, to tell your story or, express your ideas.
The Role of Play in Tinkering
Dale: First of all, this is grounded in play, and, tinkering is grounded in play, and play really is a, uh, just the best engagement mechanism we know of, right? Kids want to play, they enjoy playing, it gives them feedback to continue playing.
Ryan: It’s the best engagement mechanism and it also is probably the best learning mechanism. I feel that when an artist is really in the flow, when the scientist, when a designer, when people are really in the flow, I mean, they are playing with it, with materials, with ideas, they’re playing with each other.
The basis of this work is a lot in the idea of constructionism from, from Seymour Papert from, from MIT Media Lab. And this idea that when you are playing with a physical object, when you have something that you’re testing and experimenting with and sharing with each other, that’s really the way that you’re learning because this object shows your ideas and shows your questions.
Adapting Tinkering During the Pandemic
Ryan: I tried so many different experiments I feel during the pandemic and even continuing on doing things at a distance, doing Zoom online, tinkering online, summer camps, things like that. There are some advantages, there are some interesting things about that. We can do artist tours to their workshops that you couldn’t, take a whole group to this place in the world and this other place in the world.
There are some nice things for that, but I feel that when you are surrounded by people and there are people who are just learning about this for the first time and people who are experts and people who are super enthusiasts, like at the Open Make, like at the Maker Faire.
I think this is a really powerful learning environment because there’s a shared purpose there, but everyone has their own entry point and their own experience level. And I think that creates so many different connections.
Dale: Right.
Social and Collaborative Learning
Dale: And it’s social. I think this is really powerful today. You’re watching what other people do. And unlike a lot of school outcomes, which are everybody gets the same result this is, “Oh, look at, look at what they did, look at this person, look at that person.” They came up with different ideas on the same basic premise, or they took it in a different direction.
That inspires you to think, well, that’s a, that’s a creative solution I didn’t think of.
Ryan: It makes me think that a lot of the tinkering projects that, uh, I feel are the most interesting are when we’re asking people to contribute to something larger than themselves.
I was just at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, and we were building a giant, uh, Rube Goldberg style chain reaction machine. And every group, you know, every family, every participant who came and worked with us, they made one section of this chain reaction machine.
The Power of Collaboration in Tinkering
Ryan: And I feel that that’s such a powerful motivator, right?
It’s not a competition, you know, it’s not who makes the best Rube Goldberg machine. It’s like, how can we all work together to make this as interesting and complicated and cool and surprising and fun and playful as possible. And so I, I really like this, um, this model that it’s not like maybe the more traditional, like science fair or science competition, but how can you actually create a setting where people feel like we are all contributing and we’re all building something together? .
Introducing ‘The Tinkering Workshop’ Book
Dale: So let’s talk about your book. Tell us about it.
Ryan: The book’s called The Tinkering Workshop, and it comes out on October 15th, and it’s a collection of art, science, technology prompts and explorations that you can do with Everyday materials. So we tried for the most part to, to make it all about things that you can find around your house, wire, clothes, pins, cardboard, recycled materials, and give people some ideas about how they can get started playing and tinkering with these with these objects.
Dale: So the key part there is it doesn’t necessarily require an extensive laboratory or makerspace to be able to tinker.
Ryan: Yeah, exactly.
Encouraging a Tinkering Mindset
Ryan: I mean, I’m really interested in general, but especially with the book. How can families, how can kids, how can also educators working in an informal setting, how can you start this tinkering mindset, tinkering approach without having to get a bunch of specialized stuff or have a lot of pre-existing knowledge.
Again, I feel that really what is important is the attitude that it is playful, that it is collaborative, that it is based on our own ideas and we’re experimenting and trying things together. I feel that for a book, there’s a challenge in that in the sense that in a normal tinkering space, there are facilitators there. There are people asking questions, showing examples, giving prompts. So that was something that I was trying to do as much as possible, putting together in the book to not have it be just, — Follow this step, do step one, do step two, do step three — we all end up at the same point, but how to organize the book where there are starting points, but most of the text, most of the photos in the books are showing possibilities.
What if you tried this? Could you imagine adding this extra piece? What if you built it really big? What if you built it really small? What if you switched out this material? And so to really, I hope, not constrain the ideas that people have when they’re trying the projects for the book. I think for me, the biggest, um, sign of success would be if people get inspired by the book, but build something that I couldn’t have imagined and is completely unexpected for me.
Facilitation and Adult Involvement
Dale: Can you talk a little bit about adult facilitation of this, whether you’re a parent or a teacher? Just motivating, inspiring, engaging with the students as they’re discovering things is part of this, but it’s a different modality in ways than just “I’m gonna introduce everything to you. And make sure that you have success.”
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, definitely. And I think, you know, same with these kind of captions and texts. A lot of it is framed as suggestions –something you could try, something you might be interested in moving in that direction. A lot of the facilitation process for educators or or also especially for parents is not, it’s like not intervening. It’s not putting your own ideas at the forefront. It’s really keeping the ideas of the learners, of the kids at the forefront. For me, it’s this idea that I might have in my mind, here’s a solution to the challenge that someone’s thinking about or working on when they’re trying these projects.
But it’s not about me showing how experienced or good I am with these activities, but it’s about how to support the learners to develop their own solutions. And again, I can think of so many examples, where people have created something that I was like, this will never work. This is, it’s, it’s not like I was facilitating and showing them and saying, okay, we could try this. But, you know, I’m actually really authentically surprised a lot of times with, with what people, what people come up with and what they make.
Dale: Yeah, we ought to almost coin a new term, generative intelligence without the artificial in it, you know, it’s like facilitators giving prompts to see what comes back from a group of kids. The key thing is that they’re generating, their intelligence is generating these different products. Maybe the facilitator said, I didn’t think you could get there with that prompt.
Ryan: I think you’re right. There is this interplay and I really think that you react differently depending on what the environment is and what the classroom instructor, how the parent, how the facilitator is presenting what’s going on.
And so I really feel that In a physical space, people really pick up on those cues. Like, am I allowed to come up with my own idea? Is it okay to try something, even if I don’t know if it’s going to work? Is it okay to try something weird or try something silly or something funny? And so, I don’t know. I mean, that was something again, in the book, it’s trying to create that environment within the pages, but to have a lot of things that look funny or look silly, or are not the most perfect examples, but maybe give people the impression that it’s okay to try something and it’s okay to experiment. I think that’s really the goal.
Challenges and Opportunities for Adults
Dale: Let me ask you, have you done much with adults? My thought is being playful, creative, something we often as adults don’t get enough time to do, and we focus often on language like, well, I’m not creative or I couldn’t draw or, and which is kind of a concern about the outcomes rather than just engaging in the process.
Ryan: Adults have built up a lot of experience both in school and in their professional life and in the daily life that I think sometimes it’s hard to break through. People might not feel confident about their abilities with different subjects. People might feel like they should know the answer. I see that a lot. Like I’ve done a lot of work with especially educators where they feel like they should know how to wire up a light and a battery and but it’s maybe they have the technical, the theoretical knowledge, but doing something practically with real materials is a different story.
I do feel that sometimes with adults, there is a barrier. There’s an added challenge.
Dale: My point is this would be a great thing for makerspaces to do.
Ryan: Definitely, definitely.
Dale: Have a community night and not worry about like, we’re not trying to make something useful or productive here. It’s just to have fun and enjoy the materials, the tools and each other.
Ryan: Yeah. We had a tinkering social club for a while at the Exploratorium. That was a great model because it emphasize the fact that we’re collaborating, we’re playing. A lot of times we had an artist come in and I think that was really helpful to kind of show people that, an artist or could be a scientist is not necessarily, kind of up on the pedestal, but that they can be relatable and they can share their process.
And I think sometimes people feel that when we’re all working together and we’re engaging with the same materials and the same ideas, we found pretty, pretty soon people were grabbing, you know, screwdrivers and hammers and taking things apart or building their own design.
So I agree. It’s something that all of us should spend more time doing.
Upcoming Events and Farewell
Dale: I look forward to seeing you at Maker Fair. Anyone listening here can meet Ryan. Uh, you’ll probably have copies of your book. Um, we hope.
Ryan: We’ll have copies of the book there. They’ll be available at the Maker Shed, which is going to be great. Basically the whole Faire, me and some of my collaborators are going to be doing activities from the book in a collaborative drop-in workshop.
So you can come by and hang out and also start tinkering yourself with some of the ideas and projects from the book.
Dale: Okay, Ryan, thanks a lot for talking to me today. I look forward to seeing you and seeing the book when it comes out.
Ryan: Thanks, Dale. Really great talking to you and see you at Maker Faire.
Come to Maker Faire Bay Area and talk to Ryan yourself about tinkering and “The Tinkering Workshop” book.
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