Module 11- Makerspace Blogshare

                When I started graduate school over a year ago, one of the new concepts I learned about was makerspaces.  From my understanding these were cool ways for students be creative while in the library.  When I worked in an elementary school, our library had a Lego station and coloring station. The kids loved these, but I wondered how high school students would respond to these stations.  When I started in the high school library I work in now there was only one big room with books and many, many tables.  I began by cleaning out the storage room (aka junk room) in the back of the library.  This is now the College and Career Readiness Room.  The room contains college brochures, scholarship information, and a work station, complete with scissors, glue, markers, and other craft materials.  Before beginning this week I did not think of this as a makerspace, but after reflecting I believe it is.  The room also contains comfy couches and beautiful chairs.  It has become the room to discuss future plans in.  On a daily bases I now have students working on projects and making life changing decisions about their future based on what they learn in that room.

I have also tried a few other makerspaces in the library, like blackout poetry and a coloring station.  These were an epic fail!  Students were not interested and saw it as meaningless.  However, this week as I was researching makerspace blogs, I came across the blog “How to Inspire Students to Be Compassionate Makers (https://ideas.demco.com/blog/inspire-students-compassionate-makers/).”  It describes the makerspace as a MakerCare Program, where students create things to improve the community or out of compassion for others.  This blog caught my attention due to the fact that most of the creations are geared more towards high school students.  At the very top of the blog the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for other?”  At the school I work at currently we have been focusing on a sense of community and how community involvement makes the school and world a better place.  The blog explains that stations should be focused on making a difference in the school, local, and even national community.  Canino-Fluit states in the article School Library Makerspaces, that “Making at the library should be about helping your students identify the problems they want to solve and the things they want to create and teaching them to use the tools they need in order to do it.”  This could easily be done in a MakerCare Program.  Some of the suggestions were making dog chew toys for the local animal shelter, photo buttons for athletes and their families, and mats for the homeless made from crocheted paper bags.  These projects are meaningful and would make students feel like their creation is more than just some picture that would eventually be thrown away.  The projects created within this MakerCare Program would have made a difference in the world.   They would be an asset to any school, no matter the age.  Students should learn to have compassion at any age and a makerspace would be a great way to foster that.

Canino-Fluit, A. (2014).  School library makerspaces.  Teacher Librarian41(5), pp21-27.

Seymour, G. (2017). How to inspire students to be compassionate makers.  Retrieved from https://ideas.demco.com/blog/inspire-students-compassionate-makers/ .