PLEASE TINKER
School program encourages experimentation.
Stepping into Miller Comprehensive Catholic High School’s makerspace feels like visiting a Silicon Valley startup.
It’s a room filled with electronics, sci-fi posters and young people working on some very cool stuff. There’s students working with 3D printers, motion-sensing computers and robotics. Think of it as the woodworking shop of the future.
The space, which gets its name from the cultural movement of tinkering and home-brewed tech projects, was opened on Jan. 28 by Jodi Wilton, a teacher and education leader at Miller.
“It’s for them (students) to become engaged, to love learning and to come up with some ideas on their own,” said Wilton, who teaches English, Christian ethics and photography.
Students are free to find their own niche and pursue whatever projects they want. William McCullum, a Grade 11 student, eventually hopes to make a 3D-printed drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
“UAVs are so neat. They have started (out) so small and now they are the future,” said McCullum, who is the resident 3D printing expert at Miller, and has already taken the devices apart and put them back together.
Any of Miller’s Grade 9 to 12 students are allowed to access the makerspace throughout the day and after school. Wilton has also had other teachers express interest in using it for their classes. Up to 20 students may be in the space on any given day.
While technology clubs and classes usually skew male, Miller’s makerspace is anything but a boy’s club.
“Maybe it’s because I’m a female that’s leading it, but (female students) didn’t feel intimidated and they didn’t feel afraid. So we’ve always had about one-third girls and two-thirds guys,” said Wilton.
Although the hope is students will apply what they’ve learned to their academic courses, there’s a strong sense of play in the makerspace, which Wilton encourages.
Students have built mechanical Lego robots and combined several K’Nex kits to make a roller-coaster. They’re even planning a project that involves video games, which are totally allowed in the makerspace.
“We’re working on the Raspberry Pi to make it into an emulator for some old game systems like the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and the Sega Genesis,” said Grade 11 student Julie Weisbrodt, who blogs about the makerspace’s exploits.
Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer designed for teaching basic computer science in schools, but has been adapted to do much more.
Wilton would like to put on a maker fair and come up with challenges for the students, but whatever projects the makerspace tackles next will likely be decided by them.
“I think that if we really put our minds to it we could do anything, we could build anything,” said McCullum.
The fact that the makerspace’s direction is driven by students is what makes it special, according to Wilton.
“It’s seeing that desire to learn again, to do something that’s unique and a little bit different, and I think that hopefully will transfer through to their classes,” she said.