Wood Fellowship Provides Thatcher Hall with a Makerspace

This past year, we put together a team of educators and administrators to develop a lower school makerspace. Together we decided on what type of space would work best and what should fill that space.

ELA-8 Director Hope Jones offered to move her office so we could have that space. We love the big open windows and the area was equipped with storage space and a water source.  

We were thrilled to receive the Wood Faculty Fellowship. Thanks to this grant, we were able to make big purchases to benefit all the students from pre-K to eighth grade. We purchased two additional 3D printers for the students to use with prototyping. A student favorite, has been the vinyl cutter. Students are able to design their own stickers and have them cut right then.

We stocked up several items for teachers to check out from the space, so they would be able to use it in the classroom. These items include iPod touches, Spheros, Little Bits, Osmo kits, Ozobots, Hummingbird Robotics, Makey Makey kits, Lego Mindstorms, Lego WeDo kits and a couple of Raspberry Pi kits.

The motto for the makerspace is “Fail Up!” This space is a place for students and teachers to be inspired, create, and make without failure. That way, even if you don’t reach your goal the first time, you learn from it and can make the appropriate changes for next time.

This room plays perfectly into design thinking, which we are doing a lot of in many classrooms this year.

The Wood Faculty Fellowship allowed us the opportunity to impact student learning in so many different ways. Students are staying after school, just to work in the space. They are creating projects at their own pace, in their own way. Every student in pre-K through fourth grade has visited the space and made projects based on their curriculum. These are just a few more ways our students are learning with passion.

I can’t wait to see how the makerspace will continue to grow, as well as all the amazing projects that will come out of the space.

 

Students are currently working diligently after school to create projects for the Darlington Technology Fair on Nov. 1. Winners will continue on to the Northwest Regional Tech Fair in January.