![]() Sometimes it might include things like cardboard and duct tape, and other times it might consist of items like laptops, microphones, and green screens. That space would look different in different classrooms, and even within one classroom, the materials might look different throughout the year, depending on the type of learning that’s happening at the time. That’s not what a makerspace is for, so it’s a space devoted to and differentiated and set up for making.” But there is an actual product, so you’re not going to, say, design an event or a service project. But (in) a makerspace, you’re actually going to create some kind of product. Creativity is sometimes idea generation, it’s sometimes problem-solving. ![]() “I see a makerspace as simply a space designed and dedicated to hands-on creativity,” he explains, “and the key thing there is they’re actually making something. Spencer’s definition of a makerspace is much broader than my mental image of Legos and cardboard. Spencer teaches online courses about Project-Based Learning, Design Thinking, and Makerspaces, and I really trust his thinking, so I knew he would be a great person to help me demystify the makerspace: What it is, why we would want one, and how to get started. Juliani, of the books Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, and Empower: What Happens When Students Own their Learning. So I asked one of those smart people, my friend John Spencer, who was a classroom teacher for a number of years and currently teaches at the university level. I don’t know…the more traditional, stodgy, control-freak part of me says it looks like a bunch of hooey.īut some of the smartest people I know are pretty into makerspaces, and the part of me that’s not a stodgy control freak, the part that knows there’s a lot about tradition we need to question, that part of me wants to find out once and for all what’s so great about makerspaces. Or attaching some kind of wire to a banana. ![]() Or taping together some cardboard strips to make them into a car. I have this picture in my mind of kids kind of messing around with Legos instead of, I don’t know, reading primary source materials that would shed light on some period in history. I even stumbled into a Twitter chat one night where a group of school librarians was throwing around some pretty great ideas about building makerspaces in their libraries.Īnd yet, I still feel like I don’t get it. I’ve walked through exhibit halls at conferences where the coding and robotics displays cause me to stop, stare, and try to look like I have some idea of what I’m looking at. I have seen plenty of photos on social media, with the towers made of marshmallows and toothpicks. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.įor as long as I’ve been aware of makerspaces, I haven’t quite understood them. This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Sponsored by Peergrade and Microsoft Class Notebook Listen to my interview with John Spencer ( transcript):
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