Mathematician Amalie “Emmy” Noether’s education was originally geared toward English, French and playing the piano, before she began auditing math courses at the University of Erlangen.

The Value of Hands-on Experience

Posted by stoots on Feb 18th, 2012 | 0 comments home title

I have to confess that I have been wondering if knowledge is becoming conceptual for a lot of students. Adam Savage, co-host of MythBusters, speaks to this in his Problem Solving talk at the Maker Faire (2010). Savage candidly states that, every time he goes into a project thinking he understands absolutely everything involved in order to work through it and get it done, he finds that he screws it up. In short, he doesn’t understand what’s going on until he gets his hands involved and starts to build it. This, I believe is the weak link for a lot of young people—they work on their computers almost exclusively, which is only one venue of receiving information and one tool (though a variety of programs) by which to create something. Are students getting hands-on experience? Are they building or making what they design? Do they get the opportunity to handle the materials to see how they work when manipulated or fit with other materials (or mechanisms)?

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"For centuries the Phoenicians alone possessed the secret of the manufacture of purple. ... The Roman emperors transferred the manufacture of purple to Italy and conducted it as a monopoly. The art of purple dying, which, like many of the arts, had reached a high level at this time, was lost almost completely in the stormy period which marked the migration of nations. For a short time the art was still preserved in the Byzantine Empire, only to become extinct there in the 12th Century."

Josef Maria Eder, Edward Epstean, and Hinricus Lüppo-Cramer, HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945).

The Value of Hands-on Experience

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2 Steps Back