Our Unique Methodology

MyMachine is a collaboration with schools of all educational levels for (almost) one school year:
STEP 1. IDEA: Primary Students
children in primary schools invent and present (via drawings, models, manuals, …) their own ‘Dream Machine’. Anything goes: from a machine that helps you to put peanut butter on a sandwich to a machine that cleans your room. The main criterion is that it’s relevant for the child who really, really wants it.
STEP 2. CONCEPT: University Students
higher education students (e.g. in product design, game design, engineering, architecture, arts, occupational therapy) design a concept and produce a scale-model.
STEP 3. WORKING PROTOTYPE: Technical / Vocational Secondary Students
The technical drawings/designs are handed over to the Technical/Vocational Secondary Schools . They build real working prototypes of those dream machines, assisted by the children who invented them and the higher education students who designed them.
These 3 steps are not devided. On the contrary, the whole MyMachine process is a co-creation process. All students work together in the different stages (both offline and online). They learn from each other and use the expertise and support of a wide range of local corporations and organizations who partner with us because they share a common view on creativity, innovation, empathy and the importance of learning how to bring an(y) idea to life.
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Higher Education Students, Technical/Vocational Secondary Students and Primary School Children learn a lot through MyMachine
Tom Vander Ark on MyMachine
Tom Vander Ark is CEO Getting Smart, author, Forbes contributer, Linkedin Top Voice in Education, first Executive Director Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, previously served as President of the X PRIZE Foundation and is leading voice in education in the USA.
Tom Vander Ark’s keynote on our Future of Education event -organised in a partnership with our esteemed industry partner Agoria– where he explains the modern context for education and how MyMachine is stepping in:
Harvard University on MyMachine
dr. Christina Smiraglia is a Senior Research Manager at Harvard’s Project Zero, where she has worked on multiple projects, including Arts Festival Impacts, Learning Innovations Laboratory, Art Works at Work, and Higher Education in the 21st Century. Her research interests are focused on informal learning environments and object-based approaches, and she teaches graduate courses on informal learning research and pedagogy.
Christina Smiraglia’s keynote on our An Evening With MyMachine event:
Sir Ken Robinson on MyMachine
Sir Ken Robinson is education and creativity expert, one of Time/Fortune/CNN’s Principal Voices, acclaimed by Fast Company magazine as one of “the world’s elite thinkers on creativity and innovation”, holds the most viewed TED-Talk worldwide and author of many New York Times bestsellers.
Sir Ken Robinson’s introduction to our book:
Read more in our book