Abstract

With the increasing interest of integrating Making into formal set- tings, like public school classrooms, questions have emerged on how to sustain Making as a practice in these environments. Men- tors, who can guide students’ development of Making knowledge and skills, are needed in these classrooms to facilitate Making ac- tivities. In rural areas, the need for experienced mentors is often exacerbated by distance of experienced Maker-mentors from the classroom. In this research we studied how distance mentoring can help a group of high-school students in a rural school to Make and manufacture learning materials for an elementary school in their community. Grounded in literature from Lave and Wenger’s com- munities of practice and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, the work presented in this paper investigates how mentorship devel- ops in this classroom, becoming less dependent on researchers for guidance and thus becoming more self-sustaining. We discuss how distance-mentors can better train and sustain expertise in Making classrooms, and how our approach may support this mentorship process by aiming mentors and mentees towards a communal goal.