Journal: Materials literacy
22 August 2015
One concept in particular that has come back a few times in the last few weeks for me has been "materials literacy," that is, knowing about different types of materials and their properties. I've realized recently that so much of what we interact with these days is trompe l'oeil, and we end up not knowing about honest materials. In an email thread, I read about one man who said his 12-year-old daughter didn’t know the difference between plastic and metal. And of course, not being familiar with materials leads to a lack of confidence... like in this thread. I think one of the advantages of Tinkering activities is that it puts Tinkerers in contact with lots of different materials in a way that puts their properties to the fore, so that materials literacy is built into Tinkering activities.