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January 16, 2017OWATONNA — As part of a move toward STREAM (science, technology, religion, arts and mathematics) curriculum, St. Mary’s Catholic School is operating a makerspace for students.
Students are more “engaged, and they are learning differently than with just pencil and paper,” said Sharleen Berg, the school’s media specialist who leads makerspace projects.
The makerspace group meets each Tuesday and Thursday after school from 2:45 to 4 p.m. and is open to students in grades two through eight, and a group of eighth-grade students gathers four times a week in the space from 11 to 11:45 a.m. to work on projects.
Berg takes into account the interests of students and then “runs with them,” said Kathleen Segna, St. Mary’s principal. The students are “independent, and they do the engagement themselves.”
The makerspace has been made possible by a STEM grant from the Minnesota Independent School Foundation that Berg helped apply for. While this is the second year of the makerspace program, year one was a limited rollout because St. Mary’s faculty and students had classes on the Pillsbury campus in 2015-2016 due to construction on ceilings and floors.
“We just didn’t have the space over there,” she said.
“They are just starting the design stage of creating a Rube Goldberg machine, and their planning is something to behold,” Berg said of the eighth-grade group. “It’s already gone well beyond what I expected with very general directives from me.”
Before moving onto the Rube Goldberg machine — a contraption deliberately over-engineered to perform, via chain reaction, a simple task — that will pop a balloon, students “invented self-driving cars, and we had a little race,” she said.
To do so, students needed to learn circuiting so they could utilize what are essentially “electronic Legos” on their cars.
They’ve only just begun the Rube Goldberg process, but they have a completion date of Jan. 26.
“Cooperation and imagination are the only limits,” said Berg.
Indeed, cooperation is paramount, as one piece of the project will lead to another.
“There’s a natural respect among the students, and they identify those gifts within each other,” Berg said.
Students are able to play to their strengths, and when someone is struggling, he or she can call for assistance from classmates.
The makerspace is comfortable for “right-brain” students, but a challenge for those who are “more Type A,” she said. Still, the unique approach to learning benefits everyone because they are thinking in a new way.
“I won’t, but I could leave the room, and nothing would change,” Berg said. “They look forward to this class every day, and it lets kids find their gifts.”
Students “like the interaction,” Segna said. “It keeps their minds thinking creatively.”
Students concurred, saying they prefer the makerspace because it allows them to be up-and-about, use a different portion of their brain, and all work is contained to the space.
“I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands,” said Oliver Hansen. “I like engineering and designing things for the better.”
Izzy Leonard also said she appreciates the design element of the course, although the Rube Goldberg project is more difficult than anything she worked on last year.
“They were our own little projects, not connected,” she said. “This is harder because you need to plan to connect with everyone else, and they don’t always fit.”
“I like working in groups more than as an individual,” said Madi Bruessel. “I also like that we don’t have homework” because all the work is done during the time of the class.
Berg is “amazing,” Segna said. “She’s been doing a phenomenal job.”
The after-school program currently has 15 students, and students rotate in eight-week sessions. Students decide on their own what they want to work on each day by looking at the available materials, with some days turning more artistic and others seeing “incredible contraptions,” Berg said.
“After a long day, that span at the end is actually very energizing,” she said. “It’s electric in here.”
Makers “tap into an American admiration for self-reliance and combine that with open-source learning, contemporary design, and powerful personal technology,” according to Adweek. “The creations, born in cluttered local workshops and bedroom offices” — or new makerspaces in the case of St. Mary’s — “stir the imaginations of consumers numbed by generic, mass-produced, made-in-China merchandise.”
The Maker Movement is “very important to America’s future,” Tim Bajarin, a technology columnist and consultant who has been at the forefront of the digital revolution for years, wrote in a piece for Time Magazine. “It has the potential to turn more and more people into makers instead of just consumers, and I know from history that when you give makers the right tools and inspiration, they have the potential to change the world.”
Segna has seen the research and understands makers and STEM are the wave of the future in education and with employers.
“This is what our workforce needs tomorrow,” Segna said. Students “are born with those minds. It’s inside of them.”
In addition to the makerspace, St. Mary’s junior high students have a 30-minute technology class every other day in which they learn “coding, keyboarding and digital citizenship,” Berg said. Furthermore, the seventh-graders are engaged in a year-long water conservation project, which is another part of the MISF grant in addition to the makerspace.
Students were able to go out into the field to learn more about water quality. They are considering ways to be more efficient with water use at St. Mary’s, including crafting public service announcements to bring awareness to water conservation.
