10 THINGS I LEARNED WHILE AT A4LE MAKER CONFERENCE

  1. Making is for people of all ages and all walks of life.
  2. You don’t need a huge budget to modernize an existing facility into a makerspace/ fablab. You just need creativity. The Arizona Science Center was modernized for less than $1.5 million.

 

  1. 960 SF of classroom space is plentiful, it’s a matter of the teacher decluttering and furniture selection.
  2. The worst thing that can happen when you ask someone if they would like to collaborate is that they say no.
  3. The best thing that can happen is that they say yes. (They said yes!)

 

  1. The staff at a local Makerspace in Phoenix referred to themselves as “Dream Consultants”. How can we redefine an educator’s role to something that relates more specifically to each individual student?
  2. Arizona and Ohio has JTED’s, Joint Technical Education Districts. Under this umbrella, community colleges, technical colleges and local businesses can be active partners with high schools. Traditional core courses are taught at the high schools in the morning and the afternoons are for internships and/or focused courses within the JTED network.
  3. Many school districts are revisiting their libraries and converting them to “Makerspaces/ Innovation Centers”, others are referring to them as Learning Commons. How can these spaces actively engage learning?
  4. If a new makerspace isn’t in the budget, how about “science on wheels”? A van that travels to educational facilities district-wide with “maker” supplies.
  5. I miss making things!