Makerspaces, libraries and education

Bricklaying robot expected to slice two months off home build time Commercial machine to be truck mounted for extra mobility Machine can work wit

If you want to teach 3D printing in the classroom, you can revert to some resources. Here’s All3DP’s Teacher's Guide to 3D Printing Education.

Marc is passionate about technology, electronics and computer science. He loves teaching people new skills and generating passion within youngsters. A former project manager, head of CMDNet and research engineer at CRP Henri Tudor, Marc is currently in charge of the computer science department at Lycée Technique Ettelbruck. In his spare time, Marc actively participates in youth-oriented tech projects such as the CDays, an interactive fair familiarising students with new technologies and HacKids, a series of workshops introducing hacking to young geeks.

As a teacher, Marc's dream is to bring back natural curiosity and playful behavior into our schools. In Luxembourg's school system, there is little room for improvisation or passion, and little time for cultivating differences, teaching respect and propper team skills. That's where Makerspaces come in. This concept of "learning by doing" makes it possible for students to see what they were taught, learn how to improve existing solutions and grow a passion about what they do best...

In this webinar, expert maker librarians, David Saunders and Susan Polos, tell all about how they built their library makerspaces and turned them into hubs for creativity and invention. Join in the conversation as they look to the future of makerspaces.

Unless you live under a rock or are completely off the grid when it comes to technology, you’re probably aware of the maker movement. However, if you need a refresher, I made an infographic. The maker movement is such an exciting time for students and teachers alike! Yet, while a part of you is excited, the other part of you is flooded with the reasons why you just can’t start a makerspace right now.

“I have no money.”
“I’m just not super comfortable with technology.”
“We don’t have devices at my school.”
“I don’t have the space.”
“I don’t have the schedule that allows me to teach the kids how to do the stuff.”
I find this to be incredibly unfortunate. Not unfortunate in that I wish you had more money and were more comfortable with technology (although I sympathize), but unfortunate in that you think you need both of those to start a makerspace. With the massive amount of information out there about makerspaces, somewhere along the way, the term “maker” became synonymous with words like “3-D printing” and “robots.”

Background Information

I recently learned, for the first time, about Aristotle’s belief that there were three basic activities of humans: theoria (thinking), poiesis (making), and praxis (doing). Corresponding to these activities were three types of knowledge: theoretical, the end goal being truth; poietical, the end goal being production; and practical, the end goal being action (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(process)).

The Greek theoria, from which the English word “theory” is derived, meant “contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at”.  The word theoria is derived from a verb meaning to look, or to see: for the Greeks, knowing was a kind of seeing, a sort of intellectual seeing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoria).

Poïesis is etymologically derived from the ancient Greek term ποιέω, which means “to make” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poiesis).

Praxis (From ancient Greek: πρᾶξις) is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, or realized (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(process)). “Praxis” may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas. Praxis may be described as a form of critical thinking and comprises the combination of reflection and action. Paulo Freire defines praxis “reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed.”(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(process))

Take your imagination to the next level with the Itty Bitty City maker kit by Microduino.

A few days ago, I met Manuel Herrera at MORENet. He has an amazing maker space where students engage in creative thinking on a daily basis. It’s a bastion of creativity and wonder and his passion for it is contagious.

However, as we talked about prototyping and design thinking, he mentioned something surprising.

“We have a 3D printer, but only a few students know how to use it for creative purposes. Most students download templates and print things out. There’s not much actual creative thought that goes into it.”

“So, what’s the answer?” I asked.

“I think they need to start by making things by hand,” he said.

So, what is important in terms of the Maker Mindset? It’s all the things in these images – persistence, resilience, perseverance, the opportunity to fail and then the ability to push through this.  This opportunity to fail is really quite significant as she learnt much more from the failures than she did from the first model which worked after only a few quick tweaks.   She learnt how the printer works and how the software worked to best suit the capabilities of the printer.    She learnt about how models should be designed and how she should hold her ideas lightly so that her designs can get even better.

Connected to this last point above is the importance of having a process which names different styles of thinking and allocates them to a stage in a process which scaffolds inquiry and design.   Design thinking is the process which we are using to do this.

Lissa Davies didn’t hesitate to put 255 elementary school students into a room together with a mountain of cardboard, tape and scissors.

“We want these students to be excited about what they’re doing. And what you see here is students who are totally engaged in what they’re doing,” the Keheewin school teacher-librarian and curriculum co-ordinator said over the din of high-pitched voices Friday.

Armed with plans they revised on the fly, students in the south-side Edmonton public school were engrossed in a school-wide makerspace challenge to build a game out of cardboard.

“People are making (such) cool things,” said six-year-old Wyatt Knorr, who’s in Grade 1. “They’re using their brains, and thinking, and problem solving.”

Travis Good further explores Makerspaces in libraries during ILEAD USA on March 27 at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

The feature, announced on Wednesday, lets users walk around an object while it builds a 3-D image to save into photos.

You can rotate that image just as you would with any other 3-D system. This new system allows you to get 3-D pictures without finding yourself at the mercy of a larger device or chained to cords.

No word yet as to price, its availability or platforms for downloading. This element does come in conjunction with Microsoft’s previous announcement that Paint will include 3-D aspects. The new feature could replace Microsoft PhotoSynth, the company’s 3-D panoramic tour app.

Thingiverse is a great site for finding printable 3D models, but it is not the only website out there.  Here are 45 others to choose from. 3D Printing and

If there’s one thing we’re passionate about here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, it’s sharing our community’s passion for making with technology. Back in January, the Education team exhibited at the Bett Show with a special Educator’s Edition of our fabulous magazine, The MagPi. The goal was to share our projects and programmes with educators who could join our increasing community of digital makers. Like all our publications, a downloadable PDF was made available on our website; this was good thinking, as the magazine proved to be very popular and we ran out of copies soon after the show.

Hack/slash/cut/bash/scrape/mod/mash – it’s a culture thing

Join the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts and Curtin Library Makerspace to hack cultural datasets and heritage information.

Use government and institutional research data, gallery, library, archive and museum information as data sources. Experiment with data for a research project or proposal; create something accessible, beautiful and/or useful using craft, games, augmented or virtual reality, apps or something else: it’s up to you.

Date:                     Thursday 10 November 2016 (afternoon) & Friday 11 November 2016 (9am – 5pm)

Location:              Makerspace, level two, Robertson Library (building 105)

Curtin University

Kent Street, Bentley

Registration:      Free via Eventbrite

For more information visit the Curtin Cultural Makathon website.

To volunteer to assist with data or to sponsor a prize please contact Dr Lise Summers or Dr Karen Miller.

Curtin Cultural Makathon is funded by a MCCA strategic grant. For more details on the project contact Professor Erik Champion.

To be sure, there have been changes in the Maker movement in the decade-plus since the first Maker Faires wooed a new generation of DIYers. Along the way, we’ve celebrated successes and asked hard questions. How can we help making become more equitable and inclusive? How can maker ed embrace traditional technology, including computer science? What are the benefits of a maker education, and how do we measure them? In this guide, we hope you’ll find answers to—or at least ideas about—these and other questions that explore the meaning of making.