In light of the ongoing integration of digital media into everyday life, it is no longer adequate to think of digital media and the Internet as a sphere separate from the physical world. The integration of networking capabilities into almost every object (i.e. clothing or domestic appliances) and the discussion of a forthcoming Internet of Things (IoT) clearly show that the digital and the physical cannot be regarded as separated spheres. Accordingly the question of digital mediality becomes increasingly important on both a corporate and an educational level: digital mediality needs to be considered in teaching and learning. Against this background the concept of “maker space” is often discussed as a specific teaching-method to incorporate the topic of digital-physical into school as it enables hands-on practices of building and rebuilding real world artefacts from a multitude of (digital) materials. At the same time the concepts of “maker culture” and “makerspaces” are strongly related to the idea of “hacking” and a corresponding “hacker culture” (Holze 2012) which relies on creative and often subversive practices of coding and on practices of re/building electronic and digital devices since the 1950s. From this point of view “hacking” as a practice is ideologically connected to the idea to open up, make available and explore (digital) things that are part of our everyday lives. “Hacking” aims at understanding and using them in new, creative and often unintended ways. It will be discussed whether same is true for “maker culture” and its practices (Sneed 2012, Halverson & Sheridan 2014). While the practices of “hacking” may provide potential for learning processes in general – like „looking under the hood“ of a digital world - transferring it into an institutional setting may be challenging. Especially the underlying ideology of subversive practices may conflict with school as an institution. It is quite obvious that this understanding of “making” and “hacking” differs from current science- and ICT- classes as it refers to decode and recode practices and objects and interact with everyday items in new ways (Düllo 2005). By elaborating the concepts of “maker culture” and “hacker culture” and by referring to empirical examples we will discuss the potentials and challenges of integrating “maker spaces” into schools and teaching.

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