If this blog is teaching me one thing, it’s my lack of talent for creating titles for blog posts. Making a makerspace? C’mon. Isn’t that the most obvious choice? I need to start thinking more outside the box.
When I first heard about this project at the beginning of the semester, I was very excited. My school just began the creation of a makerspace, and I was excited to learn more about some of the tools and techniques that go into one. That way, I can perhaps fold some of these ideas into our up-and-coming makerspace.
I shared a group with my wonderful classmates Noelle and Shaira. We decided to split the components of the assignmentand collaborate on the project that way. Three components, three members — perfect. And it went really well. I undertook the task of proposing an inventory for our fictional makerspace. We first agreed on a vision for our makerspace and then customized our decription, space, and inventory from there.
Our makerspace is called the “STEAM Lab” which comes from the combination of “Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics.” Our fictional high school is Dominican High School which houses its STEAM Lab in the library. The Lab, like the library, is a public space made available to classes, clubs, staff, and individual students during free periods, lunch, and before and after school. We wanted our Lab to fulfill as many interest areas within the STEAM model as possible while still remaining under our budget. I guess you could say we followed the “more is more” philosophy by spreading our resources across many areas — 3D printing, circuitry, robotics, coding, electronic music, and movie making.
Most of the pricing and reviews I read on the items came from Amazon.com, but I also cross-checked with Google Shopping to see if I could find any items for cheaper. For the 3D printer, I chose to spend a good chunk of our budget on a Dremel Idea Builder which, according to reviews, is a sturdy, middle of road 3D printer — more quality than the cheaper ones and less industrial than the very, very expensive printers. To supplement those, I found 3D pens that can also contribute to that area.
For circuits, robotics, and coding, I chose three of what seems to be the most common examples of each — LittleBits, LEGO Masterminds, and Spheros. Each of these devices appears on several makerspace blogs and kits I researched. I got the idea for electronic music creation from a teacher at my school who used to teach a class on electronic music class at her former high school; and she taught the students how to create their own music entirely through the iPad and the inexpensive app GarageBand.
Lastly, I added to the inventory tools for making stop-action movies through the free and amazing LEGO Movie Making app. For this, I found on Amazon.com several kits of LEGO pieces and figurines that students would need to create diverse sets and scenarios that can be filmed through the app. These include sets made of cardboard, a 256-piece figurine set, and various LEGO platforms on which to build their sets. This is, in my opinion, the most exciting part of our makerspace and one which I especially hope to bring to the makerspace at my current high school.
Unbelievably, when I first added up the total cost of our inventory, it came to only a few dollars over our budget. So, I cut back on the amount of AA batteries we purchased and voila, to my disbelief, out total cost matched our maximum budget to the exact dollar amount! It almost seems phony, but it actually added up.
Hopefully, I’ll propose some of these tools and toys to our administrators and I’ll get to play with them in real life soon!
