Last spring, my Library Media Specialist co-worker Kira and I were fortunate and blessed to receive a School District of De Pere School Board Innovate Grant to create makerspaces at De Pere Middle School and Foxview Intermediate. After months of planning, purchasing, and pondering, the makerspaces are getting close to being fully "open for business"!
So why makerspaces? The heavy influence for me included the great resources at the hashtag #makered on Twitter, as well as the lessons and knowledge about the Maker Movement in "Invent to Learn" by Gary Stager. Essentially, the maker movement is taking advantage of the plethora of either low cost or lower cost electronics that allow students to engage in areas they may never have before, like 3D printing or programming. You can read more about the Maker Movement here.
I am extremely passionate about the Maker Movement and feel that offering opportunities for students to engage with modeling, prototyping, and programming will only serve to enrich the education they receive in De Pere.
Currently, we have a few different pieces of our space still in processing, and we hope to be officially set to go by October 1st with drop ins available during the day, as well as after school opportunities. So what will our students get to look forward to this year?
- 3D Printing
- Programming with the $35 Raspberry Pi computer
- Machine coding and circuitry prototyping with Arduino
- Electronics fun with littleBits
- Video editing and green screening
- Robotics programming with Sphero
In addition to these products, we will be looking forward to providing monthly events, such as the Global Cardboard challenge or a Scratch code-a-thon!
We are extremely excited about how this makerspace will grow this year and beyond. Stay tuned for more updates!
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