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Bots for Tots: Building Inclusive Makerspaces by Leveraging "Ways of Knowing"

Published: 21 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Despite an explicit commitment to epistemic diversity, making and makerspaces have struggled to serve a diverse population of creators and have become heavily dominated by men. Drawing on the construct of "ways of knowing" from the feminist tradition the Bots for Tots project explores the affordances of activity framings and structures that tap into alternate mental dispositions to broaden participation and interest in maker activities. In this paper I present data from a workshop with 9-10 year olds explicitly framed to be about making toys for children in the community. I show that when making is framed as being a set of practices, skills, and technologies to give back to and support members of one's community, young girls were highly motivated to engage in the maker activity, persisted through construction challenges, and showed interest in further exploring making and technology to help others.

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cover image ACM Conferences
IDC '16: Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
June 2016
774 pages
ISBN:9781450343138
DOI:10.1145/2930674
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 21 June 2016

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Author Tags

  1. Construction
  2. STEM
  3. craft
  4. gender diversity
  5. making
  6. technology

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  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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IDC '16
Sponsor:
IDC '16: Interaction Design and Children
June 21 - 24, 2016
Manchester, United Kingdom

Acceptance Rates

IDC '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 77 submissions, 47%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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  • (2024)IF science AND making AND computing: Insights for project-based learning and primary science curriculum designStudies in Science Education10.1080/03057267.2024.2397300(1-65)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Making computing visible & tangibleInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2023.10060238:COnline publication date: 27-Feb-2024
  • (2022)STEM Education for GirlsResearch Anthology on Makerspaces and 3D Printing in Education10.4018/978-1-6684-6295-9.ch029(584-601)Online publication date: 6-May-2022
  • (2022)“Go[ing] Hard...as a Woman of Color”: A Case Study Examining Identity Work within a Performative Dance and Computing Learning EnvironmentACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/353100022:4(1-29)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2022
  • (2022)Uncovering Children's Situated Design Capital – A Nexus Analytic InquiryProceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3501712.3529732(408-421)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Designing with FeelingProceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3501712.3529725(315-326)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
  • (2022)My:Talkies: Designing a Craft Kit to Support Learning about Communication Devices through MakingProceedings of the 21st Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3501712.3529720(442-447)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Literacies in the Making: Exploring elementary students’ digital-physical meaning-making practices while crafting musical instruments from recycled materialsTechnology, Pedagogy and Education10.1080/1475939X.2021.1997794(1-22)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2022
  • (2022)Critical agenda driving child–computer interaction research—Taking a stock of the past and envisioning the futureInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10040832:COnline publication date: 3-Jun-2022
  • (2021)The Women* Who Made It: Experiences from Being a Woman* at a Maker FestivalSustainability10.3390/su1316936113:16(9361)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
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