More school makerspaces to share
Makerspace leaders share a variety of makerspaces in five educational settings
Here’s a collection of five school makerspaces from New York and Virginia to Indiana and India as well as Santa Rosa, California. They have offered to “show me” their makerspace, see the students using the space and working with tools.
York College, CUNY in Jamaica NY
Dr. Xin Bai is Professor of Educational Technology in the Department of Teacher Education at York College/CUNY.
We just had a game/DIY makerspace event with high school students today. It was messy but fun!
Flint Hill School in Oakton, VA
Joey Starnes (she/her), JK-6 Innovation Department Chair/Innovation Specialist
This is our Flint Hill JK-3 makerspace. We are an independent school with multiple makerspaces, one for each age range of students. We’ve had this Innovation Lab for eight years. We have a beautiful space filled with consumables, building materials, two 3D printers, a Carvey machine, a Cricut, a LEGO wall, a green screen, and so much more!
Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, CA
Jason Farthing is the Innovation Director.
Here are some photos of kids in action in the makerspace at Cardinal Newman. I rolled out a Maker II class this year, which the prerequisite was Maker I, so I have students who are now two years into the program. These Maker II students are currently creating a five hole mini-golf course. This will be portable, sort of like a cornhole game. The students can bring these in and out of storage in order to play them around campus.
My ninth graders are doing some cardboard tilt mazes with a custom theme and many other fun intro projects throughout the semester.
Dawg’s Den at Orleans Jr/Sr High in Orleans, IN
Jeri Brown is the Dawgs Den Facilitator and Career Coach/STEM Fellow.
Our Digital Fabrication Lab/Makerspace is called the Dawgs Den and is located in our Jr/Sr High School in Orleans, Indiana. This is our 5th year for the space.
The lab is facilitated by me and I have a few students that come in during their study hall and assist. They are earning Badges as they become experts on the machines or different processes.
We have open hours when there are not classes booked in here. Otherwise I coordinate with teachers developing Projects and PBL’s for their students to complete connecting to the state standards and skills they are wanting to learn.
Two makerspaces in Tamil Nadu, India
I am Vivek Devaraj, Maker Educator and Engineer.
I’m on a mission to make learning fun and experiential. Having worked in India and the Netherlands in R&D of global companies, I found my calling as a Maker Educator after moving back to India in 2017. In my five-year journey as a makerspace developer, I have set up two makerspaces in totally different contexts. One is for a community of artists and designers in the Central India city of Nagpur. Its main focus is on electronics prototyping.
The second one is close to my heart, as it is set up in a rural part of India, in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is set up in the campus of Payir Trust, a twenty-year old NGO with deep roots in the area. Three years ago, I proposed this as a way to engage rural teens who couldn’t find their way in conventional classrooms. We focussed on woodworking, electronics prototyping (mostly taking things off, fixing battery or soldering kind of activities) and toy making. But it has evolved into something beautiful we didn’t imagine.
We initially set it up to motivate dropout students and fresh graduates who are not conventionally employed but partly work in their family farm. We wanted to give them a space to express their creativity and maybe build a small business out of making something. But seeing the kids work and build things, we got so confident that we are converting the entire campus into a Science Centre, dedicated to rural students. The Science Centre is called Aarvam (meaning Curiosity in Tamil) and the makerspace is called Idea-pattarai (Meaning Idea Foundry in Tamil).
It is staffed by 2 members from the same village, Thenur. One of them is a teacher (Ms. Harisudha) and the other a young diploma graduate (Mr. Subash). By having both male and female (the teacher) staff at our space, we were able to see a good participation from all the kids and the community members.
We have kids from local schools visit us every Saturday and they are engaged in activities like bird box, catapult-making, Origami or taking apart old devices etc. On other days, we have some visitors who want to build decor or small furniture items or just fix broken things. We also began making stencils for a nearby women’s self-help group making bags as a livelihood.
In the next phase, we are working on a curriculum to train the kids in becoming Makers and stimulate their creativity. We want to give them first-hand experience in woodworking, building circuits and making their own tools. And we are working with the local authorities to have more school children visit our space.
I am attaching our photos and portfolio of our resident maker Subhash for your reference. Link to Makerspace Portfolio.
Thanks to everyone who shared photos of their makerspaces. I’m super excited to see this work and share it with others. I hope these stories are a reminder of how vital this work is and it can be done almost anywhere. If you’d like to “show me”, send me some photos of the makerspace and tell me about how students use the space. Write me at: dale@make.co).