Lisa DickHave you been wondering what all the fuss is about Makerspaces? Makerspaces are just one of many ways to integrate STEM into your district, school, classroom, or even town!
So what exactly is a Makerspace? Makerspaces are an easy way to integrate STEM/STEAM into your classroom and/or school. This creative DIY space is where people can gather to create, invent, and learn. They are sometimes also referred to as hackerspaces, hackspaces, and fablabs. A STEM/STEAM lab can be a Makerspace and vice versa it just depends on how it is integrated into a lesson. I typically think of Makerspaces as the least teacher controlled option for integrating STEM. Students are in charge of their own learning.
Students in charge of their learning may seem like a possible “free for all” but honestly, in my experience, it was the opposite of what you might expect. Students actually have trouble grasping this concept, even high schoolers. I’ll never forget my first time to integrate Makerspace Friday. I thought the hardest obstacle would be funding supplies, but actually, the student reaction was mindblowing!
The Makerspace was loaded with everything from robots to art supplies. The first day went something like this “Ok, today we begin our first Makerspace Friday. You will be 100% in charge of your learning. As long as you are making, you are learning; as long as you are learning, you are achieving today’s class objective. Since today is our first day, I would like to show you a few of the items in our Makerspace before you start.” One by one I picked up various baskets and items and gave a brief overview of what they were, not what they could do with them, only what they were. “Which team knows what they would like to try first?” Crickets. “Okay, I’ll give you a couple minutes to discuss and raise your hand when ready.” Crickets. Okay, I know how to solve this. I quickly grab the Sphero. “First person with hand raised get the Sphero for their team!”…you guessed it, crickets!
Finally, the first question surfaces, “What do you want us to do with this stuff?” I respond with what would they like to do, they are in charge of their own learning. “We don’t know what to do or what these things can do.” Augh, there we go…and when you need to find out about something what do you do? …a quiet reluctant voice answers g-oo-gle? I’m getting pretty pumped by now, YES! Google. What else? This leads to a discussion of various resources, effective search techniques, etc.
After a few Friday’s you would have thought I was serving food in my room, because they were racing to spend every minute possible on what ever project they were working on. The students had a wide range of projects from building their own Dance, Dance, Revolution game to virtual surgeries to coding Arduino.
Makerspaces can be run in a variety of ways from total control of their learning to solving an issue using engineering or design challenge processes to using task cards, STEM in a bag/box, or full PBL units. Check out the world of STEM through Makerspace integration and you just might catch the madness too:)
