If you’re a teacher, you’ve likely heard the words MakerSpace or Maker Movement. You may also have heard the acronym STEM (or STEAM) used often in recent years. But don’t feel embarrassed if you’re not sure what MakerSpaces are or how they can improve teaching and learning. The term “Maker” is almost too self-explanatory not to assume it has an alternate meaning. But if you’re thinking a Maker is “one who makes or creates”, you’re right on the mark.
Student creativity has always been an important part of teaching and learning, but many teachers have found it increasingly difficult to find time for creativity, play, and exploration in the classroom. The Maker Movement (and MakerSpaces in schools) are educators’ way of providing a time--and a space--within existing curriculum for students to learn while they explore, create, build, and even sometimes break things. “A makerspace is a physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build. Makerspaces provide tools and space in a community environment—a library, community center, private organization, or campus.” (7 Things You Should Know About Makerspaces - Educause)
Projects involving arts and crafts, sewing, building models, engineering simple machines, and tinkering are nothing new. So why the sudden surge in the popularity of making? Technology! The relative affordability, small size, and increased prevalence of devices and small electronics in schools and homes allows kids AND adults to create and innovate in ways unimaginable in the past. Thirty years ago students might have built a cardboard robot with arms and legs that could be moved manually. Today, using LEDs, circuitry kits, and microcomputers like MaKeyMaKey or Raspberry Pi, those robots can actually move on their own, their eyes can light up, and they can talk. Instead of building a static model of the solar system out of styrofoam balls and plastic wires, kids can program Spheros and Ozobots to simulate the orbits of the planets around a glowing sun.
Most MakerSpaces are designed around individual or small group creativity and exploration. The idea is not for students to go there and follow recipe-style directions to create 25 versions of the same project. Rather, students are free to explore and teach themselves or each other how to use new tools, or to use familiar tools in new ways. STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) activities integrate content areas and learning standards the same way that real life does. As Sylvia Martinez points out in her book, Invent to Learn, “While school traditionally separates art and science, theory, and practice, such divisions are artificial. The real world just doesn’t work that way!”
If schools truly intend to prepare students for this “real” world, to be contributors in a 21st Century workforce, to create, learn, and inspire others to do the same, MakerSpaces are an excellent place to foster the skills they’ll need to succeed.