Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 8.1
Amplino prototype being tested (
left
) and mock-up of the imagined final Amplino malaria
diagnostic tool (
right
). Photographs courtesy of Pieter van Boheemen, www.amplino.org
creating the piece. However, if the installation depends heavily on audience partici-
pation and interaction, they are in fact producers or co-creators to some extent, and
as such will learn from actively engaging with the work.
8.3
What Tinkering can Teach You in Science Education?
The adoption of digital/physical tinkering by individuals, as formulated in Obser-
vation 1, has had its effect on science and education. Scientists increasingly use
publicly available low-cost digital prototyping systems to create measurement tools
and other experimental devices (e.g. D'Ausilio
2012
). To witness, a Google Scholar
query for articles containing the word “Arduino” in their title yielded a result of 490
scholarly articles.
1
Naturally, developments in science and technology resonate in science education
(e.g. Dougherty
2012
; Gerstein
2012
) and scientific education (e.g. Brock et al.
2009
; Jamieson
2010
), although not all experiences are always positive. Tinkering
is found in curricula worldwide, and students realized a plethora of projects that are
disseminated via the web.
An example of successful tinkering by academic students that stands out in our
opinion is the Amplino project (www.amplino.org), in which students developed a
low-cost Arduino-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic tool for malaria
(Fig.
8.1
). It exemplifies how a current scientific problem (i.e. offering affordable
DNA-based malaria diagnosis) can be aided in unexpected ways by student tin-
kering. Although more examples exists (Reardon
2013
), naturally, not all student
1
Query result September 2, 2013 from www.scholar.google.com, excluding legal documentation,
patents and citations.
