4/4 Invent/ Make/ Tinker

Reading Takeaways

      The most powerful idea of all is the idea of powerful ideas. (Papert, 1980)

      Throughout time, human cognitive development progress from more simplistic to more complex, dualist to relativist, and naïve to mature stages. Such development is a natural process as one experiences its surroundings, schooling, encounters and social interaction and so forth during one’s growth. Students, educators, artists and inventors should BE MAKERS to begin with. Makers are creators, inventors, or engineers; they are brain stormers, or idea generators. Theory would then naturally develop after the analysis, critical thinking and theorizing from the result of making. We can all be amateurs of makers who develop the scientific or artistic methods that forms the basics of the professionals.

      According to Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, it is important for children to invent to understand and learn every new truth based on experience. This theory of learning is also termed “constructivism”, which means the process of making sense of things in their heads. It is not only important to lead an individual to develop on the “right” track depending on each student's aptitudes and talents, and let one choose subjects of one's interest to deepen knowledge, play, experiment and reprocess ideas, it is also important to train one to become multidimensional learner to develop the spirit of experimentation while experiencing the old and the new, which forms a spiral learning cycle. To stimulate and inspire students to think or brainstorm and form good ideas is fundamental education in today’s world.