Defining Tinkering
The goal of this exercise is to teach the concept of tinkering. The hope, which I rate quite reasonable, is that they can appreciate tinkering once they have the concept.
This is a general method of teaching a concept that the students don't have. I use it to teach my concept of a "transformer".
First, you define "tinkering". I think it fair to warn them that there is already a word "tinkering", that this word is very similar, but you want it to have your meaning.
The definition, roughly, is this. Sometimes you come up with an idea, or a solution, or a way of doing something. Maybe your first thought is good, but even if it is good, you want to improve on it. (And of course, when that thought is bad, you want to check it to realize that it is bad.) So tinkering is the process of improving on your idea, solution, or way of doing something.
The class's goal is to list activities that they tinker at, or that they could tinker at, or that people could tinker at.
Kindling
If the class breaks out in answers, great. But when you ask a question of a group, you often do not get any immediate answers. So you have to at least kill time, giving them a chance to think. And you might as well talk about things that will get them to answer. Or, in any case, you might have to get their thinking started in a direction that produces answers.
If we think of your question as the match, and the exciting discussion you are going to have as the fire, then your patter between asking the question and getting answers is the kindling.
Of course, you start with the question. Part of the kindling is adding all the different things -- it can be activities that other people tinker at, etc. You can repeat the definition in a different way.
Here, another possibility, if they obviously aren't suggesting anything, you can have them first say things (activities) that aren't tinkering. If someone says "fork", you can change it to the activity of eating with a fork, or designing a fork, or making a fork.
You can explain why this is difficult. Students mostly live in a nontinkering environment -- school. What country was Christopher Columbus born in? Italy. There is no reason to check the answer, and no reason or rhyme to tinkering with it.
I am guessing that tinkering is a foreign concept to them, so that they will have trouble getting started. But, because there are so many activities that could include tinkering, they should eventually do well.
Preludes
This is identical to my exercise of listing transformers. So that might be a useful prelude to this -- or this might be a useful prelude to listing transformers. But I suspect that listing things is a common and obvious skill.
It probably would help if you have done some of the tinkering exercises first. Then the class could think of them, or you could mention them.
Exercise: Confirmation Bias
Exercise: Defining
Tinkering Intro
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