The Maker Movement: Learning by Making

Opportunities, Resources

The Maker Movement has a lot to offer in STEM education.  Making things, even simple ones like a rubber band gun, or jewelry, is intrinsically interesting — and it teaches important things about how things work. Through making things, kids (and those helping them) acquire, almost by accident, a deep understanding of physics, engineering, math, and materials science.  Making things complements subject-specific classes while it inspires, captivates, and teaches organization/executive function skills.  Here’s an overview of some of the many Maker resources — both global and very local — to help kids (and those helping them) dive in and learn.

The Maker Movement

What used to be scattered woodworkers, electronics hobbyists, and craftspeople have been united by the Internet into the Maker Movement. There are Maker Faire’s sponsored by Make Magazine where people show off all the things they’ve made, everything from a robotic pancake maker made from Lego to a life-size Mouse Trap game.

Cambridge Mini-maker faire (Photo by Chris Connors

Resources for Budding Makers

In addition to thousands of blogs (like my own, http://baldwisdom.com) there are some great sites that document how to make all kinds of things:

  • Instructables.com – The content here is very broad, from sewing and crafts to very geeky science subjects and everything in between.
  • Make Projects – More techno-crafty and fewer projects, but many general guides.

Two of the big hobby electronics providers also have a lot of educational materials:

  • Sparkfun.com offers a lot of kits and parts for fun projects. They also travel around teaching about Arduino, soldering, and other maker skills. They also document all their educational materials at Sparkfun learning.
  • Adafruit.com has a smaller selection, but has an excellent tutorial section. In addition to basic electronics, they have a lot of wearable projects: Adafruit Learning Center

Local Classes and Resources

  • Artisan’s asylum is a makerspace/artist studio “village” with a fantastic array of tools for making just about anything.  They hold an array of classes from beginning electronics to jewelry making, welding, and glassworking.
  • h3xl  in Burlington is a family-oriented “makerspace” with lots of construction toys, logic games, and classes in Lego robotics, laser-cutter jewelry, Minecraft, and more. They also sell kits and construction toys to take home.