What Is The Maker Movement?
What if mastery instead of testing were the focus of education?
Young people are constantly told they need to gain experience to land successful careers. The problem is a lot of students go through the entire course of schooling and they end up not gaining those skills and when they are told they need all this experience, they’re completely caught off guard. In addition to not gaining any experience, the main thing they learn how to do well is take and pass tests. I strongly feel that not only that kind of education is completely outdated, but it leaves students completely unprepared for the 21st century. Education needs to be based on bringing out your skills, absorbing and applying what you learn through a mix of theoretical discussion and practical application, and mastery instead of tests should be the focus of education.
The manufacturing economy is completely changing. While it has been less prevalent in the United States than in many other countries due to its transition to a service economy and then an information economy, manufacturing jobs have traditionally been the backbone of the American economy. With the upcoming election and politicians constantly promising jobs especially to bring back the old manufacturing economy, they don’t realize the unfortunate truth: The old manufacturing economy is never coming back. This isn’t all doom and gloom, however. The phoenix always rises from its ashes. From the ashes of the old industrial manufacturing economy comes a new technological manufacturing economy based on the maker movement. The maker movement believes that everyone is an innovator and in informal, networked, peer-led, and shared learning motivated by fun and self-fulfillment.
What Are Makerspaces and Why Are They Relevant?
Makerspaces are places where students can gather to create, invent, tinker, explore and discover using a variety of tools and materials. While makerspaces have lots of tools, the main focus of the makerspace isn’t the tools themselves but rather the community where people come together and create in a shared social environment and access resources that they couldn’t afford on their own. Makerspaces generally feature high-powered machines and as such are associated with engineering, computer science, and graphic design, but the most important thing about makerspaces is the community that forms. They provide tools and space in community environments such as libraries, community centers, private organizations, or campuses. Occasionally makerspaces bring in field experts to provide mentorship, as well as host scheduled classes, which are usually not for credit and focus on single skills which are not generally taught in school (for example, coding, soldering, woodcarving, entrepreneurship). Makerspaces are spaces which are focused on learning for mastery focused within a collaborative culture in which everyone involved puts their ideas together and exchanges them to combine into a constantly growing and incredibly resourceful toolbox and roadmap.
Why Is the Maker Culture Important?
Makerspaces are important because the idea behind them is that people shouldn’t consume mass products, instead they should make their own things. This idea is known as the maker culture. The values of the maker culture are a participatory, hands-on approach, self-directed learning, open source technology, the democratization of design, engineering, fabrication, and education, collaborative learning, interdisciplinary learning. There is an emphasis on applying practical skills to reference designs. It is a social movement with an artisan spirit with a universally accessible digitalized framework. These collaborative studio-spaces are a combination of lab, shop, and conference room, which makes them ideal for maker cultures to form. Interdisciplinary studies is great in a university setting, but it’s much more the exception than the norm. However in maker spaces, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary learning is the norm instead of the exception. As a result multidisciplinary learning creates a stimulating environment enriching the projects built or made in the space and making the makerspace an increasingly viable educational venue.
Who is doing makerspaces?
Originally the maker space was focused mostly on practical skills rather than theoretical skills. This reinforces the mission of the learning by doing environment encouraged by maker spaces as well as the sharing of projects between different parties. Sharing and learning skills between different people who know different skills is paramount, which results in a dynamic studio environment. Over time, however, makerspaces have been beginning to create a foothold within the academic community as well. For example, the University of Washington has the ThinkLab, Rutgers University has the Headquarters, Stanford University has the FabLab, Case Western Reserve University has ThinkBox (ThinkBox is considered such an important resource at Case Western Reserve University that it is being placed into a seven-story 50,000 square foot space), and Wheaton College has the WHALE Lab (Wheaton Autonomous Learning Lab). The WHALE Lab is an interdisciplinary marketplace where the students do activities such as embroidering, soldering, welding, sculpting, and designing and manufacturing creative projects. Community-provided mutual assistance is emphasized. At the Georgia Tech Invention Studio, students can apply for Maker Grants to fund their projects and in addition, winning teams must work on their projects at the Invention Studio, which are then presented as portfolio pieces at the Georgia Tech Capstone Expo. There are also makerspaces which aren’t confined within the institutional structure. An example of a non-institutional makerspace is the Fab Lab in Spain which is a wooden solar house project that allows customization by inhabitants and adaptable to environmental conditions, a remarkable feat indeed.
There are a variety of different attempts being made at creating makerspaces at different educational institutions. Some have been creating spaces in a more ad hoc fashion, with existing spaces are transformed into after-school makerspaces using tubs and other types of storage containers so that materials get safely stored during the school day. Others are using elective courses that incorporate creative exploration that are makerspace classes. Others are integrating design thinking and playfulness into the school curriculum, which allows for the creation of unconventional classes devoted to creative exploration. Usually schools and community centers use grant money and/or community support to fund all of the makerspace resources (technology, tools, materials). Usually local businesses and tech companies invest their efforts as well to foster the development of new innovators, whether they eventually become employees or self-employed.
The Future of Makerspaces
The maker space allows a space and resources for physical learning and interdisciplinary learning. Because of this, students from many different disciplines can easily seek assistance from resources and experts and more experienced users at the maker spaces. Everyone there contributes to developing each other’s fields of expertise and therefore broadens their minds and perspectives. Makerspaces, most importantly, allow students to take complete control of their learning process and to have ownership in both what they define and design, as both are equally important in such a space. Makerspaces are the places where students learn for mastery. Interface and software designer Bret Victor states the future of makerspaces is going to involve turning maker spaces into “seeing spaces”, which he defines as “an environment that’s based around seeing what your project is actually doing”. He says this shifts the focus from makerspaces putting the pieces together to seeing spaces emphasizing deep understanding of the process of making. He defines seeing in three different levels: seeing inside, seeing across time, and seeing across possibilities. The summary is that we will want to get information about the things we are making “out of the box, into the environment, where anything you’d want to know is immediately accessible from a glance away”, we’d be able to record the time we spent on the projects and observe and note patterns that come up in a sort of digital notebook, and experimenting with all the different possibilities with each project to find the best possibility through seeing all the context. In summary, the makerspace, and possibly the seeing space, will merge the manufacturing economy with 21st century technology, STEM, and the liberal arts and hopefully the makerspaces will become a key cornerstone of 21st century societies.
