Making makers
"Making Makers" is a two-day professional development program for teachers, administrators and library staff to learn what goes on in a makerspace. This will include hands-on time with Fab Lab equipment and design tools. There will also be planned discussion of pedagogy and best implementation practices.
What is a Makerspace? Where does one fit into your school?
Makerspaces, Fab Labs and STEAM classrooms prepare our students for the coming 4th industrial revolution and the uncharted futures beyond. Popularized by Pappert’s constructionism, Harvard’s Project Zero and the Fab Lab community, these spaces invite students of all ages to explore new technologies and the capacities they can develop within themselves. In a makerspace, educators can help students learn core academic concepts while also naturally inviting deeper thought. Students might iterate car designs, to win a school-wide competition. They could model and 3D print different shapes for finch beaks, to better understand Darwin’s evolution. Older marketing students could even leverage a collection of digital design and fabrication tools for a club fundraiser, or awareness campaign.
"We Are Makers" a compilation of viewpoints on why new technologies and communities of making are bringing us back to something deeply human. by wearemakers.io
This program is a two-day version of a graduate level class also taught by Corey Rice at a local university.
Our friends in Oulu, Finland have run a program analogous to this, which developed into a local community of practice among educators with access to Fab Labs. It is our genuine hope to be able to become such an epicenter for educational best-practice in our southern Connecticut community.