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Case Study

MAKERSPACES

“The ‘maker movement’ leads to a new pedagogy - ‘Tinkquiry’ - Tinkering + Inquiry.” – Peter Skillen, Author of The Construction Zone

Introduction

Welcome to Makers, where you will TOUR MAKER SPACES AND TOOLS supporting DIY.

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360° View

Move your phone around to view the space. Click on numbers to learn more about each item.

                   

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A Maker Space is a place for students that gives them access to high tech and low tech tools for them to explore transformative learning.  Through risk-taking, creative thinking and adaptive expertise learners take control of their education by understanding how to create, share and reflect on their newfound knowledge.  Below are two tools from the space. As you read through, think of how these tools could apply to our DIY learning model.

Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi may sound like a delicious treat, but for education, its primary purpose is to provide students an entry point into the broad world of physical computing. Its place in a Maker Space is vital as its applications range from teaching primary coding skills to developing complex interactive components that link the computer to the physical world.

 

At its base, Raspberry Pi is a simple single-board computer, but as explained in the 360 sphere, it hooks into the physical world through a breadboard to which components can be attached.  It has all the functions of a regular computer, but the 40 GPIO pins allow users to begin to take their coding skills and create physical inputs and outputs. 

Challenge

Please glance at the site below which is the first lesson for beginners using the Raspberry Pi.  Click quickly down the menu on the side, and you will see some of the basics students will learn about; for example how to switch a LED on and off and using a button as an input.

As the tutorial above explains, beginners will use the coding application Scratch, a block-based program that allows users to interact with GPIO pins. From the site RaspberryPi.org, there is a vast collection of lessons that range from starters (like the one you see above) to more advanced coding using the syntax-based language Python as shown in the lesson below.

Challenge

Each lesson is tiered and leads up to a more difficult, increasingly complex task.  Each lesson fills your tool belt with more adaptive expertise and allows for the learner to apply what they have learned to the new lessons as they continue on their journey. Each lesson provides challenges that can be solved by combining previous experiences and creating new problem-solving abilities.   Lessons gradually become more open-ended as learners move away from the lesson scaffolding to self-regulation and learning independence.

3D Printers

With the price point and technical specifications of 3D printing lowering every year, this is now something that Maker Spaces are looking at employing as a staple tool. The cost ranges from $500 to $6000 depending on one's needs, and there are numerous sites now dedicated to helping educators ranging from K-12 learn how to incorporate these tools into their lessons. 

 

A 3D printer brings objects to life through the magic of fused deposition modeling or laying down material layer after layer to achieve the desired shape.  Numerous sites have repositories of 3D models to download such as Thingiverse but your students will gain the most experience from creating their own in online 3D modeling programs such as Tinkercad. 

 

Students who learn how to create models can build anything from a character to use in their next LA story to a pencil holder for their desk.  Math skills such as measurement, manipulation of 3D objects and creating complex shapes are a given but the imagination perseverance and creativity it takes to build an object in a digital platform and transfer that to a physical object link to many competencies.  

Challenge

The draw of the 3D printer is the broad range of applications it can cover across curricular divides.  From printing a  scanned T-Rex skull for a Kindergarten class's lesson on dinosaurs:

To students creating and building their own Mars Rover

Process

Students follow a tiered learning system with increasingly complex development of 3D designs.  This process also involves a team element as students work together to develop design ideas and challenge each other to adapt and reflect on their designs.  Students are often looking to develop their ideas to solve real-life issues using 3D printing, so they usually use the Think, Pair, Share Model to work collaboratively on design and reflection.

Outcomes

Maker spaces cover a broad array of curricular competencies under British Columbia’s  new Applied Design Skills and Technology experiential curriculum, which includes:

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  • Understanding context

  • Defining

  • Ideating

  • Prototyping

  • Testing

  • Making

  • Sharing

Reflection

How do makerspaces fit into the context of DIY learning? How would you use the DIY template proposed on this site to help navigate the complexities of this project?

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