Maker Blog: You will create an article, blog, or website to help teachers, designers, or educators who are considering building their own Makerspace. You can use any tool to create the information, but it will contain (in any order):
o Tips and tricks for building sustainable Makerspaces
o Your thoughts and ideas about Makerspaces and the maker movement
o What students gain from making and why those things are important to learning
o How Makerspaces connect with learning based on the research and reading you’ve done
o How Makerspaces fit into schools, libraries, or other settings based on the research you’ve done
o How you might help educators justify implementing Makerspaces to their school administrations
Make this fun and enjoyable to read. It doesn’t have to be academic, long, or in-depth (but you will cite research and readings at the bottom). There is a ton of research out there, but do teachers/designers really want to read it when they have one million other things to do? Consider your audience and write to them.
Prototype a Thing: One aspect of the maker movement involves free-form making. While too much open-endedness can be overwhelming or distracting to participants, sometimes it encourages creativity and passion projects (if used sparingly, at the right times, and with the right audiences – think Google’s Genius Hour). Here, you will use class time over our course to prototype a thing to address some problem you have identified as necessary to solve. That thing and that problem are up to you. (I know how much you all hate this part.) While the ideas are open-ended, you will all do the following:
1. Outline your problem and plan your thing
2. Create your thing and document the steps you took
3. Include the costs, tools, thoughts, and processes behind the process
Makerspace Design Challenge: Another aspect of the maker movement involves design challenges – like the ones we will do in class. Design challenges prompt students to creatively work through ideating, prototyping, and testing potential solutions to problems. While the challenges are flexible and relatively open-ended for the participants, teachers and designers must plan them thoughtfully in advance to ensure there are plenty of materials, that the solutions are not impossible, and that the activities are engaging. Here, you will create a design challenge for your audience. See Destination Imagination for some examples of what and how to. Again, this doesn’t have to be long or complicated and definitely not too planned out where you remove the innovation piece from students/participants.
Final Makerspace Proposal Development: The final challenge will involve the development of a proposal geared toward implementing a Makerspace. In it, you will address 1) the purpose, goals, and objectives of the space, 2) the use and layout of the physical space, what materials/tools will be available, and how participants will interact in and utilize the space, and 3) the costs, fidelity, and sustainability of the space. All of these things will focus around a particular audience of your choosing and will be designed to get administrators to approve the proposal. You may work alone, in pairs, or in groups of three to develop your proposals.
Final Makerspace Make and Take Kit: The final challenge will involve the development of a Make and Take kit geared toward any audience of your choice. In it, you will include 1) the purpose, goals, and objectives of the activity, 2) the what materials/tools will be needed to complete the activity, and 3) how participants will assemble the materials and use the tools be be successful. All of these things will focus around a particular audience of your choosing and will be designed to get teachers to want to have their students use this. You may work alone, in pairs, or in groups of three to develop your kits.
See the following sites for examples of existing kits: