Making a Trundle Wheel

During maker projects, participating productively as part of a group generally leads to better and more robust work. Pooling and building on each other’s ideas creates better maker designs and products. Likewise, solving mathematics problems or building a mathematical model is a creative process that benefits from collaboratively generating and/or vetting ideas and working together.

Maker tasks encourage trying out design ideas early to see if they are feasible. If they work, they are revised and improved upon. If they don’t, they are replaced by new ideas quickly without losing too much time pursuing dead-ends. This habit of mind also applies to mathematics. While solving math problems, students should test their ideas early. Will an idea lead to answers that is reasonable rather than too big or too small? If we are writing a general expression or equation, does it work for small cases? Can we tell without solving if a solution will be positive or negative?

During maker projects, students are encourage to scout out the projects of other groups and to incorporate and build on (or reject) scouted ideas into their own designs. Making is a social and open endeavor where all ideas are common property with the goal to create the best overall product. This habit of mind is also valuable within mathematics. Worthwhile mathematics often affords many entry points and approaches. Students can benefit from comparing their own ideas to their peers so that they can combine or adopt other’s ideas in their own mathematical work.