Take a peek our current draft of the Makerspace Playbook, intended to offer some guidance to those who are hoping to start a Makerspace at their school or in their community. We welcome your feedback on the kinds of things we should add to this Playbook, what you think we got right and wrong, and any changes you’d make in general. We already know we’d like to add things like sample letters to garner support from administration and potential funders, more spotlights of teachers doing this kind of making with their students, and more detail about what the new roles for teachers, mentors, and shop hosts might entail. What do you need to know to get your Makerspace up and running?

Besides this draft of the Makerspace Playbook, we’ve also made some progress on the companion document High School Makerspace Tools & Materials, so we have a new draft of that to share with you , too.

• Makerspace Playbook (April 2012)
• High School Makerspace Tools & Materials (April 2012)

Eventually, we’d like both of these documents to exist online in a form via which we can all freely contribute to the information and refine what we have learned about running Makerspaces. For now, you can send your feedback to us using the form below.

Charlie Vierhout has been working hard to spread the Maker movement into new corners of Arizona. Charlie sits on the city council of Avondale, and with his friend John Miller, Vierhout has been successful getting some maker tools and culture into the schools as well. They sent us a pair of pictures we’re delighted to pass along here. Please don’t forget to take before-and-after pictures of your transformed rooms as you add Makerspaces in your schools!

Verrado Middle School computer lab on February 16th, 2012.

And here’s the same room just a week and a half later, on February 27th.

They call the new room “Computer Lab 2.0.” This 21st-century version has fewer computers but more technology plus far more interest for Verrado’s students. They have two MakerBots, some LEGO robotics stations, an Eggbot, a computer tear down area, a stop-motion animation stage, and an Arduino workbench.

The old room had 30 Apple desktop computers. That’s about $36,000 in systems. The new room with all the gear and extras came in at under $15,000.

Vierhout put it this way, “[That's a] saving of $21K and student engagement is up 100%.  Notice all the Post-Its on the wall? Those are student ideas for things to do.”

Another school in the district was recently written up in the local paper: “Litchfield Elementary School District offers tech advantages.”

You can keep up with Miller and Vierhout’s progress as they continue to transform this room and the school culture at their website:

https://sites.google.com/a/lesd.k12.az.us/ignite/get-started

Also happening in that part of Arizona: On March 20th, Vierhout tells us, nearby Avondale opened a “free-to-the-public collaborative workspace.” Read more about this new space, Gangplank Avondale.

One small downside of placing a makerspace in a school is that it might be used only when students are present and the campus is open.

Bryant Patten of The National Center for Open Source and Education has come up with a clever solution to give the whole community access to this valuable community resource. He’s working with a couple of high schools in northern New England to transform shop spaces into makerspaces. And here’s one difference to his plan: he’s helping them find ways to open up that converted space to people in the community … after school hours.

He listed the benefits of his approach–what the school and the community get from following his plan:

1. Turn students who are passive consumers of stuff and information into active makers.
2. Community makers could pay a monthly fee for after-hours access, providing a much-needed revenue stream for budget-crunched schools.
3. The building is ‘free.’ Often, community hackerspaces must pay rent for a space.
4. A mentorship program with local experts and craftspeople would break down the barrier between community and schools.
5. The students using the makerspace would be a source of interns for summer co-ops or, eventually, potential hires.
6. Local manufacturers might see the benefit and sponsor machinery purchases.

Schools hosting hackerspaces, and hackerspaces opening up during daytime hours for schools to use their machines: we think this is a potentially rewarding symbiosis. Have you seen this model in action?

In January, Make: magazine printed a column from Saul Griffith in which he introduced our project to bring Makerspaces to schools. Saul ended the piece by requesting “your ideas, your offers of help, your good and bad educational experiences.” He wanted “to hear what you would do if you were tasked with reforming STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education.”

We got a lot of advice and encouragement, a smattering of skepticism, and some pointers to several really interesting programs around the country that we wanted to share with you. We heard a little about what’s out there (we know there’s a lot more!) I’ll be passing along some of what our readers wrote to us over the coming days and months. First, I wanted to highlight a few stories that came from readers who recalled positive experiences they had as students.

Betsy, who described herself as a “mechanical engineer, maker, do-it-herselfer, wikiHow author/administrator, volunteer literacy tutor, and quite a few other hats” wrote about some good advice she got from the teacher of her favorite class, introductory engineering or “E25,” one in which they spent a lot of time taking things apart and putting them back together.

It was the class that taught me that using a screwdriver is fun…..At the end of the quarter, the professor gave us each our own screwdriver (my first!) and advised us all to ask for tools for Christmas and birthdays (which I did). I still use that screwdriver. And I’m a far better engineer for it.

Tiger, a high school senior in Colorado, recalled a very recent taste of biohacking that he wished he’d had earlier:

It wasn’t until I took a microbiology class after school at a community college that I induced a plasmid into a bacterium, which absolutely blew my mind. I got to change the way a life form operates, and see that effect in a physical way (glowing). If I could have done this in my sophomore bio class, it would have shown me the practical application for what we were learning.

Stuart, a doctoral candidate in Materials Science and Engineering, brought up a requirement of all students where he went to public high school in New York City, to go to an art museum and complete an assignment, or to go to a musical performance and complete an assignment. He used this to riff on how students could learn to love the art of making, the way they learn to love these other arts.

In a similar manner, students should be required to go to a hands-on workshop for credit…. Obviously this type of program will work better in a big city, such as NYC, where one workshop studio can cater to many multiple high schools. … If a workshop is optional, 5 students in a group of 20 might attend and enjoy the experience. If all 20 are required to attend, the 5 will enjoy the experience, and there is a fair chance that some of the 15 others might as well.

We are all learning all the time. As Ed, a technology teacher in Amherst, New York put it, “Two things my kids hear me say every day (at school and at home) There is so much cool stuff in the world to do and If you’re bored, it’s entirely your own fault.”

So tell us more about the cool stuff in the world that keeps you from getting bored, as Betsy, Tiger, and Stuart did. We’re still glad to hear from you about those great educational experiences we might consider as we build this network of Makerspaces. And if you know of a Makerspace-like program that may be helpful for others to see, or you’d like to get involved, please email us at mentor@otherlab.com and fill out the “Get Involved” form on this page so that we can stay in touch.

Teachers and administrators who want to set up a Makerspace at their school often tell us they don’t know how to get started. What tools and materials do we need to allow for a wide range of Maker projects?

Steve Hoefer has put together an excellent overview of the kinds of furniture, tools, and materials you’d need to start a Makerspace for about 25 students in a high school. We’re excited to share with you our latest version of this annotated checklist and guidelines.

This buildout takes a modular approach. Steve describes a general workspace and tools, and then the most popular making areas as modules that a teacher could add on to the basic space. These modules are: Electronics, Textiles, Computers, 3D Printing, and Laser Cutting. For each module, Steve has defined the safety, requirements, and some example projects and resources for that space. Then Steve listed the tools, accessories, consumables, materials and parts that module would need. Each item in the checklist is identified as part of a Basic- or Intermediate-level space.

Take a look at it, and tell us what you think. We welcome your comments and feedback.

Makerspace-HS-ToolsMaterials

P.S. This is a working document, and we not only welcome but encourage your feedback and comments. (updated 23 March)

A VERSION OF THIS Column APPEARS IN MAKE Volume 29.

DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It used to be called ARPA, and it was ARPA who funded the creation of the internet. Think of DARPA as the high-risk R&D sector of the U. S. Department of Defense. Sometimes the things they fund sound crazy, and sometimes they even are, but I personally think that they fund the more ambitious science and engineering projects in this country and get great results. Google might be claiming credit for the autonomous car, but remember that the guy who is running that program cut his teeth in the DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle race.

Continue reading →

On June 29, 2011, Miles O’Brien reported from a gathering in California on a growing movement that embraces the art of making cool things and a quirky do-it-yourself spirit. Supporters see “making” as one way to overcome a crisis in American science and math education.

Read the Transcript: http://to.pbs.org/mMoOKh

What is the Maker Movement and Maker Faire all about? Here is a look inside Maker Faire New York 2010 – held at the New York Hall of Science.