Making to Learn. The Pedagogical Implications of Making in a Digital Binary World

Making has always been at the center of pedagogical reflection, as testified by the emphasis on the principle of learning by doing. Today, digital media and technologies provide more opportunities for expanding these concepts, given their potential to facilitate media production and creation. However, common practices in media-making in schools tend merely to emphasize the technical aspects—including the technical procedural skills, the creation of a product or the use of specific software—while overlooking the pedagogical dimensions associated with media-making processes. A reappraisal of the educational dimensions of making in the digital era may come from a reconceptualization of the relationship between manual and intellectual activities. Through the lens of Sennett’s understanding of craftsmanship, this chapter first explores the ways making and thinking can be set out in a single process that characterizes the human condition. Second, it explains how the Open Source Movement’s approach to software design is a sort of “digital craftsmanship” based on collaborative problem-solving, one that can inspire a renewed vision of the learning by doing principle for the digital world. The chapter concludes with several considerations on the implications of such an approach for the future of schools.