MAKERSPACES
Innovation, Agency & Community
Makerspace Tools
Makey Makey Kits
Use these kits to create design challenges such as designing simple circuits, creating game controllers and games, or even exploring soundscapes by creating underwater music scores.
Lego Walls & Motors
Build or design different objects or systems utilizing assorted Lego pieces, Lego motors, and the Lego walls. Students can create their own tasks or projects utilizing the Lego materials as models.
Minecraft:
Education Edition
Minecraft: Education Edition allows students to create different “worlds” in this program Students can collaborate with peers in real time and virtually to play or create games.
Cardboard Challenges
What better way to recycle cardboard than to create imaginative designs and models of authentic solutions to problems. Always accessible and affordable, cardboard lets the learner work with sizes that are appealing. The students can connect pieces with duct tape or Makedo nuts and bolts.
TV Studio
In the TV studio, students have access to a green screen, iPads, Padcaster, tripods, and microphones. They can record in front of the green screen or take the camera on location in the school or on school grounds. They also have access to video editing software including Animoto, iMovie and WeVideo.
Gardens & Greenhouse
Students are familiar with the concept of gardening and how to care for plants in the gardens. Students use the greenhouse to begin seedlings.
While completing my doctoral degree in the Design of Learning Environments, I was fortunate to be the Principal of a school where we designed and implemented a makerspace to increase student-driven learning. Our makerspace, Sickles Studios, is an evolving learning environment where students can create, innovate, and educate. Children work with elements of coding, engineering, digital literacy, and video production through both “plugged in” (technology-based) or “unplugged” (hands-on experiences) lessons. Our makerspace is designed to be an open-ended learning environment where students work with community experts, peers, and teachers through play-based learning (Britton, 2012).
Because makerspaces are a relatively new design in public schools, some would argue they are a fad in education with little empirical research to support this student-driven learning model. Furthermore, the majority of studies conducted thus far are done in informal learning environments like museums, community centers, or public libraries, whereas the remaining studies conducted in formal education settings are derived mainly from higher education, high school, and middle school learning environments (Vossoughi & Bevan, 2014). The research conducted at Sickles Studios builds upon the emerging body of research that documents both the formal and informal learning outcomes, as well as the iterative nature of the learning process through making, specifically for elementary school students.