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Existing inequities play out when adults engage with kids around tinkering or making. And, while makerspaces are a unique kind of learning space, many of the techniques thoughtful educators are using to improve their interactions with students could be used in other venues.

Sewing has been one of the most successful projects in the program Escudé helps run at the Boys and Girls Club in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley neighborhood. Kids shared their family histories of sewing and even invited grandparents to participate and share. The activity was framed as intellectual thought and valued as equal to any other tinkering task. The success of this activity came from giving students the space to share themselves and build relationships with one another and the facilitators, not because they were using the most recent technology or because they were building robots.

it’s a cultural assumption that kids would think taking apart toys would be fun.

By contrast, the report’s short-term developments, online learning and makerspaces, have a distinct yesterday’s news vibe about them. But make no mistake, they still hold some of the biggest long-term promise in the report.

six trends, six challenges, and six so-called important developments.

Take online learning and makerspaces for example, which are now expected to find their way into even more classrooms during the next year.

analysts predict that over the next five years, major American companies will need to add to their workforce a total of nearly 1.6 million employees versed in STEM: 945,000 who possess basic STEM literacy and 635,000 who demonstrate advanced STEM knowledge. Other data suggest that at least 20 percent of U.S. jobs require a high level of knowledge in at least one STEM field, according to the report.

Accessible learning activities that invite intentional play and risk.

Flexible and inclusive learning spaces. Teachers and students need flexibility in structures, equipment and access to materials in both the classroom and the natural world, as well as environments augmented by virtual and technology-based platforms.

Author Sherry Turkle says that even the presence of a phone on the table makes people feel less connected to each other.

. Kids are beginning to complain about the amount of time parents spend on their phones.

There's scientific proof that the blue light emitted from cell phones disrupts sleep.