Design & Innovation Museum Style: Part II

Makerbot 3D printers in Museum's Makerspace.

Prusa 3D Printer.

Member of the all girls Exit 5 Robotics team.

Cutting board is a must!

Using Augmented Reality with child's created mask.

The Faire's main hall.

Rasberry Pi with Pixel pal kit from Soldering Sunday.

Using Xbox Kinect to scan ME for printing!

How to scan and create a 3D model from a scan.

Last Saturday I attended the Greater Newark Mini Maker Faire at the Newark Museum in Newark, NJ. Maker Faires are family friendly festivals which celebrate innovation, creativity and all basically all things which involve Making.  As hubs of collaborative learning in their communities, libraries and museums have quickly adopted the Maker Movement by providing the tools and spaces for design and innovation. The Newark Museum has effectively integrated maker programming both within the museum and with its partners in the community, thereby creating an environment which promotes participation, innovation and empowerment.  

As the school librarian, I started a small Maker Space, "the Creation Station" in the school's library in Vernon and would like to do the same here at MJS.  In my efforts to follow best practices, I've read Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager's Invent to Learn, AnnMarie Thomas' Making Makers, Jackie Gerstein's The Educator as a  Maker Educator, The Makerspace Playbook, Laura Fleming's Worlds of Making, the articles curated here, and attended numerous webinars, in addition to following #makered on Twitter and continually reading shared posts etc. A summary of my thoughts and initial purchase considerations, prepared for district administration can be found here.  This being said, Maker Education revolves around the concepts of embodied cognition, "learning by doing" and collaborating with other makers, and so, there's no better way to truly get it, than participating in it! With this in mind,  I happily attended my first Maker Faire.