While going through my questions of practice , I found several great goals to achieve. I chose to focus on how we can implement a makerspace or fablab at our school. This is an issue we have been working on over the past few months as part of our technology strategic plan. We want to provide our students with new 21st century learning experiences and to increase their exposure to technology.
Getting access to a good makerspace is not an easy goal to accomplish since it can involve a significant time and money investment. I don’t know that there is a realistic, ideal solution that will make everyone happy. How can we implement a high-quality makerspace to give students a genuine, real-world experience, prepare them for an unknown future and expose them to technology?
We’ve looked into having our students go to an existing fablab that has great connections that would allow our students to work on real-world problems from the start. But that option is costly and not sustainable. We could build an onsite lab that is more sustainable, but we would lose the valuable expertise and connections the offsite lab offers.
I created a survey to get an idea of how others feel about the problem. The survey design was harder than I thought it would be. I wanted to keep it simple so people would complete it. This challenged me to think more about what information is essential. For example, Pierce and Cleary (2016) said that technology is often unreliable and that unreliability often negates its benefit. I wanted to see if our teachers felt this way and if they perceive any other barriers that will need to be removed. This is essential if we are to make our makerspace successful.
REFERENCES
Pierce, G. L., Cleary, P. F. (2016). The K-12 educational technology value chain: Apps for kids, tools for teachers and levers for reform. Education and Information Technologies, 21(4), 863-880. Retrieved from: https://link-springer-com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs10639-014-9357-1
Brian Durst EdTech 