Making Social Change v2.0

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You Are Here

We are here.  Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I are co-teaching v2.0 of Making Social Change, a hands-on course at the intersection of making and Sociology, in which we explore social movements and the ways that they use tools to enact change. We teach the class in the makerspace, and we’re working with a brave cohort of interesting students. We’ve been tweaking and adapting the content, activities, and flow, building on what we learned offering a prototype of the course in fall of 2017.

So far, we’ve spoken with Ivan in South Africa, a friend of Diane’s and an ANC activist who fought against apartheid…

Talking to a South African Activist

…worked with the laser cutter and 3D printer to create a Harriet Tubman stamp to perfect a twenty dollar bill…

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…and discussed memory and monument, working through James W. Loewen’s ideas in Lies Across America…

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…and creating prototypes for potential monuments to be built on our college campus.

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Designing Solutions to Social Problems

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What Works? What Could Be Improved?

Spent some time this week sharing the design thinking process with students from Diane’s (Sociology) Social Problems course.  Diane’s students were game, approaching the work bravely and with enthusiasm. Our hope is that they’ll use the approach for their end-of-semester projects, creating solutions for social problems.

Sharing

My favorite prototype of the day:  The Self-Care Cube.

Self-Care Cube

Photo gallery…

Design Thinking in Sociology

How Many Bubbles in a Bar of Soap?

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Diane Carlson (Sociology professor, and co-creator of Making Social Change) and I finally got around to building out version 2.0 of the Wheel of Voter Fortune Diane created as part of the Making Across the Curriculum faculty professional development academy from summer of 2016.  Diane uses the wheel with her students to help them develop an understanding of voter suppression.  Building upon Diane’s original prototype, we added a mask so that only one segment of the wheel would be revealed.

How Many Bubbles?

We also created a control panel to hold a switch and batteries…

Wheel of Voter Fortune control plate

…and used a piece of copper wire and an LED to create a flexible lamp.

Wheel of Voter Fortune v2

Ideas for version 3 include interchangeable question wheels, and maybe some elaborate game show lights and sounds!

Making Social Change Begins!

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About two years from our original idea, and after many hours on the greaseboard, and many prototypes and preview events, Sociology 379: Making Social Change has finally been born!  We’re joined by twelve brave, multi-talented, fascinating students, passionate about a wide array of social justice issues.

Making Social Change

The class meets once a week on Mondays from 1pm – 4:05pm, and we’ve met twice. We spent the first session framing the course and getting to know each other, doing some design thinking with the help of the Making Connections card game from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, and building some low res prototypes.

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In our second session, we took a critical look at the “maker movement,” spending some time discussing “Making Through the Lens of Culture and Power: Toward Transformative Visions for Educational Equity.” (Harvard Educational Review, 86(2), 206-232.Vossoughi, S., Hooper, P. K., & Escudé, M. (2016), https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fa5b/4e88c78f380b4727d445afa33bea5212a21d.pdf), before students had the chance to begin work on their contribution to our tile project, which is a low risk/high reward, very accessible “first project” in digital fabrication.

David Creates his Tile

Really looking forward to continuing to work with these students, and to learning from this “version 1” prototype of the course!

Spinning a Yarn

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Earlier this week, Diane Carlson (Sociology) and I held a preview event for Making Social Change, our Sociology + Making course, as part of FLC’s Social Justice Spring events. We decided to create some drop spindles and spin some yarn, based on an activity Erica Tyler (Anthropology) developed as part of last summer’s Making Across the Curriculum faculty professional development program.

We cut the whorls using the laser cutter (which has been christened “Danger Scissors”)…

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Note the engraved design, inspired by Gandhi’s spinning wheel.  Diane cut the dowels using a good old-fashioned chop saw…

Sawhat

…after which she and Erica taught us how to turn wool into yarn.

Drop Spindling

We also walked students through some other digital fabrication techniques, using the same spinning wheel motif source file to create objects using the Carvey, vinyl cutter, and 3D printer.  Looking forward to helping bring this course to life in the fall!