Maker Education
Individual and collective creativity are key to solving some of the biggest problems of the 21st Century. Creativity isn’t necessarily innate but rather learned, and makerspaces are a hot bed for learning and self expression. These projects explore the best ways to teach, learn, and thrive within them.
Multigen STEM Makerspaces
— Co-Principal Investigator, program design, activities and space design, research
The Multi-Gen STEM Makerspaces in Affordable Housing: Co-Designing a Model with the Community project sought to develop and research a sustainable model for multigenerational making and learning that can support a STEM career trajectory. It was a collaboration with residents from Bayview Towers, a 200-unit affordable housing complex in Connecticut. Through research justice and a design-based research approach with iterative cycles of co-design, the project ideveloped a sustainable model for multigenerational making and learning that builds the skills and dispositions that can support a STEM career trajectory.
The Multigen Makers Playbook provides a guide for other affordable housing communities on how to co-create a makerspace program of their own. Playbook chapters include:
- Introduction
- Co-Designing with the Community
- Setting up the Makerspace
- Running the Makerspace
- Designing Activities & Programming
- Sustaining the Makerspace
Maker-Mentor Program
— Program designer and mentor organizer
Artisans Asylum, a makerspace in Boston, invited neighborhood youth to connect with experienced maker mentors to learn new skills, build creativity and confidence, and pursue new passions and interests. Mentors helped the youth learn tools and techniques around different modes of making in different shops, including Fiber Arts, Design Lab & Photography, and Digital Fabrication with 3D printing and laser cutting. The youth were then supported on their individual exploration journeys, to be showcased at the end of the month.
EdTech Design Challenge
— Project inspiration, program lead, and organizer
The EdTech Design Challenge put Boston area Boys & Girls Club teens in the driver’s seat to envision and design apps that make learning better. The youth were supported in the design thinking process to define, brainstorm, sketch, prototype with mentors, and pitch their ideas to a panel of industry experts. The project aimed to ensure and foster engaging and fruitful design thinking skills, and explored how UDL methods could inform maker education for all and the very process of design innovation itself.
Watch the event trailer!
Collaborative Learning App Design Challenge
— Project inspiration, program lead, and organizer
The Collaborative Learning App Design Challenge brought together the greater Boston edUX designers and educators communities to solve the challenges of collaboration in maker education and maker-centered learning contexts.
