Maker. Space. Inquiry. Place. What might be the connection?

Maker Space. Maker Ed. Open Making. 

Maker Opportunities. Fab Lab. Maker Culture. 

There are many names and motivations behind implementing 
maker learning with your students. 

The maker movement and its benefits for student learning has been an ongoing focus of the Library Learning Commons transformation over the past two years. The staff at my school have been working to implement curriculum focused maker learning to help both students and other educators see the value of hands-on maker learning as a way to work through the process of their learning, to integrate 21st century competencies into their every day work, and ignite a passion for making and creating. 

Maker Culture: A Place to Start

Last year we created a Maker Culture PLN to develop our understanding of the Maker Movement, to attempt maker opportunities to explore with our students and to share our learning with the staff in our school community. Our learning over the course of the year culminated with an opportunity to "hack the staff meeting". We shared our learning with the staff by creating a carousel of maker stations for the staff to tinker, play, and explore with their grade level teams. 

The stations were well received and many educators began to seek out time to co-plan and co-teach maker infused lesson in the Library Learning Commons. 

Make. Literacy. 

Another attempt to integrate maker learning was through our Forest of Reading program, specifically Blue Spruce and Silver Birch. In the 2017- 2018 school year, both programs were run primarily as classroom based activities. Teachers were invited to share an inquiry bag with their students to spark interest in the books prior to reading. Each bag contained an item or theme word related to the book that could be used as a Minds On for students. Educators and students would then read the book together and explore a maker task or inquiry prompt together related to their reading. 

A collection of these maker inquiry prompts from the 2017-2018 school year can be found at bit.ly/TinkerInTheForest under Archive/2018. 

We adopted a similar program for the the 2018-2019 school year with one small tweak- the Silver Birch program is running as an open book club for students in Grades 4-5 who are interested in joining. Students have been invited to explore their own making interests as they connect to their reading by creating artifacts to share at our Museum of Learning. This has also provided an opportunity to explore badging and the concept of attaching success criteria and goal setting to our making. 

Open Making. Genius Hour. Passion Projects. 

One of my main goals in exploring maker culture and the maker movement has been to provide students an opportunity explore their own maker passions and maker inspirations OUTSIDE of the curriculum. I am a full believer in hands-on learning and the belief that students (and adults!) learn best through doing and so we should look for opportunities to uncover the curriculum through making. 

But I also believe in making for the sake of making. 
Making for the joy of making. 
Making for the learning about making. 
Making for the beauty of making. 
Just making. 

And so the Genius Cart was born. 

Part open making. Part genius hour. Part passion project. 

And as it turns out...part inquiry. 

Behold... the Genius Cart. 

I wanted to provide an opportunity and a space within the Library Learning commons for students to explore making that interested them outside of their classroom activities. After combing through many posts (and of course, Pinterest!) the idea for the Genius Cart was born. 

As educators we love to approach things from an If - Then stance in order to measure or gauge the success of our endeavors to improve the learning of our students. I developed this If - Then statement as way to promote ongoing reflection of the Genius Cart and the success (and failures) as we worked to develop the students' capacity to work in an open making atmosphere.

I launched the Genius Cart by first presenting the idea to the staff at my school and providing time for the educators to explore the cart and discuss how this make opportunity might help to support the maker learning happening in their classrooms.

You can access the slide deck I used for this initial launch by visiting 

bit.ly/GeniusCart . 

Additional slides have been added since that first launch as we reflected and refined the use of the Genius Cart.

And then we launched!

A few observations about this initial stage of the Genius Cart:

• most staff were interested in bringing their entire class for an orientation activity involving a design thinking task
• a few teachers had thought ahead and booked the library space to integrate their ongoing maker activities with the Genius Cart
• many of the students who were coming during our scheduled open making periods did not come with a project in mind
• there was a lot of repeat making based on what had already been explored in class (e.g. structures)
• many, many, many students equate making with using a hot glue gun!
• students needed a lot of prompting to develop a plan prior to making, most wanted to jump in and "see where it went"
• at times the making appeared "purposelessness"- students were not engaging with the materials in order to learn a "maker skill" or to create a product, but mainly to tinker with the materials

Now what?

Moving forward we will be exploring the intersection between inquiry, design thinking and the maker movement during our time with the Genius Cart. To begin our exploration I developed a Zip Line challenge after consulting with another teacher-librarian who explored a similar design thinking in her LLC. Students were invited to work their way through the launch cycle by examining photos and videos of zip lines and sharing their ideas on an inquiry chart. A Wonder Wall documented the questions developed by students were recorded as well.

Students created plans and materials lists for their carrier designs and then we built, tested and shared our success. I documented the process, student observations and discussions as we worked through the iterations of their designs and testing on the zipline. You can see the video and photos I shared with our school community by visiting our virtual library learning commons. 

I'm still working through the qualitative data I collected and hope to share my thoughts and observations around the challenge soon before we head into a second Genius Cart inquiry. Stay tuned...


***********************************
I used the following resources/educators to help me with my planning:

Inquiry Mindset: Nurturing the Dreams, Wonders, and Curiosities of Our Youngest Learners

https://www.trevormackenzie.com/

@trev_mackenzie

@rbathusrthunt

Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student

http://www.spencerauthor.com/the-launch-cycle/
@ajjuliani
@spencerideas

Jenn Brown, Teacher-Librarian

@JennMacBrown