It's pandemonium today in the library at Albert Lacombe School. Paper airplanes whiz through the air. Towers of plastic cups rise from the earth, only to tumble down soon after. A stuffed brown bear balances atop a house of cards, while strange, wheeled beasts coagulate from pools of rainbow-coloured bricks of Lego.
It's pandemonium today in the library at Albert Lacombe School.
Paper airplanes whiz through the air. Towers of plastic cups rise from the earth, only to tumble down soon after. A stuffed brown bear balances atop a house of cards, while strange, wheeled beasts coagulate from pools of rainbow-coloured bricks of Lego.
And through it all are the students, laughing, playing and learning.
“It's organized chaos!” says librarian Kelly Liusz-Moser.
Liusz-Moser converted the Albert Lacombe library into a makerspace last January. It's the first of its kind in the Greater St. Albert Catholic district.
The space provides students with simple tools – cups, Lego, craft supplies – and challenges them to make something with it. The kids over here are making airplanes to see which design flies the farthest, for example, while the ones over there are designing bridges that can support a bear's weight. It's part of a new trend in education that emphasizes learning through play.
“It's teaching them to think for themselves,” Liusz-Moser says.
Student Emily Marsden figured out how to make a giraffe with wheels from Lego, for example, and now plans to race it against the cow and narwhal built by her friends.
“I had a tough time figuring out the head,” she says, but she worked with her classmates to come up with a solution.
She says she likes the makerspace a lot.
“It's all pretty challenging, and for me, challenging stuff is fun.”
Teaching through tinkering
Over in Edmonton, teacher Kandise Salerno oversees a slightly more organized scene in the makerspace/library at H.E. Beriault Junior High.
Kids stamp pin-on buttons on a button press. Another builds an electric fan from modular snap-together circuits, while several others assemble robotic, magnetic cubes that roll, flash, spin or beep in different ways based on their configuration. A colour-changing motorized ball whizzes between their feet, guided by a child with an iPad.
Salerno says she set up this makerspace two years ago as part of her PhD in constructionism – a concept that emphasizes learning by doing. It now includes about 16 high-tech tools and toys that let students experiment with everything from robots to virtual reality.
Chris Boden, a passionate man with a mad-on for high-energy physics, runs a slightly bigger makerspace for the Geek Group in Grand Rapids, Mich. It's the size of a city block, and features 3D printers, chemistry labs, machine shops, high-powered lasers, industrial robots, and Project Thumper – a giant capacitor that blows stuff up. Pay the $40-a-month membership fee, and you can use these tools however you want.
“We're a place for people to come and explore what they want to explore,” Boden says.
Boden founded the Geek Group in the mid-1990s. It's now one of the oldest non-profit makerspaces in the world, and its members have made everything from quadcopters to the world's biggest Newton's cradle – a device that demonstrates conservation of momentum and energy via a series of swinging balls.
A makerspace (or hackerspace) is a physical place where people can share tools, ideas and resources they otherwise would not have on their own, Boden says.
“It's the step up from having your home workshop.”
Makerspaces are a rare find in St. Albert-area schools – the Sturgeon School Division has about five, while Greater St. Albert Catholic is working on two.
“It's certainly not something that's in a lot of schools,” Salerno says.
While often linked to high-tech tools such as 3D printers, makerspaces can include a huge range of technologies – everything from Liusz-Moser's plastic cups to Salerno's robo-cubes.
It's not the contents or the space itself that makes a place a makerspace, Boden says – it's the philosophy behind it.
Traditional education is based on the “push” model, he explains – you have a shop full of tools, and you have a teacher telling you what to do with them.
“It's sit down, shut up, we're going to push things into your brain.”
But if you give someone a smartphone, they usually won't read the manual to figure it out, Boden continues. Instead, they'll sit down and start playing with it.
“That's how people learn.”
Makerspaces teach people through play and tinkering rather than lessons and lecturing. Boden calls this the “pull” model of education – you have a shop full of tools and it's up to you to use them to pull knowledge toward you.
Students learn more when they come to understand something on their own, Salerno says. That's why she acts more as a coach than a teacher in her makerspace, giving out the occasional tip but never telling the kids what to do.
“That's really important to not give them that instruction manual,” she says – you want to get the kids to think creatively and come up with their own ideas.
Building better brains
Education was one of the Edmonton Public Library's main goals when it opened a makerspace at the Stanley A. Milner library two years ago, says Peter Schoenberg, the library's manager of digital literacy. The facility now has a 3D printer, a book printer, a green-screen, and several sound studios.
“These are things the average citizen isn't able to get their hands on or buy,” he notes – tools a budding writer or entrepreneur could use to get their careers started.
“We're very much the ground floor.”
Residents have used the makerspace in many ways in the last two years, Schoenberg says – doing photo shoots, recording podcasts, printing prosthetic hands and books.
A lot of people use it just to play around, whether it be through games on the Xbox or jam sessions in the sound booths.
“Part of what the makerspace is for is just plain fun,” Schoenberg says.
Salerno says that her school's makerspace has been a definite help to students who are tactile learners, especially when it comes to science lessons on electronics.
“The potential is just evolving,” she says, and teachers are still experimenting with how to use it.
Albert Lacombe teacher Candace Leis says her students have become much more willing to work together and share ideas since they started using her school's makerspace. Some of the activities also have direct, hands-on links to classroom lessons, too – paper airplanes and the Science unit on flight, for example.
Mackenzie Kleinfelder, who is playing a computer game using a controller he built in minutes using Play-Doh and a box of wires and circuit boards, says the makerspace has introduced him to cool technologies such as Photoshop and cardboard VR headsets, and taught him a lot about electronics.
“It teaches you stuff we can use later in life,” he says, and teaches you independence.
“And it's a lot of fun, too.”
Making the future
People today hunger for knowledge about the science and technology around them, Boden says. Makerspaces can give them that knowledge, and that knowledge gives them the power to change the world.
“Smart people fix problems and make better decisions,” he says.
“Instead of trying to fix all the root problems, let's create the solution for everything, and that's making more smarter people.”
Makerspaces make people more self-sufficient and better prepared to deal with the future, Schoenberg adds. The do-it-yourself approach behind them also promotes entrepreneurship.
Makerspaces don't have to be expensive: Liusz-Moser says the one at Albert Lacombe cost about $200, and Salerno says she's spent less than $2,000 on hers.
And the results seem to be worth every penny.
“When I told (these students), ‘OK, we are going to the makerspace today,' they were engaged, they were excited,” Salerno says.
“Once you make your kids motivated and engaged, anything is possible.”
