The Plug-In Studio: Art Education for the Maker Age! !
Steve Ciampaglia, Kerry Richardson · 2013
paper describes our experience co-founding and co-directing The Plug-In Studio (http://pluginstudio.net/), an autonomous, self- contained and entirely portable Art + Technology classroom. We bring innovative, affordable learning tools (Scratch, PicoCrickets, littleBits, Squishy Circuits, MaKey MaKeys), along with artist- teachers and curriculum, and plug into the existing physical sites of partner organizations to provide free after school art classes and workshops to underserved children and teens in the communities where they live. Students learn design, engineering, programming, robotics, and electronics skills associated with making through contemporary art practices. The Plug-In Studio is also a curriculum incubator for developing a new model of art education for the 21st century that integrates maker practice and restores the iterative nature of art-making that is being de-emphasized in the contemporary art classroom in favor of proscriptive and quantifiable teaching practices. The Plug-In Studio is a model for how maker concepts and practices can be incorporated into any subject matter at the curricular level, making these subjects more relevant for contemporary students and legitimizing making to school administrators.