A few weeks ago, I started a grad course titled: Learning Theories and Instructional Designs. The class in and of itself is a great resource in enhancing and enlivening what we can do through the Churchill Library. As an assignment for this course, I am to create a proposal for a new integration of technology in our school. I went through various thoughts and ideas in preparing for the various steps of this assignment, but what I've come down to is that I'd like to create a makerspace-focused environment in our school library.
It is no secret that a library is meant to be a place of knowledge, learning and exploration. As this, it is important for a library to stay relevant in an ever-changing technology-focused world. This is why I've decided to look into these kinds of changes. Information is all around and comes in many forms and I've always believed that the library should be a portal for information. In order to create that, though, I'd like to supply students with means to be creative in the reasons they seek information, the ways they find it and what they ultimately do with it.
So, I've started planning this "makerspace" environment.
And it's interesting because the more I do research on "makerspaces" the more variety I see this concept used. What a makerspace is, essentially, is an area where one can go, be provided with materials to, well, make. There is some guidance...perhaps guiding questions, organized steps to take, perhaps theories to test, and, of course, ways to evaluate the end result, but it is mostly self-driven. In a library, I see students using the makerspace to think of ideas to create, research those ideas, see what purpose and potential the ideas can have and then once something is created, they look back and reflect on it.
It's been an interesting process to see how this could work in our existing library. I'm not wanting to take books away or make the library be less about books, but I'm just wanting to cater to students changing, evolving needs. The greatest challenges in this are really figuring out how to make this be effective and not just a "craft space," finding ways to fund it and then figuring out how this integrates in the library.
Many (well, most) of these challenges are unanswered, but I see glimmers of direction here and there. I've highly considered putting together a team of students to bounce ideas around, get feedback on what they want/need in the library and help that guide me through some of these challenges. What I'm almost expecting, though, is that I will need to sort of integrate little elements of this at a time to see what works, what doesn't and what I can do to make it better. It's certainly a process, but one that I am certainly excited to embark on!
It is no secret that a library is meant to be a place of knowledge, learning and exploration. As this, it is important for a library to stay relevant in an ever-changing technology-focused world. This is why I've decided to look into these kinds of changes. Information is all around and comes in many forms and I've always believed that the library should be a portal for information. In order to create that, though, I'd like to supply students with means to be creative in the reasons they seek information, the ways they find it and what they ultimately do with it.
So, I've started planning this "makerspace" environment.
And it's interesting because the more I do research on "makerspaces" the more variety I see this concept used. What a makerspace is, essentially, is an area where one can go, be provided with materials to, well, make. There is some guidance...perhaps guiding questions, organized steps to take, perhaps theories to test, and, of course, ways to evaluate the end result, but it is mostly self-driven. In a library, I see students using the makerspace to think of ideas to create, research those ideas, see what purpose and potential the ideas can have and then once something is created, they look back and reflect on it.
It's been an interesting process to see how this could work in our existing library. I'm not wanting to take books away or make the library be less about books, but I'm just wanting to cater to students changing, evolving needs. The greatest challenges in this are really figuring out how to make this be effective and not just a "craft space," finding ways to fund it and then figuring out how this integrates in the library.
Many (well, most) of these challenges are unanswered, but I see glimmers of direction here and there. I've highly considered putting together a team of students to bounce ideas around, get feedback on what they want/need in the library and help that guide me through some of these challenges. What I'm almost expecting, though, is that I will need to sort of integrate little elements of this at a time to see what works, what doesn't and what I can do to make it better. It's certainly a process, but one that I am certainly excited to embark on!