@MakingKnowing

A @columbiacss Research Cluster led by @ps2270 reconstructing 15th-17th c. craft techniques. See #edition640 for yourself: https://xitter.cf/t.co/i0RnRRxotl

 Columbia University
Joined December 2014
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Hands-on experimentation doesn’t need to be expensive or exclusive. The Companion’s resources can be scaled for various levels of learners, budgets, and research spaces. Start exploring today with teaching640.makingandknowing…
students showing their work in a classroom.

ALT students showing their work in a classroom.

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The Companion is our guide to clearing these practical and pedagogical hurdles. It’s a behind-the-scenes guide to the workflows, challenges, and successes that come with hands-on learning.
student working on laptop will well-annotated essay.

ALT student working on laptop will well-annotated essay.

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The benefits of this collaborative combination of research and teaching are clear. Yet it can be difficult to incorporate hands-on learning in the classroom. Hands-on learning is—by its very essence—difficult to codify and describe.
Group photo of students and instructors in a laboratory

ALT Group photo of students and instructors in a laboratory

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Hands-on work fostered a spirit of collaboration and creativity, allowing students and their instructors to work side by side and learn together. Each day in the lab was a chance to try again and build on our past failures and successes.
students in lab talking with instructors.

ALT students in lab talking with instructors.

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Instead of textbooks, M&K used low-stakes making activities to highlight other forms of knowledge: making, experimentation, collaboration, and failure. Students learned to interpret historical texts—and history itself—through materials.
zoom screenshot of students holding up papers with homemade paint.

ALT zoom screenshot of students holding up papers with homemade paint.

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But the process of creating the edition was just as important as our results. Pedagogy was integrated with original interdisciplinary and collaborative research, opening scientific inquiry to humanities students and vice versa. teaching640.makingandknowing…
image of teacher helping student pour liquid out of beaker in a laboratory.

ALT image of teacher helping student pour liquid out of beaker in a laboratory.

Making And Knowing Project@MakingKnowing6 Feb 2025
Replying to @MakingKnowing
The result was our digital critical edition. It’s not only an online version of the manuscript, it includes multimedia essays, glossaries, and search functions to help readers explore and find new meanings in our work.
Homepage of the digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature

ALT Homepage of the digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature

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The result was our digital critical edition. It’s not only an online version of the manuscript, it includes multimedia essays, glossaries, and search functions to help readers explore and find new meanings in our work.
Homepage of the digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature

ALT Homepage of the digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature

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Hands-on learning allowed us to uncover historical questions embedded in the text that would have otherwise remained inaccessible and helped generate key insights into the relationship between scientific knowing and craft-making in early modern Europe.
Student filming another student making ink

ALT Student filming another student making ink

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Over 7 years, students, scholars, and practitioners from across disciplines worked together in a boundary-breaking endeavor to research and reconstruct some of the manuscript’s 900 recipes for art objects, medical remedies, and household items.
students working in a laboratory

ALT students working in a laboratory

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Why create a Research and Teaching Companion? To answer that, we flashback to 2014, when Professor Pamela Smith founded the Making and Knowing Project to study a 16th-century French artisanal manuscript via interdisciplinary teaching, research, and digital analysis.
manuscript book cover

ALT manuscript book cover

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Four years after publishing our digital critical edition, Secrets of Craft and Nature, we are thrilled to share its Research and Teaching Companion! These resources and tools help bring history to life in any classroom. teaching640.makingandknowing…
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ALT Thumbnail images

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Looking to bring hands-on history into your classroom? Our Research and Teaching Companion shows how experiential learning can be adapted to any space, learner level, or budget with lesson plans, case studies, and other resources. Discover it for yourself: teaching640.makingandknowing…
Making and Knowing Project Research and Teaching Companion

ALT Making and Knowing Project Research and Teaching Companion

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Our students have been in the lab making cochineal lake pigments! Found growing on cactuses in Mexico and South America, the cochineal insect revolutionized pigments and dyes. Trace empire through color and learn how to make pigments at home: tinyurl.com/rtc-cochineal
Beaker in lab filled with red pigment

ALT Beaker in lab filled with red pigment

Student working in lab

ALT Student working in lab

students working in lab.

ALT students working in lab.

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