“Makerspace
better than recess”
Image
credit: Morningside Elementary School in Elizabethtown - Student shows a game
he designed using Scratch at Makerspace Learning Lab
According to EdTech’s
recent article How Makerspaces in Schools Help Students Learn to Code by
Eli Zimmerman, Makerspaces in schools are giving educators new options
to teach students core coding concepts.
“Computer science has taken a priority slot for K–12 teachers, as
experts forecast a majority of jobs will incorporate some kind of coding skills
or computational thinking by as early as 2020,” states Zimmerman.
One way that schools are engaging students is by introducing coding
activities in Makerspaces, where students can use the creative culture
to start establishing the building blocks of computational thinking.
Coding has taken the educational world by storm, especially with the
introduction of mandatory computer programming curriculum across the globe.
Some educators and experts are calling it the “new literacy”.
Image credit: MakerKids
Traditionally, computer languages were reserved for college level
students and were intensely complicated with syntax. Coding has never been more
accessible to students of all ages! Thanks to block based coding languages such
as Scratch,
the free program from MIT, students and teachers can learn to code in a safe
and easy environment. Four and five-year-olds can learn the foundations of
coding and computer commands before they can even write and spell words.
A lot of coding apps use the idea of game creation as a learning basis.
Beyond the practical reasons for learning how to code, there’s the fact that
creating a game or animation can be really fun for kids.
Coding is Part of the Maker Movement!
The maker movement has been growing steadily for more than a decade. It
has been enthusiastically embraced by curious kids of all ages, and the
movement has gained an increasingly strong foothold in K–12 classrooms and
libraries, where it is also called maker education.
“Maker Education” is a
term coined by Dale Dougherty in 2013 in his book Design, Make, Play:
Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators (ISBN 978-0415539203). It is
an approach to problem-based and project-based learning that relies upon hands-on,
often collaborative, learning experiences as a method for solving authentic
problems. People who participate in making often call themselves "Makers”
of the “Maker Movement” and develop their projects in “Makerspaces”,
which emphasize prototyping and the repurposing of found objects in service of
creating new inventions or innovations.
Culturally, “Makerspaces”, both inside and outside of schools,
are associated with collaboration and the free flow of ideas. In schools, Maker
Education stresses the importance of learner-driven experience,
interdisciplinary learning, peer-to-peer teaching, iteration, and the notion of
"failing forward", or the idea that mistake-based learning is crucial
to the learning process and eventual success of a project.
Game-based
Makerspaces leverage the idea that playing games is a way to engage
students, but making games can be even more absorbing.
In his article Creating Game-Based Makerspaces, Brian Mayer, a
gaming and library technology specialist at the Genesee Valley (N.Y.)
Educational Partnership, addresses different ways of blending games and play
with the power of creation and Makerspaces. His work utilizes game
design as way for students to demonstrate concept understanding and mastery
throughout the design process and in the finished product. Working with
classroom teachers and school librarians, he helps guide students through
designing a game around the curriculum being covered in class.
“Students begin by playing games that introduce themes, mechanisms, and
styles of play that can later be used as reference resources during the design
process,” says Brian. “Students then brainstorm game ideas and pitch them to
the teaching team for thoughts and feedback. Once students have a game concept,
they work in groups to develop their designs, meeting with the teaching team
intermittently for feedback and direction from both a curricular, as well as a
design approach. The project culminates with students playing each other’s
designs and providing reflections on both the process itself and the other
group’s designs.”
The nonprofit organization Maker Ed has been a formidable
facilitator for bringing maker-centered learning to students across the
country, both inside and outside of schools. The group was founded in 2012 as
the Maker Education Initiative by Dale Dougherty, widely known as the leader of
the maker movement and the founder of Make Magazine and the
popular Maker Faire events
across the globe. Dougherty’s company, Maker Media, is a major funder of the
Maker Ed organization, as are Intel and Pixar Animation Studios.
Maker Ed, the organization, focuses on “educators and the institutions
they work for” by providing training, professional development, and support for
educators who want to engage their students with making activities. Maker Ed’s
flagship program is called Maker Corps. Maker Ed trains makers for the Corps so
that they can travel to various host sites in all 50 states and bring making to
kids at museums, science centers, libraries, summer camps, and other partner
agencies.