As I watched this week’s lecture and did this week’s readings, I was floored by how incredible some of the featured makerspaces were. (And as a resident of Columbia, I was excited to see my local library featured! I love the Richland Library.) However, like many of you, I kept thinking about the cost of these spaces and how I can’t imagine dropping several thousand dollars on a space that I don’t know will be successful. What are some ways to create a budget-friendly makerspace, particularly for middle school?
Luckily, there is no shortage of ideas. I found some great ones from Edutopia. One post I found is all about middle school makerspaces, and while some of the items on the list are a bit pricey, there are some great affordable ones as well, including writable desk surfaces, dry-erase walls, quadrille pads, and dollar store items. As makerspaces have shifted to a STEM discovery model (Fontichiaro, 2019, p. 51), these affordable tools still allow students to create and discover in the same way a 3-D printer or a Raspberry Pi would, except for several hundred dollars less.
Edutopia also has an entire post dedicated to the use of origami in schools, which is another great budget-friendly activity for a makerspace. Origami, which is Japanese art of paper folding, beautifully marries math and art. It would be great to use with students learning geometry and fractions, and it could specifically appeal to more artistically-minded students who struggle with math.
Fontichiaro also writes that it’s important to intentionally select different tools across grade levels in order to have long-term sustainability of the makerspace (Fontichiaro, 2019, p. 51), and selecting more affordable options would make that much easier. Differentiating tools across grade levels would also be a great opportunity for collaboration with classroom teachers (which would also likely help with buy-in)! Science and math teachers could collaborate with the school librarian to plan what types of tools would be most applicable to what students learn at each grade level.
Makerspaces are going to look different at every school or library, as discussed in research done by Heather Moorefield-Lang and Megan Coker (2019, p. 374). In an ideal world, every library would have the funds to provide all the tech that patrons could possibly want, but this is almost never the case (especially for school libraries). These budget-friendly ideas outlined by Edutopia are a great way to get a makerspace started at your school, especially one that aligns with the ideas mentioned in research done by Kristin Fontichiaro. I hope you give them a try!
References
Fontichiaro, K. (2019, Apr.). What I’ve learned from 7 years of the maker movement in schools and libraries. Teacher Librarian, 46(4), 51-53.
Jarrett, K. (2015, December 4). Middle school maker journey: Top 20 technologies and tools. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/making-makerspace-top-20-technologies-tools-kevin-jarrett
Moorefield-Lang, H., & Coker, M. (2019). How to make a maker librarian. Journal of New Librarianship, 4(SI), 371–379. https://doi.org/10.21173/newlibs/7/9
Ramirez, A. (2015, April 29). 5 reasons why origami improves students' skills. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-origami-improves-students-skills-ainissa-ramirez
I tried to find budget friendly ideas as well. After scanning the blog you provided, I now have a new idea I would like to include in my Imagination Station. Since we are one-to-one devices at my school, I am excited to try some of the movie making software thats available. I think it would be a fun activity that my kids would like.
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