Power Up! Learning in a Hackerspace Alex Megelas A Thesis in The Department of Education ...

124 Pages·2014·2.06 MB·English

by  Alex Megelas

Power Up! Learning in a Hackerspace

Alex Megelas

A Thesis
in
The Department
of
Education

Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts (Educational Studies) at
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

July 2014

© Alex Megelas, 2014
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
School of Graduate Studies

This is to certify that the thesis prepared

By: Alex Megelas

Entitled: Power Up! Learning in a Hackerspace

and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

M.A. (Educational Studies)

complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to
originality and quality.

Signed by the final examining committee:
Prof. Ailie Cleghorn Chair

Prof. Arpi Hamalian Examiner

Prof. Ayaz Naseem Examiner

Prof. David Waddington Supervisor

Approved by ________________________________________________
Prof. Richard Schmid, Chair of Department of Education

________________________________________________

Dean André Roy, Faculty of Arts and Science

Date ________________________________________________

ii
ABSTRACT

Power Up! Learning in a Hackerspace
Alex Megelas
This qualitative research project considers the acquisition of technological literacy in the
lived, physical context of the Foulab hackerspace, a community of practice located in Montreal,
Quebec.
Hackerspaces are an offshoot of hacker culture. They are physical sites (garages, lofts) where
individuals who sometimes self-identify as hackers come together to share tools and knowledge, and
collaborate on projects of a technological nature. As educational communities, hackerspaces are
member-led and member-funded. Initiatives stemming from hackerspaces including computer
programming, electrical design and small electronics projects.
Power Up! participants were six individuals, including the lead researcher, who all identified
themselves as having experienced barriers to engaging with technology. The research objective was to
see how (if) Foulab would contribute to participants overcoming their reluctances, successfully
complete a project and in so doing, acquire mastery over the tools and knowledge required.
Participants were required to design and build a bicycle-powered electricity generator with the
support of the Foulab membership, facilities and tools.
iii
While the project was successfully completed, there were clashes between the lab and Power
Up! project which prevented the project from being fully integrated into Foulab. The research project
documents this and how, as a result, Power Up! grew into its own peer-based learning community.
Participants met at Foulab weekly for ten weeks. At the onset of the project, participants were
asked to take part in a written reflection and a group conversation in order to consider their prior and
current engagement with technology.
Participants then began to develop a methodology for working together that first saw them
engage in research into the theoretical fundamentals of electrical conductivity and electrical project
design. They then came up with a design for the bicycle-powered generator and gathered the tools and
parts necessary to assemble it.
This process, and the participants' engagement with each other and with Foulab, was
documented in field notes by the lead researcher. At the conclusion of the project, participants took part
in a group discussion to reflect on the experience.

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people to whom I am indebted for their immensely kind and encouraging
contributions to my educational journey.
I'd like to first recognize Heather Stephens and everyone at the Thomas More Institute for
leading me to realize I was mistaken when I had thought that higher education wasn’t for me after all.
Thanks, also, to Shirley Roburn for this talk we had way back when during which you asked
me those questions that helped me come up with some core concepts that have stayed with me since.
And to Elizabeth Hunt for sitting down for coffee years ago and valuing my thoughts and voices over
the course of all these messy University of the Streets conversations over the years.
Thank you also to my committee members Prof. David Waddington, Prof. Ayaz Naseem and
Prof. Arpi Hamalian, for their time and feedback. I'd especially like to express my gratitude to Prof.
Hamalian for getting me to move past the imposter syndrome I couldn't quite shake at the onset and for
encouraging me to stick with it and engage in research these past few years since.
To my supervisor, Dr. Waddington, thank you for encouraging me to apply to the program in
the first place and for putting up with my sometimes lack of reliability.
Shout out to Jim, Andrew and Max for being rad and being my friends and being so inspiring
with your very lives. I pretty much got into this whole project because of you
And lastly, thanks to Foulab and all its current and prior member for having created this
incredible space and for having letting me engage with you these past few years.
v
DEDICATION

To Ana, my love, my people.

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction... p. 1
Chapter 1: Research objectives and context… p. 5
Research objectives and structure… p. 6
Hackers and hackerspaces: a note on the use of terminology... p. 9
Foulab: Its space, members and history... p. 13
Chapter 2: Literature review and theoretical framework... p. 20
Literature review… p.20
Theoretical framework... p. 23
From inside looking out: peer-to peer interactions in communities of practice... p. 26
From outside looking in: negotiating boundaries towards membership… p. 30
Chapter 3: Power Up!... p. 34
Research background… p. 34
Research methodology... p. 36
Confirmation of Foulab interest... p. 43
Participant recruitment... p. 48
Participant selection... p. 50
Introduction meeting... p.52
Life-history reflections... p. 55
First facilitated group discussion... p. 67
The first month – the kind of bike-powered generator we wanted to build... p.68
Thanksgiving weekend and weekend visits... p. 73
The Cleanup... p. 77
Switching to Tuesday nights... p. 80
Switching to Anna’s loft... p. 82
Completion of the project... p. 84
Chapter 4: Summary of themes... p. 86
Interactions with Foulab members and users... p. 87
Lack of support... p. 87
vii
Different levels in technological literacy... p. 89
Conflicts over shared use of the space... p. 91
Gender and Race... p. 92
Gendered interactions... p. 92
Race... p. 96
Beer... p. 98
Relationship-building... p. 100
Co-learning... p. 103
Conclusion... p. 106
Appendices... p. 112
Appendix 1: The bike-powered generator during the glittering session... p. 112
Appendix 2: The workshop... p. 117
References... p. 118

TABLES

Table 1: Research steps... p. 41
Table 2: Summary of candidate interest... p. 50
Table 3: Learning approaches... p. 71
Table 4: Research themes... p. 83
viii
Introduction
The concept of power often has evil connotations, especially when it is used to characterize social
relations. In the sense of directing and aligning energy, however, power is neither inherently evil, nor
necessarily conflictual (though it can be both in specific cases). It is a condition for the possibility of
socially organized action. (Wenger 2000, 180)

Power is used to create an effect – whether that effect be physical or otherwise. One person
can be said to have power over another. To empower people is to increase their access to social or
political power. It also refers to electrical current. To power-up in a computer game is to get an
immediate increase in the abilities of your character.
In July of 2008, my friends the Avocado, Clever Duster and Jonesey1 headed down to the Last
HOPE conference.2,i All three of them like to build all sorts of different contraptions and have picked
up this affinity and connected skills “along the way” without necessarily relying on formal education.
Since the HOPE conference covers a great many of these related skills (from soldering to computer
programming), it made sense for the three of them to head down and check it out.3 While there though,
they were introduced to hackerspaces, a significant and new development in hacker culture.

1
Members of hacker culture often use handles when identifying themselves (i.e., on Internet bulletin boards). Handles
are short nicknames that help hide one's identity while nevertheless allowing for individual distinction. Marco Deseriis
(2011) writes about the significances of online aliases that allow for anonymity: “On the one hand, improper names
empower a subaltern social group by providing anonymity and a medium for mutual recognition to its users”. Except
for project participants who consented to my using their real identities, I’ve changed the names and handles of all those

we came into contact to whom I refer to herein.
2 HOPE stands for Hackers on Planet Earth.
3 I was initially going to head down as well, but then I went through a breakup and had to stay in town to move apartments
and generally get my life in order.
1
Hackerspaces are physical sites in which individuals, who self-identify as hackers congregate to
share tools, collaborate on projects, hold workshops and learn from each other. When my friends came
back from NYC, they and some of the Montrealers they met while there, decided, along with some
others,4 to start up Foulab,ii a hackerspace.
Foulab was one of the first ten or so hackerspaces in North America although since then,
hundreds of others have opened up. They are dynamic, fiercely autonomous communities, which allow
for a wide variety of learning experiences and technological innovations. They are garages and lofts,
chaotically filled with all sort of tools, discarded technology, and in-progress projects with varying
degrees of usefulness and applicability. They are communities of practice and educational sites and as a
social phenomenon, they are new in North America, and were widely popularized through the HOPE
conference.5,iii
Forward two years. It's July 2010 and I was on a train with the Avocado and his seven-year-old son.
They were on their way down to the Next HOPE conference and this time, since I had some vacation
coming, I figured I would go with them. Though I didn't know much about technology, there were a lot
of workshops at the Next HOPE that I was interested in and which both looked at hacker culture from a

4 According to Clever Duster, in an email exchange dated June 24, 2014, “Foulab wasn't so much started by 4 people that
met at HOPE as by 4 people who attended HOPE (2 of whom met there—Hugo and max) and 6 others who responded
to a series of emails and posts to mtl tech forums and blogs seeking help in organizing a hackerspace.”
5 See Gui Cavalcanti's “Is it a Hackerspace, Makerspace, Techshop or Fablab?” for a breakdown of the history of
hackerspaces, its emergence as a European movement and its eventual introduction to North America.
2