Maker Showcase

The Maker movement has been making its way into education. Many schools and teachers are starting to incorporate different components of the Maker movement into the way they teach in the form of maker lessons, projects, and other ways of giving students agency in how they learn. Making offers a way of increasing equity in the classroom by giving students more agency and letting them incorporate their interests into their education. Students no longer have to stick to the traditional ways of learning that involved them exclusively taking notes as their teacher lectures. This is especially beneficial for students who have a hard time following lectures, such as English Language Learners or those with learning disabilities, but it is also great for helping all students find a reason to connect to the lesson and find a way to make it important to themselves.

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Not all schools have the financial resources to create a cutting edge Maker space. This can be discouraging for those looking to incorporate Making into their teaching, but something that I learned by through the Maker community is that Making can be simple. Over the summer I worked at Mad Science of Austin where I helped lead science based summer camps. At many of the camps the students did Maker learning activities and they were all very accessible in terms of materials. This further reinforced the idea that Making is a way to increase equity in education.

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Financial resources are not always what limits the implementation of Maker education at schools. Sometimes the staff/administration can be the obstacle to overcome. Schools that are used to using primarily traditional methods of teaching, and have been successful doing so, can sometimes have some resistance to something new. My student teaching placement was at a pretty traditional school that is highly ranked. The curriculum and activities used by the teachers I was working with had been used for years prior. Because of this I had some difficulty finding a way to bring in a Maker lesson without disrupting the agenda that had been set in place already. In the end I was able to design a project that fit in with the curriculum but still gave students agency in their learning. 

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