Slide into being a DM: Facilitating tech-enabled learning in your library with creative kits

Session description

Seymour Papert said: “The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge” — just substitute Dungeon Master, facilitator, or librarian for “teacher”! In this session, participants will have the opportunity to be the DM (facilitator!) of a creative STEAM learning experience. Much like a DM, a great facilitator allows participants to explore their own paths and creates balance between good scaffolding and open-ended outcomes.

You’ll practice with several creative kits that we’ve designed in collaboration with librarians and Media Lab researchers. Kit themes include outer space exploration, urban ecology, computational thinking, making, storytelling with data, and more! You’ll also leave with a set of design patterns for creative kits that we’ve been developing and refining over the course of the last year. You can use these patterns to design creative kits for your own library, meaningfully inviting your patron community to interact with new, emerging technologies in creative ways.

Session Format & Style

make/hack/play session & hands-on workshop

Takeaways

-An understanding of the creative learning pedagogy 

-A set of design patterns for prototyping your own creative kits

-Tips & tricks for building your facilitation practice & tinkering mindset

-We’ll even have a few of our kits that we’ll be giving away for participants to take back to their library!

Organization

Three members of the MIT Media Lab’s Public Library Innovation Exchange (PLIX) team will facilitate. PLIX is a community of librarians and MIT Media Lab researchers who strive to integrate the ideas of creative learning into their facilitation practice. Together, this community has been developing new creative STEAM learning experiences—based on MIT Media Lab research and designed for the public library setting. Learn more about our work at https://plix.media.mit.edu.

Contact Information

Lydia Guterman, lguterma@media.mit.edu

Katherine McConachie, kamcco@media.mit.edu

Doyung Lee, doyung@media.mit.edu