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Maker education provides the perfect context for young learners to develop 21st-century skills. However, research is inconclusive on how these skills could be assessed. Namely, the complex nature of 21st-century skills requires different types of assessments, not necessarily relying on paper-and-pencil or multiple-choice tests, but rather drawing on the learners' perspective in the form of self-assessment and reflection. Prior studies highlighted several challenges of situating self-assessment in makerspace contexts, such as the lack of dedicated technology for documentation, distractions caused by noise or group work, and the lack of skills and motivation to practice self-assessment. This paper presents an exploratory case study aimed at an in-depth investigation of the use of a digital self-assessment tool of 21st-century skills in makerspace contexts. The authors converged qualitative data collected mainly from interviews with teachers and students. Researcher observations and tool log files (e.g., student work in the digital tool) were used as triangulation sources. Although challenges emerged, the study presents encouraging findings regarding the use of the digital tool for raising students' awareness of their development of 21st -century skills and engaging them in self-assessment and reflection. The results of the study provide rich insights to guide future research on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges in patient care, prompting frontline clinicians globally to devise novel solutions. This article highlights the creativity of clinicians who adapted to meet the evolving standards of care. The researchers explored the scale of clinician awareness of the novel devices and protocols that were being made. A thematic analysis revealed rapid team coordination, supportive management, acknowledgment of practice-based medicine, and just-in-time fabrication as drivers behind the design, fabrication, and scaling of clinician-made solutions throughout the hospital. Results show that the presence of the Makerspace significantly contributed to the hospital's nimble and proactive response to the pandemic, emphasizing the need for transformative approaches that embrace innovation, collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and recognition of clinician-led innovations to advance patient care. • Clinicians worldwide created novel COVID-19 devices and equipment modifications. • Explore the drivers of clinician-made COVID-19 solutions. • Four drivers of clinician-made COVID-19 solutions: rapid team coordination, supportive management, practice-based medicine, and just-in-time fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Die Maker Education hält inzwischen auch in Schulen im deutschsprachigen Raum Einzug. Soll pädagogisches Making jedoch im Sinne einer Bildungsinnovation über punktuelle Ergänzungen des Lernangebots oder kurzzeitpädagogische Aktivitäten wie Maker Days oder Blockwochen hinausgehen und im Sinne eines holistischen Ansatzes methodisch und inhaltlich zum festen Bestandteil des Schulalltags werden, dann kann es als Schulentwicklungsprojekt «gelesen», als solches konzipiert, realisiert und analysiert werden. Auf der Basis eines partizipativen Aktionsforschungsprojekts mit fünf Pilotschulen in der Schweiz wird aufgezeigt, welche Herausforderungen die Implementierung pädagogischen Makings mit sich bringt und welche Faktoren ein solches Schulentwicklungsvorhaben stützen. Dabei werden die erhobenen Daten in dieser Zwischenauswertung im Sinne der extrahierenden qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse anhand von Apriori-Kategorien ausgewertet. Die Kategorien leiten sich von drei Modellen der Schulentwicklungsforschung sowie von der aktuellen Forschungsliteratur im Bereich Making und Schulentwicklung ab (Rolff 2019; Altrichter und Wiesinger 2004; Holtappels 2013). Die analysierten Gelingensfaktoren lassen sich im Schulentwicklungsmodell von Rolff verorten, wobei in diesem Beitrag auf Faktoren im Umfeld der Schule, in der Organisationsentwicklung sowie in der Personalentwicklung eingegangen wird mit dem Ziel, dass sie interessierte Schulen dabei unterstützen, pädagogisches Making einzuführen.

This article presents findings from a design-based research study that investigated curriculum implementation in a makerspace with a grade six teacher and her class over the course of one year. In comparing the figured worlds of classroom and makerspace, the authors explore through the examples of three students and the teacher how they each adopted personal improvisations from the makerspace into the culture of the classroom, leading to developments in agency and identity on the part of all. In particular, by engaging in collaborative design-based research, the teacher was able to embrace the iterative, collaborative, risk-taking nature of maker culture, which led her to rethink and transform her teaching practice. Findings suggest that the makerspace serves as a specialized learning environment in which teachers can prototype inquiry-based approaches to curricular learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative research involved the development of 12 weeks of twice-weekly virtual maker professional learning (PL) sessions for K–12 and post-secondary educators at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sessions were developed by four researchers from a maker lab in Ontario, Canada that moved entirely online in March 2020. The research question driving the study was: what are best practices related to virtual maker professional learning? Findings and implications related to this question include: a) technical issues should be anticipated and addressed in advance of each session; b) simple, hands-on activities are most effective for online maker professional learning; c) collaboration are pivotal to a rich online maker professional learning experience; d) using free, virtual tools is imperative for equitable access and learning; and e) adaptability is key when working with a diversity of learners/teachers from varied subjects and divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the great benefits of 'making' including self-fulfilment and creativity development, the maker movement has become a social and global phenomenon with great demand for community-based makerspaces. This requires designing appropriate environments with well-developed creative activities in makerspaces to help improve the impacts economically and socially. Much research has investigated the topics of making/makerspaces but primarily focused on Western culture. This study, however, looks into the perceptions, experiences and requirements of people toward making/makerspaces, with an in-depth study of Chinese cases. A qualitative research methodology with mixed methods was employed. The study discusses the key stakeholders' perspectives including their requirements and expectations, drivers for and barriers of current practices with possibilities of applying bottom-up approaches, and the potential of turning community centres into creative hubs. The key findings will be used to develop a prototype of public makerspaces in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This literature review identifies the content and scope of empirical academic research on making, makerspaces, and fablabs. Using an overview approach, 150 peer reviewed studies were analyzed using expanded activity theory as a framework to examine how researchers have explored various components in a makerspace (subjects, tools, community, rules, division of labor and objects) as well as the outcomes (cognitive, psychomotor, affective, and behavioral) for their users. This review indicates that despite the wide-spread discussions describing makerspaces and making in school library practitioner publications and conferences, there is a lack of research related to making, makerspaces, and fablabs in PreK-12 school libraries in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coding, Making und Tinkering könnten als “medienpädagogische Türöffner” bezeichnet werden. Durch einen Mix aus freiem Experimentieren, Improvisieren und kreativem Problemlösen werden die verschiedenen Lernwege zum Ziel und handlungsorientierte Formen einer Medienbildung möglich, die den im deutschsprachigen Raum tradierten Medienkompetenzbegriff wesentlich erweitern. Nach einer theoretischen Begründung im ersten Teil des Artikels werden Beispiele aus einem EduMakerSpace in Wien Favoriten vorgestellt, der als Schulentwicklungsprojekt insbesondere auf dem Konzept der Communities of Practice aufbaut. Dabei wurde deutlich, dass die gleichzeitig einsetzende Corona-Pandemie und die daraus sich ergebenden Belastungen für die Schulen nicht spurlos am Projekt vorübergingen – so waren viele Schulen trotz eines umfangreichen Service-Angebots für das Projektteam schwer zu erreichen. Umgekehrt konnten einige Lehrkräfte nachhaltig für Making und Tinkering begeistert werden und werden als Multiplikatorinnen/Multiplikatoren für die MakerSpace-Idee eintreten.

Der Artikel befasst sich mit der Einbettung eines Medienlabors der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, dem ein Makerspace sowie ein VR-Labor angegliedert sind, im universitären Kontext. Dabei geht es um die Implikationen des Selbermachens für Lernen und Bildung, Makerspaces an Hochschulen und das Projekt des Medienlabors. Unter der Leitung von Prof. Johannes Fromme wird das Medienlabor in Studium, Lehre und Forschung eingebunden und bietet sowohl Studierenden als auch Lehrenden einen Raum für die Entwicklung und Umsetzung eigener Projekte hinsichtlich medialer Phänomene und digitaler Technologien. Ziel des Beitrags ist es, die Potenziale von Makerspaces an Hochschulen beispielhaft darzustellen.

Combining the excitement from the maker movement and the novel creation of deployable makerspaces, we review the development of the Mobile Atelier for Kinaesthetic Education (MAKE) 3D. MAKE 3D is a mobile makerspace platform that can be deployed anywhere there is electricity to create a curricular spectacle of digital fabrication in particular additive manufacturing or what is more commonly referred to as 3D printing. Our project combines this notion of curricular spectacle and a mobile makerspace platform, to develop strategies in how to meet the novice user almost anywhere and to entice them into a series of hands‐on activities that would give them a range of knowledge and aptitude for additive techniques in digital fabrication. We review the component parts of our Material to Form curriculum and explore thematic connections between the maker movement and art education including STEAM and interdisciplinarity; design thinking and kinaesthetic learning; and place‐based education and the mobile platform. Informal practices in art education and the mobile makerspace advances forms of place and kinaesthetic learning. Similar curricular setups are therefore encouraged to reinforce and expand prior knowledge, broaden participation and provide an adaptable learning space for STEAM initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makerspaces are locations where people with common interests can work on projects, share ideas, tools and expertise to make or create. There is an abundance of "how to" guides and research studies on physical makerspaces, little research focuses on describing the virtual making processes and the experiences therein. This qualitative study explores the experiences of seven participants who engaged in a synchronous virtual makerspace. Meeting once a month over 16 weeks, members of the International Maker Educator Network participated in the making of a robot. This case study describes how the virtual making occurred, the personal experiences of the makers, technology used to support virtual making, and the affordances and inhibitors of virtual making. Data are analysed through the lens of a professional learning community and the People, Means and Activities makerspace framework. The paper concludes with implications for virtual making in practice and future research opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we focus on the case of a Canadian teacher and her students who engaged with a researcher in a year-long design-based research study exploring the implementation of curriculum within a makerspace context. Together, the grade six teacher and researcher co-designed, co-enacted, and co-reflected on three curricular making cycles, one related to sky science, another to mathematical transformations, and a third focused on core concepts of democratic systems. The two-fold purpose of this DBR was to promote pedagogical change through designs for making and to articulate design principles that could be utilized when engaging with curriculum for making. Findings show that the makerspace as learning environment and design-based research as methodology provided a double helix scaffold that compelled the teacher to reconsider her frame when enacting curriculum. For this teacher, collaboration on design-based research and designs for learning in the makerspace promoted a shift in pedagogy and led the teacher and her students to rethink notions of curriculum while questioning what is important to know. An expansion of the intervention to engage multiple teachers in multiple sites to determine scalability is recommended. Study findings point to the makerspace as a promising design frame for rethinking curriculum and pedagogical practice.

This paper explores the integration of interdisciplinary, standards-based making in elementary classrooms through an investigation of teachers' navigation of contradictions between traditional academic practices and the playful, imaginative, and collaborative design thinking that characterizes making. Empirical findings are reported from a three-year, NSF-funded research project that involved the integration of standards-based Mobile Maker Kits into 15 elementary schools within a suburban-rural Southern school district. Drawing on a framework that recognizes making and formal learning as interactive activity systems, this qualitative study illustrates how teachers experienced and resolved contradictions as they integrated the kits into their classrooms. We conclude by discussing how integrating standards-based making provides opportunities for transformative learning that allows students and teachers to engage in creative production, design thinking, and experimentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Die Veranstaltung "Maker Days for Kids" war eine kreative digitale Werkstatt, die im April 2015 vier Tage lang für Kinder von 10 bis 14 Jahren geöffnet hatte. Aufbauend auf einer kurzen Einleitung zur Maker-Bewegung werden das Konzept der Veranstaltung, z. B. die Einführungsworkshops, die Rolle der Peer-TutorInnen, Challenges und Selbstlernmaterialien, sowie Erfahrungen damit vorgestellt. Durch eine detaillierte Erfassung der Anwesenheit, Teilnahme an unterschiedlichen Angeboten und der Nutzung der Infrastruktur ist es zudem möglich, Besonderheiten von SchülerInnen unterschiedlicher Schularten und von Buben und Mädchen genauer zu betrachten. Insgesamt haben 69 Kinder an der Vorbereitung bzw. bei der offenen Werkstatt teilgenommen und dabei u. a. Traumhäuser modelliert und am 3D-Drucker ausgedruckt, Games programmiert oder LED-Lampen in Acrylbildern montiert. Mehr zum Projekt: http :// makerdays . wordpress . com

With the introduction of the new two-year Bachelor ofEducation program across Ontario, our Faculty of Education has introduced a twenty-hour internship. This internship is meant to provide real-world teaching experience for teacher candidates, who are nearing the end of their formal education. By maker pedagogies, we refer to the inquiry-based, student-directed, constructionist approaches to learning typically used in makerspaces. Makerspaces have gained traction in Ontario classrooms, particularly in the last two years. These spaces and their pedagogies facilitate the development of students' global competencies (Hughes, 2017; Somanath et al., 2016). We welcomed eleven teacher candidates (TCs) into our STEAM 3D Maker Lab as part of their internship course for professional development (PD) to provide them with pedagogical experience in a makerspace environment. Our research focused on exploring how the TCs developed a better understanding of maker pedagogies and the associated tools through this PD. As the internship was created and facilitated by an education graduate student in the lab, we extended the research to also investigate this student's development in identifying and understanding some of the best practices associated with making as learning. Through analysis of the TCs' and graduate student's experiences, we identify some best practices in maker-focused professional development for beginning teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of a 10-day summer camp makerspace experience that employed design-based learning (DBL) strategies, the purpose of this descriptive case study was to better understand the ways in which children use visualization skills to negotiate design as they move back and forth between the world of nondigital design techniques (i.e., drawing, 3-D drawing with hot glue, sculpture, discussion, writing) and digital technologies (i.e., 3-D scanning, 3-D modeling, 3-D printing). Participants included 20 children aged 6-12. This research was guided by Vossoughi, Hooper, and Escudé's (2016) call for explicit attention to pedagogical practices during the integration of "making" activities. Content analysis was used to analyze qualitative data, including observation, researcher/facilitator field notes, think aloud protocols, daily reflective exit tickets, and participant artifacts. Findings highlight the ways in which participants negotiated visualization skills through (a) imagining, drawing, and seeing through creating 2-D sketches, (b) reasoning and relating through writing stories, (c) transforming through 3-D extrusion, (d) observing and noticing through 3-D sculpting and 3-D scanning, and (e) manipulating through digital 3-D modeling, mental rotation, and mental transformation. Implications for formal K-12 educational contexts and teacher preparation programs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief essay offers an introduction to a special symposium on equity in STEM-rich making. The introduction provides context that frames current equity issues in the Maker Movement, as well as short descriptions of the four articles included in the symposium. Collectively the papers in this symposium examine how complex power dynamics shape youths' making experiences, and how carefully designed equity-oriented pedagogical and design approaches can support youth in challenging sociohistorical narratives and complex power dynamics around making. The four articles pay attention to how making, innovation, and community spaces are always under negotiation, resulting in potential in-between spaces where individuals reproduce and resist the narratives at play there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two approaches to materiality (i.e. mediated discourse and agential realism) are compared to explore their usefulness in tracking literacies in action and artefacts produced during a play and design activity in a preschool makerspace. Mediated discourse analysis has relied on linguistic framing and social semiotics to make sense of multimodality. Can a multimodal lens grounded in embodied histories of meaning-making unpack sensory exploration, silly repetition and free-wheeling nonsense in children’s playdough play? Barad’s agential realism seems promising for unpacking the sensory and the emergent produced in the materiality, fluidity and messiness of entangled bodies and things in a makerspace. We compare key constructs of mediated discourse and agential realism, comparing interaction and intra-action in video excerpts from two weeks of play with playdough electronics kits in three early childhood classrooms in a US university childcare centre. Mediated discourse analysis of multimodality identified collaborative interaction among players in a small group and tracked a collective flow of materialized knowledge that moved through children’s sharing and collaboration. Agential realism tracked intra-actions among bodies, materials and spaces as transitory becomings and undoings that rupture definitions of sense-making as strategic design that manipulates materials into artefacts or as play that resemiotizes materials into roles and props in dramatized narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As makerspaces begin to move into school libraries and classrooms, there is a growing need for professional development to help K-12 educators answer common questions such as 'what is a makerspace,' 'why should I bother with a makerspace,' 'how do I run a makerspace,' and 'how do I teach from a makerspace?' In part one of this two-part series, content and professional development activities were recommended to help educators develop a basic understanding of what comprises a makerspace, what happens in a makerspace, and how the makerspace can benefit their curriculum. For educators interested in taking the next step, part two of this series includes recommended content and professional development activities to help them answer the 'how' questions. This article summarizes related literature and best practices from maker leaders to ground recommended professional development activities that may be applied in workshops or in the authentic context of making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As makerspaces begin to move into school libraries and classrooms, there is a growing need for professional development to help K-12 educators answer common questions such as 'what is a makerspace,' 'why should I bother with a makerspace,' 'how do I run a makerspace,' and 'how do I teach from a makerspace?' In part one of this two-part series, content and professional development activities are recommended to help educators answer the 'what' and 'why' questions. These questions typically come up first and if adequately addressed, can help motivate educators to dig deeper into the how questions that are addressed in part two of this series. This article summarizes related literature and best practices from maker leaders to ground recommenced professional development activities that may be applied in workshops or in the authentic context of making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pop-up maker space hosted by the Media Interventions working group of the Cultural Studies Association at the 2014 annual meeting, 'Ecologies: Relations of Culture, Matter, and Power,' is a collaborative intervention into the typical structure of academic conferences in the interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences, whose genres and formats tend to privilege established scholars, disciplinary paradigms, the new, and above all a mindset in which the resources attached to 'professionalization' are governed by scarcity. Held concurrently with the main conference schedule at the University of Utah’s historic Pierre Lassonde House, the maker space showcases the work of artists, activists, media practitioners, performers, researchers, and amateur 'makers,' inviting conference attendees to engage the material not merely as spectators but as active participants in the collective meanings of the event. In doing so, it quite literally makes space for multimodal methods of knowledge production that decenter the individual and scramble the dominant temporalities of academic labor. This two-part essay describes the maker space as media ecology in the process of unfolding across multiple time frames (and time zones) and through unevenly distributed agencies as well as affective states. The first part documents the process of making a space for making, while the second attempts to partially capture and re-present the event itself through digital photography, video clips, sound snippets, links, maps, and other media ancillary to the maker space. In reading, watching, listening, touching, clicking, and otherwise attending to what we are making, you become integrated into the circuitry of our affections: the queer collection of things that comprise media ecologies.

• Between 55% and 70% of makers are male. • Maker spaces put much effort in attracting a diverse clientele by offering free trainings to all, having no or low membership fees or by reducing the complexity of machines through practical and simple procedures. • Quantitative data regarding use times by gender reflect these findings relating to gendered objects. • A division between 'crafting' and 'making' becomes visible between female and male makers: While men tend to have an engineering background, female makers often work in design, communication and social relations area. • Our study reveals a lack of female role models as maker space managers. In this paper we explore gender issues in the maker movement using four different methods of data analysis: standardised questionnaires, analysis of makerspaces' social media, statistical analysis of machine use and the coding of interviews and focus groups. The objective is to give a voice to female makers and makerspace managers, looking at the maker movement from an inside perspective. The paper demonstrates how gendered stereotypes are still reproduced within the maker movement. Makerspaces still attract considerably more males than females and exhibit a primarily "male" culture, reflected in the interior design of places, or by the language and attitudes of their members. Females in makerspaces, however, often have a background in communications, arts or design, as opposed to the coding or engineering background of the males. Previous research has shown how machines and materials also take on gendered connotations. The "genderisation" of objects refers to an attributed gender-specific use of machines. An example here could be that 3D printing, which is more often used by female makers compared to male members of makerspaces. Our research also identifies promising approaches for tackling the issue of gender imbalance. The maker movement has significant potential to improve gender equality as younger generations bring societal change to makerspaces and break with stereotypes. One of the findings our paper puts forward is the lack of female role models, especially in leading positions. Our data suggest that the maker scene still has to develop a tradition in reflecting questions around gender stereotypes or their role in partly reproducing them. Hence, we argue that the maker community should be more attentive to this issue and should make a concerted effort to become more diverse. Overall, our case research did not reveal any explicit animosity to gender questions; on the contrary, male makers and most maker communities showed great interest in avoiding gender stereotyping. We suggest applying the Bechdel-Test as a simple tool for clarifying gender topics and encouraging self-reflection among makers. Overall, our paper aims to support makerspaces that want to make diversity part of their strategy for future growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]