Makerspaces, libraries and education

Asks:  "We’re in a period where almost anyone has the tools to make almost anything – but are we making the right things? Or too many of the wrong ones?"

Great post from Audrey Watters, who argues that "thanks to the move online and to digital, we'll now be able to do something "different" in our face-to-face learning environments ...  we can make a case for physical learning spaces -- for better, beautiful learning spaces."

"the makerspace takes a more public-facing, more community-oriented form than we've seen with individual DIY hobbyists or small hobby groups ... [it] brings them out into the open, into the public to share and to learn together. ...  much of what we see in the Maker Movement is the joy of learning -- lifelong learning -- in informal rather than formal environments."

From the About page: "MakerBridge is an online community for everyone interested in makerspaces and maker culture, including those working in makerspaces within libraries, community centers, and schools. This community is intended to build a bridge that brings people together so they can collaborate and learn from each other’s experiences. This network can be a valuable resource for anyone trying to plan or run a makerspace in a library, a school, or any other dedicated makerspace location--or even individuals who just enjoy tinkering and creating."

This sounds fun! The experimental theme of the popup makerspace was, “Whose Hand Am I Holding Anyway?”  It involved casting hands in plaster and then creating silicon proxies of the hands which were embedded with sensors.  An Arduino sketch was written to not only log when the sensors were triggered but also display messages via a serial readout.  "Conference participants could shake hands with these rather defamiliarizing proxies, an often amusing encounter that was immediately confirmed on a screen in the space. The handshake data was then logged so that we’d know, by the conference’s conclusion, how many people the proxies had “met.” 

Academic publishing of maker culture products.  How excellent!

The author notes how makerspaces reorient the library towards "greater user engagement, collaborative creative activity, and participatory learning". the library becomes a "locus of community involvement, innovative forms of service and instruction, and as laboratories of ideas and invention".

Some interesting thoughts about applying information literacy instruction to the makerspace concept, among other things. 

Buffy Hamilton discusses makerspaces in the context of participatory learning and provides lots of links to some great resources. 

The MakerLab team at uVic have developed DIY kits around historically relevant technologies, including wearables, wire recorders, and videogames. "The kits afford a form of tacit engagement that encourages audiences to reassemble historical technologies using current materials in order to better understand the material relationships between culture and media".