What’s the Maker Movement and Why Should I Care? – Scholastic Administrator
Gary Stager wrote an article for Scholastic Administrator magazine.
What’s the Maker Movement and Why Should I Care?
“We’re glad you asked. The coauthor of Invent to Learn explains how to start one in your schools and why “making” is the most powerful way for kids to learn.
If something is worth doing, it’s worth skipping lunch for. That may not be the official motto of Tracy Rudzitis’s students at The Computer School in New York City, but it might as well be. On any given day, 50 of the sixth through eighth graders gather during lunchtime in the school’s “Maker Space” to design their own video games, build robots, mix squishy circuit dough on a hot plate, or sew a wearable computer.
Rudzitis is the digital media teacher at M.S. 245, The Computer School. When it’s not lunchtime, she teaches programming, information literacy, and design to the 350-plus middle school students. While her lunchtime crew started informally, the growing maker movement has certainly helped attract more students, and push those already interested to take on more elaborate projects. “If we had a motto in Maker Space, it would be a combination of what two students said to me: ‘Nothing is impossible,’ and ‘Everything you touch is an adventure,'” says Rudzitis”