The Tinkering School Mars Mission represents a pioneering effort in defining a new kind of collaborative distance learning experience, while also highlighting the power and potential of giving students agency and autonomy.
We have created a beautiful photobook that documents the construction of the project and gives you a behind the scenes look at the iterative process, communication, collaboration, design artifacts, and fun that went into this endeavor.
The Tinkering School Mars Mission was conceived in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of in-person everything. Imagining that children around the world were about to spend the foreseeable future online, with few opportunities to tinker, we started poking at possible solutions to a question: “How can we keep the tinkering going, and keep kids collaborating on interesting projects?” We answered that question with another question - “What if we were together as robots?”
This project was designed and built by a team of Tinkering School alumni and friends, aged 15-20, who took on the responsibility of running the project using a form of emergent collectivist decision-making that proved both inclusive and effective. They designed and built an entire ecosystem: a museum quality simulated Martian lava tube 30’ X 20’, a fleet of web interface-controlled rovers; a fictional narrative complete with characters, written character scripts and filmed videos with professional actors; and logos and branding. And then they ran the program with six weeks of tinkerers from all over the country, reaching more than 60 children, and an adult STEM class from Barcelona. They are now designing Mars Missions version 2.0 to put into practice the lessons learned from the first iteration of the project.
The book is hardcover 12" X 9" coffee table format, 104 pages, and includes more than 120 B&W photographs by Paul Meadow, preface and writing by Tinkering School/Brightworks founder and educator Gever Tulley, and a foreword by famous American bricolage artist and designer Tom Sachs. Throughout the book are supporting text and artifacts from the project that give you a behind the scenes look at the design challenges the team faced, the collaborative nature of their work, and what it was like to participate in the project. It will be hardbound on high quality 100lb text weight/148gsm paper and printed in the United States through Edition One Books of Richmond, CA.
Buying an advance copy of the book (out Fall 2021) supports the production of this beautiful documentation of the Tinkering School Mars Mission as well as our research and development program that pilots new learning experiences.
Thank you for your support and generosity.
Gever Tulley and The Mars Team
