Remotely Piloted Systems

With extra time at home, we’re seeing an incredible amount of gardens and yard projects popping up all over social media. The weather is right, and surely we can all use something give us even a momentary distraction from Covid-19. Why not get out in the sun, feel the dirt on your hands, and make or grow something?

When the makerspace movement in education began, teachers’ intentions were in the right place, but they didn’t always have the resources and expertise to make the most of these incredible spaces. Though schools might invest in the best makerspace materials for their classrooms, if they are simply instructing students to build crafting projects the entire point of making working machinery and systems through STEM concepts is lost.

Within a true makerspace, students are supposed to create working items that serve a purpose or solve a problem. When students use simple materials to create tools that offer great solutions, they are able to see the process from the earliest planning, through building, into testing a prototype, identifying weak areas, fixing problems, and celebrating the success of a fully functioning piece of equipment.

Last spring, I gave my after-school Makers Club a challenge – create a unique, interactive project that guests can interact with at our 2016 Maker Fair.  We had held the Cardboard Challenge earlier in the school year, giving my students lots of ideas on how to use cardboard as a medium.  So it was no surprise to me when a group of students enthusiastically told me that they would be creating a cardboard Maker Cave for our MakerFair.

"Making Culture is the product of a year-long investigation visiting 30 K-12 education makerspaces across 12 metropolitan regions map conducted through in-depth interviews with students, instructors, and leadership alongside observation and study of each space and its programs.

Among the ExCITe Center's recommendations made as a result of the report are:

*The culture of a makerspace has a direct impact on student learning. Rather than choosing equipment or specific projects, designers of new makerspaces should first consider the kind of learning culture they seek to create for their students.

*Makerspace participation can positively impact a broad range of students, including English Language Learners. But school leaders must be mindful to recruit inclusively, for both for instructors and students.

*Within school makerspaces, hosting unstructured open hours (outside of class time) encourages greater exploration, positive risk-taking, and collaboration for a wider range of students.

*Students frequently use skills learned in makerspaces to improve other aspects of the school and local community, such as student government activities, classroom maintenance, and sports facilities.  

The full report includes specific recommendations for those considering or planning an education makerspace and how to create a supportive culture from the outset."

"Every kid has that moment when she realizes that the adults she admires aren’t perfect. Few children ever learn, however, that the same is true for the inventors and intellectual giants whose distinguished portraits permeate their history textbooks.   

As it turns out, recognizing that visionaries such as Albert Einstein experienced failure can actually help students perform better in school. In 2016, the cognitive-studies researcher Xiaodong Lin-Siegler of Columbia University’s Teachers College published a study that found that high-school students’ science grades improved after they learned about the personal and intellectual struggles of scientists including Einstein and Marie Curie. Students who only learned about the scientists’ achievements saw their grades decline."