Technological Laboratory of Pedagogical Innovation and Learning
- (LaTIPA)
Eduardo Ribeiro
∗
Instituto Federal Catarinense
Abstract
This article addresses the theoretical conceptions and purposes of creating the Technological
Laboratory of Pedagogical Innovation and Learning (LaTIPA). From a theoretical review of
technological innovation concepts in learning processes, the laboratory was systematized to
create pedagogical innovations through innovative actions and projects involving applied
technology. In this work, we present the theoretical conceptions that substantiate this
proposal. The results of this project are expected to come to consolidate the exposed
motivations.
Keywords: Pedagogical Innovation, Laboratory, Maker
Introduction
Maker laboratories significantly impact the institutions in which they are installed, as
shown by the examples in the Amazon
1
and Ceará
2
. We consider that an installation at the
São Francisco do Sul campus will provide various improvements, such as in the permanence
and success policies, the recruiting and engagement of entrants, the awakening of students to
verticalization, entrepreneurship, the approximation of the institution to local productive
arrangements, and the promotion of a free and quality educational institution guided by
teaching, research, innovation, and extension.
The emergence of new information and communication technologies has brought about
considerable transformations to society and conceptual demands in the teaching and learning
process. Such demands range from scientific training that allows development and application
through studies to innovation strategies in classroom teaching for technological production,
to the empowering of youths in using the technologies.
The education model in which the student only listens to the teacher and copies the content is
more and more obsolete. To dynamize classes and amplify the possibilities of acquiring
knowledge, some international and Brazilian educational institutions have been gradually
implementing alternatives to this methodology, with one of the proposals being maker
laboratories.
∗Corresponding author: Email address: eduardo.ribeiro (Eduardo Ribeiro)
1
https://porvir.org/projeto-leva-laboratorio-maker-para-3-escolas-do-amazonas/
2https://www.sct.ce.gov.br/2018/01/09/fablab/
The first maker laboratory, which also inspired fab labs
2
, was founded at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT). Its creation derived from a course taught there in 1998 called
"How to do (almost) anything", offered by professor Neil Gershenfeld to the institute students.
The idea emerged from the need of people to build, modify, and produce objects on their own.
The professor created an environment with a pedagogical purpose that allowed people to solve
problems by creating their own tools.
Although the movement may foster the exchange of knowledge, nowadays potentialized
by the Internet, the impossibility for many users to acquire the material for building their own
prototypes is a reality. This stimulates an important principle in a group of makers: sharing
a common interest and wanting to work together on the same project. This proposal caused
the emergence of the first maker workshops (Hackerspaces
3
and Fab Labs
4
), all experienced
in a process denominated learning by doing. In such workshops, different people, especially
youths, join efforts and resources to work together on the same project. At this point, one may
say that the maker movement would have shifted from "do it yourself (DIY)" to "do it with
others (DIWO)".
Laboratories previously used to transform theory into practice became sites where
creations and ideas may be built quickly and cheaply due to the versatility and potential of
multidisciplinary joint work, a channeler and booster of creativity. These may be toys, robots,
applications, whatever the students want. This environment is intended to support such
accomplishments.
That said, this project will support itself on the premise that educational maker spaces,
articulated methodologically from the inseparability among teaching, research, innovation, and
extension, will effectively contribute to the education of innovative, protagonistic, and
collaborative youths. Hence, we present the proposal for creating the Technological Laboratory
of Pedagogical Innovation and Learning (LaTIPA) of the São Francisco do Sul campus. The
laboratory will be founded on the mission of building a relationship of participation and education
of innovative, protagonistic, and collaborative students over the course of the process (learning
by doing), from the inseparability among teaching, research, innovation, and extension.
The LaTIPA activities will be structured on three axes:
a)
Experimentation;
b)
Prospection;
c)
Dissemination.
All these items will be discussed in the following section. In this sense, it becomes
necessary to contextualize the theoretical aspects that substantiate this reflection.
3 Is a real site with the format of a community laboratory that follows hacker ethics, having an
aggregating, converging, and inspiring spirit.
4 Is a small workshop offering digital fabrication. A fab lab is generally equipped with a set of
flexible tools that cover various size scales and several different materials with the purpose of doing
"almost everything".
Inseparability as an educational principle for maker spaces
The inseparability among teaching, research, innovation, and extension is a principle that
may operationalize and provide opportunities for educational spaces (formal or not) in the
construction of a maker space. Theoretically, the inseparability bases the argument of quality
education, enabling the establishment and development of the universal scientific spirit,
which is a condition for permanent education and is "[...] the necessary response to the
challenges of the project of developing a nation that requires from its children a solid
scientific education, technical competence, and political lucidity associated with an ethical
commitment" (FORGRAD, 2004, p. 229).
Despite the principle of inseparability among teaching, research, and extension being
often in the statutes of academic institutions, it is usually more theoretical than effectively
practical, even because coexistence (teaching, research, and extension) may not mean
inseparability. Also, only one-third or a little more of Brazilian universities present conditions
and infrastructure necessary for the actual practice of this principle (NEHRING;
KOLTERMANN BATTISTI; CEZAR POZZOBON, 2018). Hence, a select group of
educational institutions and their respective students would actually live this highly enriching
experience in their academic education. The authors also suggested that this principle should
be present in the pedagogical political projects and institutional development plans of all
educational institutions. Unfortunately, this statement has two obstacles to its full
operationalization. These are of legal and social order.
Historically, two legal frameworks are important to contextualize. The first is the action
of the Brazilian National Forum on Education in the Constituent Assembly, which led the
approval of the popular amendment that formulated the inseparability principle still in the
terms "teaching, research, and extension" as a paradigm of a socially referenced "university",
becoming article 207 of the Constitution of 1988. The second was the approval of the Law on
National Education Guidelines and Framework (Law No. 9394 of 1994), also known as the
acronym LDB. The laws were emblematic because they materialized an education with
strategies of universalization, autonomy, democracy, articulation between science and
society, and social commitment.
Hence, both the Brazilian Constitution and the LDB, by force of the clashes and syntheses
of the legislative process itself, express the inseparability principle ambiguously. In the LDB,
for example, several critics pointed out that the legal provision approved in 1994 did not
restate the fundamental requirement of the organization of educational institutions based on
the inseparability principle contained in article 207 of the Brazilian Constitution. According
to them, the LDB allowed inseparability actions to be, in truth, juxtaposed actions instead of
articulated, joined ones (the essence of this theory). Criticism was presented by Mancebo
(1997), Saviani (1998), Muranaka and Minto (1998), and Segenreich (1997). At the time, the
authors indicated that this flexibilization would bring effects such as the valorization of
market mechanisms and the appeal to the private sector and non-governmental organizations
in detriment to the place and role of the State and public sector initiatives, with the consequent
reduction of the actions and public investments in education. The reality does not show the
opposite.
The social aspect that prevents the operationalization of the principle is in the possibility
of identifying researchers that despise extension and teaching (high school and undergraduate
education). These argue that research is the main engine for developing science. Generally,
they point out that the actions are inseparable in research and stricto sensu graduate education
- master's and doctoral programs; however, there is no vertical inseparability. As we see it,
the complexity of inseparability "that is not separable into parts" is in the operationalization.
Traditionally, extension has connections with teaching and rarely with research in any
academic organization. It is necessary to advance.
In this sense, inseparability is advocated by the pedagogical political project and
institutional development plan of the Instituto Federal Catarinense. There is a very propitious
environment for the application of this principle within the maker space. Article 6 of Law
11892 of 2008, the law that creates the Brazilian federal network of scientific and
technological professional education, points out that its institutional purpose is to promote the
integration and verticalization from basic education to professional education and higher
education.
Moreover, there is a fertile educational space for this initiative. We stress that, besides the
articulation among the teaching, research, and extension activities and the verticalization of
teaching (high school, higher education, and post-graduate studies), innovation is
incorporated, which reflects the institutional mission according to its creator law. Hence,
hereinafter, we will adopt innovation within the inseparability principle. To not corroborate
the arguments that generate the obstacles, the inseparability principle shall guide all projects
to be developed at the LaTIPA.
Given the above, we glimpse a path to overcome the challenge posed: capacitate
protagonistic, collaborative,
and
innovative youths. In her doctoral dissertation entitled "O
princípio da indissociabilidade universitária: um olhar transdisciplinar nas atividades de
ensino, de pesquisa e de extensão", Gionara Tauchen (2009) recognized the complexity of
this proposal. According to Tauchen (2009, p. 93), (...) the inseparability concept refers to
something that does not exist without the presence of the other, i.e., the whole is no longer
whole when it separates. The fundamentals of teaching, research, and extension are, therefore,
altered; for this reason, it is a paradigmatic and epistemologically complex principle. We
expect to contribute.
The LaTIPA as a space and connection of the maker culture
The learning by doing process is one of the pillars that define the maker culture. According
to Manuel Tóran (2016), the maker culture may be defined as a chain of inventors and creators
who treat knowledge as a basis for a new model of doing, creating, and implementing.
According to the author, an important aspect is that this concept is very well assimilated
among youths (TÓRAN, 2016, p. 2). This knowledge management model of doing offers the
opportunity of integrating the broad range of technologies and solutions to promote,
implement, and disseminate technologies and knowledge for greater development of society,
without the abusive patent costs, without knowledge monopoly, without technological
dependency, favoring the collective and collaboration, decreasing technological dependency.
Another approach that addresses the maker culture is that considered "experimental
game", given that the makers are enthusiasts and play (seriously) with new technologies to
learn how things work and develop new products and ideas. An example is the CEO of the
Maker Magazine
5
, Dale Dougherty. The magazine is a reference in the maker concept;
besides tutorials, it also provides content, projects, targeted events, and marketplace (sales
market of its own or third-party products). In his TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
talk in 2016, he emphasized: "We are all makers"
6
. From this statement, one may highlight
the following arguments:
a)
Interest in doing things on their own (Do It Yourself, DIY) and in collaboration
with others (Do It With Others, DIWO);
b)
Use of digital desktop tools to create new products and develop prototypes;
c)
Culture of sharing projects online and collaboration in online communities so that
anyone may access information and create products using corresponding manuals;
d)
Use of standard project files that allow anyone to send projects to fabrication services
to produce in any quantity.
All presented arguments share a common aspect, even considering that there are different
areas of knowledge: communication. Paulo Freire (2005) stated that to educate is to
communicate. He contested the communication that takes place outside dialogic premises,
especially regarding the supposed conversations the purpose of which was the imposition of the
idea of a group, which did not allow the more in-depth reflection aimed at overcoming what he
called "false awareness of the world" (FREIRE, 2005, p. 86).
The professor fosters students to cope with their realities in the classroom from what he
called problem-situations, which would develop and be solved from joint reflexive,
collaborative exchanges established among participants - educators and pupils - for real
liberation and humanization for true mastery of culture and history. Such reflexive and
creative processes are responsible for the praxis as a structure fostering the teaching, research,
innovation, and extension actions; hence, a methodological proposal to operationalize
inseparability.
The laboratory innovation will be in providing opportunity, preferably for integrated high
school students, to have experiences with different collaborators at distinct phases of
knowledge (undergraduate students, graduate students, and professionals already inserted in
the work market) in an environment based on learning by projects, applying the contents of
various subjects present in the school curriculum. This project proposes to mediate the use
of technology as a pedagogical tool, not for the students to end up being computer literate but
rather conscious users of technological tools. Hence, the LaTIPA proposes to approximate
the fab lab essence so that its participants may complement or develop teaching, research,
innovation, and extension activities using the available equipment. Hence, the professors will
also be able to generate didactic materials to complement their courses.
5Https://makezine com/
6Https://www ted com/talks/dale_dougherty_we_are_makers
•
Expectations
Nowadays, maker laboratories are the last word relative to learning science and
technology in the school environment at any level. Several countries have already
understood that the development of the local and international society will be guided by the
transfer of experience and technology, in the consortium between universities and the
industry, for the innovation, generation, and circulation of wealth.
The LaTIPA will be an IF Maker laboratory in essence: a place focused on the students,
professors, and administrative technicians, not on machines, to thus provide a possibility of
comprehensive and innovative learning. The presence of people of different ages and
backgrounds contributing to projects that are being carried out or bringing their own demands.
Ensuring some principles, such as freedom of creation, innovation, project sharing, and
teamwork.
In this environment, no imposing demand that a given project "has to work out" may exist.
The professor must always be around to pass on the necessary theoretical basis to the students,
never undermining creativity but rather encouraging them to innovate more and more.
Propitiate multidisciplinary learning that stimulates a more personal approach to problems
and, hence, introduce the maker practice in everyday life, awakening in the students the
pleasure for work, the search for knowledge, autonomy, collaboration, the development of
technical skills, the improvement of socioemotional competencies, and the emergence of the
initiative to investigate. Essential skills to form citizens committed to the environment they
live in and professionals with skills that meet the new demands of society.
The experience in this environment will be of utmost importance for the continued training
of the professors: the development of scientific knowledge, the emergence of new didactics,
and the approximation with the local needs within the social and technological scopes will
provide better understanding for contributions in the most diverse areas of knowledge present
on the campus, strengthening and integrating the institution with society.
The stimulus to educational administrative technicians regarding teaching, research,
innovation, and extension, approximating them to students and professors for the integration
and consolidation of their role in institutional processes.
According to the data from a study carried out by Saunders and Kingsley (2016) with 93
maker laboratories in China:
•
32% of people are there for a hobby,
•
30% go with the purpose of learning,
•
21% have the intention of starting a company,
17% go for other reasons, such as official visits from the government and business
people.
Notably, the presence of machines and tools stimulates individuals to create and be
protagonistic. In this process, the approximation with the learning of the technological
practice focused on doing, allowing room for mistakes, always with a transdisciplinary and
collaborative approach, will bring the entrepreneurial spirit closer. Responding to questions
and local problems of the community surrounding the institution, hence integrating it with
society. Thus, it is not uncommon for them to be viewed favorably by business people and
academia, because their versatility allows it to be both a learning environment and a
prototyping and creation environment.
Institutions with maker laboratories are where science and technology originate; they
generate a highly qualified workforce for potential research, development, and innovation
investments. Cultivating high-level scientific talents to promote scientific development and
economic prosperity through stimulating the creative learning of students of humanities and
exact sciences, putting different programs to talk to each other, and planting the seeds for the
communication and interaction among different areas of human knowledge, being a
differential for providing consistent services of public interest.
Incubators and startups are often created in maker laboratories, boosted from a
development methodology known as Minimum Viable Product (MVP); the principle of this
methodology is the idea of collecting the maximum of validated information with the
minimum effort and cost, enabling a correction and a new test quickly. Learning is taken to a
new product stage, ending at the due patent registration guided by the laboratory and
institutions such as NIT and INPI.
The LaTIPA is expected to propitiate a complement to teaching with the use of the
available equipment for development using technology as a pedagogical tool. Generating
opportunities for integrated high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to have
experiences with different collaborators at different phases of knowledge in an environment
based on learning by projects, applying and integrating the contents of various subjects
present in the school curriculum, maximizing creativity and innovation.
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