Interviews with Colleagues

Assignment: What do your colleagues know (physical space & pedagogy) about a Makerspace? What do they want to know? Collect data from 3-5 folks.

Because of some scheduling issues, I found it was really hard to get facetime with my colleagues, so I opted to do a survey which I shared with my team at Science Friday (mostly science communicators and journalists in the NYC area) and with my teacher friends (many of whom teach science, but also some homeschoolers, art teachers, etc.). I was pretty excited I got 14 responses! My results are shared below.

My big takeaway was that most folks don't know if their local schools have makerspaces and they are unsure what exactly kids do in such a space in school.

There were two comments that I thought were really important.

The first was, “I believe all students should be involved in Maker education. It should not be an ‘enrichment’ program for only the high performing kids.” This is from a 3rd grade elementary school teacher in a relatively poor, rural area, but I see similar situations in my area. The Makerspace is for the gifted kids as a kind of reward. That's such a HUGE mistake in my opinion. In my experience, maker activities often provide kids who aren't traditionally academically skills an opportunity to shine and learn in a way that works for them. Makerspaces shouldn't be gatekept.

The second comment was, "Can a makerspace be successful in a rural setting, or are makerspaces only effective in urban areas that have the population density to support it?” This comes from a high school vo-tech teacher who has worked to start independent member-supported makerspaces in the area so that anyone can have access. It's been a real struggle to get enough participation to reach the needed funding to get the project off the ground. Grants are hard to come by, because those organizations what their dollars to affect as many people as possible, and rural areas don't have the population density they're looking for.

My point is rural areas need help providing maker education because it's really inconsistent and hard to sustain.