Maker Community Workshop

During this workshop, Dr. Shaunna Smith from the University of Hawaii joined us to lead us in an exploration and discussion of what ambiguity is, how we see and struggle with ambiguity in the context of Maker education, and how we respond to it. Ambiguity is known as the quality of being open to more than one interpretation, or a barrier to understanding.

We explored ambiguity in the context of four lenses: complexity, insolubility, uncertainty, and unfamiliarity. These are defined as such:

• Complexity - Difficult to understand, requires sifting through a lot of information

• Insolubility - Illogical or incongruent, contradictory or conflicting information that must be resolved

• Uncertainty - Unpredictable, inadequate information causes hesitancy

• Unfamiliarity - New or novel, rarely experienced if at all

We analyzed a case study about the way two different inservice teacher participants interacted with and responded to ambiguity, specifically in the context of learning how to use and implement Maker technologies in the classroom. These participants provided a series of statements throughout the study, and we were tasked with categorizing these statements by their respective roots: complexity, insolubility, uncertainty, and unfamiliarity. 

I really appreciated this workshop because I feel like I struggle with these different lenses of ambiguity both internally and practically. I know I’m not alone in these struggles, but sometimes the magnitude of ambiguity and overlapping lenses can almost paralyze me into doing nothing instead. Dr. Smith gave us strategies to overcome these different lenses and challenges within ambiguity, which was encouraging and motivating.