Maker 02 Teacher's Guide Unit 4

knowledge, check understanding, create curiosity, encourage concentration, promote participation and generate further knowledge. With #MAKERS , students have the chance to analyze content carefully before coming up with their questions and are encouraged to ask questions that can act as catalysts. When students are taught how to be autonomous and treated as agents of their own learning, the relevance of what is being taught becomes clearer, which makes it easier and more natural for them to not only acquire such knowledge, but also apply it in an array of contexts. In #MAKERS , we want to allow learners to be the main characters of their own stories. Students as Global Citizens An increasingly globalized society is putting pressure on education to help learners become global citizens. This means that students should not only be aware of the context that immediately surrounds them (i.e., the issues that are relevant to their local realities), but also learn about how these same issues are dealt with in different cultures and understand that being part of a globalized world means respecting and preserving individualities while at the same time seeing things from a broader perspective, with a view to developing empathy and to realizing that we are all connected by the common humanity we share. Watanabe-Crockett (2015) says that it is important to create a pattern that allows students to go from a local to a global perspective. When learning is local, it promotes authenticity and responsiveness. However, when students collaborate and reach out to help solve global challenges, as they are often encouraged to do in this series, they first need to employ self-knowledge—which comes from their local understanding—to see themselves as agents of change. Their global connections can be maximized when self- directed learning is promoted, especially in a context where data access is constantly increasing. Global learning, therefore, relies on the use of digital technology, and even more than that, on digital literacy to build bridges between local and global perspectives. Students and Social and Emotional Learning To succeed in a world of automation will require being as unmachinelike as possible. The entire education system will need to be retooled around no longer teaching kids what to think but how to think. Memorization of facts is pointless in a world where everyone carries around the entire knowledge base of the human species on their person. The challenge is not information storage but information processing. It’s not about information itself but how to use information. (SANTENS, 2017) As Santens points out, having access to information is no longer a distinctive feature. Students need to learn how to create their own knowledge, for which they need to know how to assess information, comparing, contrasting and expanding it. In order to do so, cognitive skills are not enough. If students are expected to succeed in the 21st century, the learning process cannot, under any circumstances, be solely centered on cognitive skills. Although their importance cannot be questioned, these skills alone do not prepare learners for the situations they will have to face both in and out of school. It is thus essential to develop their social and emotional learning. In this context, learning English goes beyond understanding grammar, lexis, pronunciation and discourse. It encompasses elements that aim at enabling students to become global citizens. Some of these elements involve thinking critically and creatively, coming up with solutions to problems, analyzing challenges and designing innovative tools. These are skills that can help them become more than just receivers of information and equip them to actively change the world. The #MAKERS series helps students reflect on and put into practice a multitude of social and emotional learning skills, such as self-motivation, organization, open-mindedness and resilience, which will be essential for them to recognize their own emotions (as well as other people’s), solve problems and build respectful relationships. As described by Blad (2017), this may continue to provide benefits for students for months, or even years, after they have had these experiences. The author also reports that recent research shows that students who completed social and emotional learning interventions fared better than their peers who did not participate in those practices according to a variety of indicators—including academic performance, social skills and avoidance of negative behaviors. In summary, research indicates that social and emotional learning participants outperform their peers in both the social and academic realms. These are some of the reasons why the #MAKERS series believes it to be so important to teach students about emotions, relationships and conflict resolution, significantly shifting how education is thought about. Students and the Maker Movement When teaching is centered on making students memorize information, they are not able to properly understand it (i.e., transfer what they have learned to different contexts). However, when teaching allows students to deal with contents in practice, they have the opportunity to test their hypotheses and come up with new ones. Wagner (2012) highlights a pattern regarding successful innovators: a childhood of creative play that led to the development of diverse interests and curiosities. Another trend Wagner found was that these innovators have the ability to persevere and learn from failure. The whole idea of trial and error is something that might be contradictory to some formal systems of education, but is essential to the maker movement. Learning happens mostly through making, doing, building, shaping, reshaping, and ultimately, creating. In #MAKERS , students spend valuable time working on projects that integrate different subjects that are traditionally separated in academic settings. Additionally, students are encouraged to find their passions and arouse their curiosity. They have the opportunity to experiment with a cycle that promotes reiteration: trying something again until it works, and then, once it works, making it better, all the while reflecting on these steps. Learners need to organize their thoughts and resources (digital or otherwise) to individually or collectively find and build practical solutions for the problems they identify. This kind of education contributes to the development of practical skills, but its main objective is to develop problem-solving skills. Having the maker movement as a principle, the series believes that learners should be taught how to break down ideas into smaller components to figure out a plausible first step. They become familiar with tools, but also with the