Question: Makerspaces are appropriate for a school library. Do you agree or disagree with this, why? Also, the school library used to be a place to go for existing content. Now they are places that are for creating content---videos, blogs, 3-D printers and more. How is this supported in your library and how do you see it changing?
I appreciated the nuance of both Josh Weisgrau and Kristin Fontichiaro's blog posts on makerspaces and 3D printers in libraries. I don't wholeheartedly agree that makerspaces are right for every library, especially in a school library, because so much of what can happen in a school library depends on who the librarian is and where their own personal skills and interests lie. In the comments section on Weisgrau's post, there was a discussion about the danger of the movement towards informal learning eclipsing the formal educational role that a school librarian plays as instructional partner, co-teaching with classroom teachers. I can see how it can be a challenge---we want to stay on trend, and make sure we are ready for the 'next big thing', but it is so essential not to do this at the expense of the core mission of the school library. School libraries are now for creating content, yes. But they are also for learning how to access and use existing information. Without context and process, making can devolve into the creation of tchotchkes (especially with 3D printers!).
All that being said, I personally am excited about incorporating making into my school library, though I have struggled over the past year with where, exactly, in my already full schedule, that making can fit in. Some content creation fits naturally into my teaching---especially audio and video. For example, rather than writing book reports, students create recorded book talks and/or video book trailers, which are then posted online and accessible with QR codes posted around the library.
Other aspects of making don't fit as naturally into the library curriculum, in my experience. A 3D printer came to live in my library this past year, and luckily our school schedule also changed to enable teachers to participate in weekly PD, in such a way that I was able to spend an hour a week leading a club dedicated to 3D printing. I honestly don't know how I would have made the 3D printer accessible to students if it wasn't for the schedule change. Additionally, students had little actual choice about which club they were placed in (they ranked their club choices, if their teacher remembered to let them, and clubs ran on a 6 week cycle). This meant that often, I had students in my club who were utterly uninterested in the making process---a serious challenge given that 3D design requires investing a lot of time and energy into building the skills to use Tinkercad, the design program, in order to realize their making goals. Over the year, I had about 80 different students in my 3D printing club. Depending on their aptitude with computers and 3-dimensional visualization, students had varying levels of success. There was also an extreme variation in the usefulness of the things they created. There were fewer than 10 designs created through the entire year that met a need or solved a problem---most were simply tchotchkes. The time it takes to print each creation was also a huge challenge---such that club time was exclusively for the design process and consultation with me about designs, and then I printed the students' work when I had time to run the printer between classes. Some designs took many hours (literally 20 hours once) to print. I often asked myself, as Kristin Fontichiaro points out in her post, if the students aren't seeing the process all the way through, are they truly the makers? Without the time to learn what g-code is, to learn how to set up the printer for a successful print, to learn the importance of using support material, and to watch the printer create their model, are they missing key components of the process? Time seems to be the key commodity that schools lack today, especially for new initiatives like makerspaces and other forms of constructivist learning.
I appreciated the nuance of both Josh Weisgrau and Kristin Fontichiaro's blog posts on makerspaces and 3D printers in libraries. I don't wholeheartedly agree that makerspaces are right for every library, especially in a school library, because so much of what can happen in a school library depends on who the librarian is and where their own personal skills and interests lie. In the comments section on Weisgrau's post, there was a discussion about the danger of the movement towards informal learning eclipsing the formal educational role that a school librarian plays as instructional partner, co-teaching with classroom teachers. I can see how it can be a challenge---we want to stay on trend, and make sure we are ready for the 'next big thing', but it is so essential not to do this at the expense of the core mission of the school library. School libraries are now for creating content, yes. But they are also for learning how to access and use existing information. Without context and process, making can devolve into the creation of tchotchkes (especially with 3D printers!).
All that being said, I personally am excited about incorporating making into my school library, though I have struggled over the past year with where, exactly, in my already full schedule, that making can fit in. Some content creation fits naturally into my teaching---especially audio and video. For example, rather than writing book reports, students create recorded book talks and/or video book trailers, which are then posted online and accessible with QR codes posted around the library.
Other aspects of making don't fit as naturally into the library curriculum, in my experience. A 3D printer came to live in my library this past year, and luckily our school schedule also changed to enable teachers to participate in weekly PD, in such a way that I was able to spend an hour a week leading a club dedicated to 3D printing. I honestly don't know how I would have made the 3D printer accessible to students if it wasn't for the schedule change. Additionally, students had little actual choice about which club they were placed in (they ranked their club choices, if their teacher remembered to let them, and clubs ran on a 6 week cycle). This meant that often, I had students in my club who were utterly uninterested in the making process---a serious challenge given that 3D design requires investing a lot of time and energy into building the skills to use Tinkercad, the design program, in order to realize their making goals. Over the year, I had about 80 different students in my 3D printing club. Depending on their aptitude with computers and 3-dimensional visualization, students had varying levels of success. There was also an extreme variation in the usefulness of the things they created. There were fewer than 10 designs created through the entire year that met a need or solved a problem---most were simply tchotchkes. The time it takes to print each creation was also a huge challenge---such that club time was exclusively for the design process and consultation with me about designs, and then I printed the students' work when I had time to run the printer between classes. Some designs took many hours (literally 20 hours once) to print. I often asked myself, as Kristin Fontichiaro points out in her post, if the students aren't seeing the process all the way through, are they truly the makers? Without the time to learn what g-code is, to learn how to set up the printer for a successful print, to learn the importance of using support material, and to watch the printer create their model, are they missing key components of the process? Time seems to be the key commodity that schools lack today, especially for new initiatives like makerspaces and other forms of constructivist learning.
Great job here. Makerspaces can be simple or wildly creative and expensive to stock, maintain and supervise. Your 3D printer is a great example of the challenges ahead. For simple makerspaces, I have seen things as simple as a table loom with how to weave books next to it, or a stack of origami papers with the Origami "how to" books next to it.
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