WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:08.580 Narrator: There's a movement happening in Dysart schools in this 21st Century learning environment. 00:00:08.590 --> 00:00:11.600 It's a new culture. A new mindset. 00:00:11.600 --> 00:00:17.020 A new way for students to have open-ended exploration. 00:00:17.020 --> 00:00:20.080 It's a place for students to create, invent 00:00:20.090 --> 00:00:22.900 tinker, explore, and discover 00:00:22.900 --> 00:00:28.860 using a variety of tools and processes. It's called the makerspace movement. 00:00:28.870 --> 00:00:33.640 To describe them simply, makerspaces are collaborative environments with a 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:38.220 set of tools to encourage authentic learning experiences. 00:00:38.230 --> 00:00:43.680 They combined technologies, collaboration, and education for the purposes of 00:00:43.680 --> 00:00:50.840 enabling students to design, prototype, and create for solution-focused thinking. 00:00:50.850 --> 00:00:54.460 Dave Beard: It's interesting that businesses and the people that we are ultimately 00:00:54.460 --> 00:00:58.579 serving, we're creating workers for the workforce, they're asking us to people 00:00:58.579 --> 00:01:02.890 that are problem solvers and will attack the problem and be able to have the 00:01:02.890 --> 00:01:08.230 ability to persevere through adversity and and to be able to have things not work, 00:01:08.230 --> 00:01:12.900 and maybe fail a couple times but still stick with the task at hand and at 00:01:12.910 --> 00:01:16.030 the end of the day actually be able to solve that problem. And this is one of 00:01:16.030 --> 00:01:19.860 those things that was really key in building those skills within students. 00:01:19.860 --> 00:01:22.540 Narrator: What's important to note first is that makerspaces 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:27.180 in the Dysart School District can take many forms and vary greatly 00:01:27.180 --> 00:01:29.320 from school to school. 00:01:29.320 --> 00:01:35.480 Makerspaces might focus on electronics, robotics, programming and coding, 00:01:35.480 --> 00:01:38.500 and even arts and sewing. 00:01:38.500 --> 00:01:44.050 Makerspaces can also take place at any time of the day. The maker culture in the 00:01:44.050 --> 00:01:48.100 classroom is oftentimes grounded within a lesson and the curriculum. 00:01:48.100 --> 00:01:54.120 Whereas before or after school makerspaces focus on a tinkering aspect that 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:59.040 allows students to explore their ideas in a less structured setting. 00:01:59.040 --> 00:02:06.140 This is called a personalized spectrum. There is personalization for the learner in which the 00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:10.870 teacher tailors the learning, and personalization by the learner 00:02:10.870 --> 00:02:16.330 in which the student develop skills to tailor his or her own learning. 00:02:16.330 --> 00:02:19.880 Valerie Downs: and that kind of just the general philosophy of a makerspace. It is a space 00:02:19.890 --> 00:02:24.390 that has all different kinds of options that the students can use to learn and solve these 00:02:24.390 --> 00:02:28.470 problems or use for these projects. But how they choose to use the tool and 00:02:28.470 --> 00:02:30.950 what tools they choose to use, are their choice. 00:02:30.950 --> 00:02:37.540 It's personalized to them. So the makerspace philosophy in Dysart lends itself very well to personalization. 00:02:37.540 --> 00:02:43.860 Narrator: Makerspaces in the district also utilize something called the design thinking process. 00:02:43.860 --> 00:02:51.880 Design thinking is a method for practical, creative resolution of problems and the creation of solutions. 00:02:51.880 --> 00:02:57.639 Danielle Salamanca: The beauty of design thinking is that it's really a structure or a framework 00:02:57.640 --> 00:03:02.700 that allows students to collaborate and think critically about what they're doing. And what's great about it 00:03:02.700 --> 00:03:06.040 is it doesn't wrap students into a box. It doesn't tell them what to think or 00:03:06.040 --> 00:03:10.890 how to think. It really nurtures creativity and divergent problem-solving 00:03:10.890 --> 00:03:16.310 so that they can go forth and have that maker mindset and create and solve. 00:03:16.310 --> 00:03:19.930 Narrator: The tools utilized in Dysart makerspaces 00:03:19.940 --> 00:03:26.260 sound like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Students explore with Little Bits, Makey Makeys, 00:03:26.260 --> 00:03:35.160 Cubelets, Arduinos, Tinkercad, and Raspberry Pi. 3D printers are also usually a staple within a makerspace 00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:38.680 and provide students the opportunity to create a physical 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:44.020 prototype that they can test and refine through observation. 00:03:44.020 --> 00:03:49.360 Dave Beard: If you think about it, the world around is being automated. The Internet of Things is right on 00:03:49.370 --> 00:03:53.260 the precipice right now. We're hanging on the edge and these kids that are 00:03:53.260 --> 00:03:55.879 going through the system right are gonna be the movers and shakers with 00:03:55.879 --> 00:03:59.370 those things. So these are real college and career ready skills that we want 00:03:59.370 --> 00:04:04.030 them to have. It's the computational thinking that goes into it. It's the programming logic, 00:04:04.030 --> 00:04:09.330 It's the learning how to understand schematics. It's very scientific. 00:04:09.330 --> 00:04:15.090 Narrator: For example, in Mr. Lent's class at Mountain View, 7th graders have identified a 00:04:15.090 --> 00:04:20.660 problem with sewage where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. 00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:26.919 Using the program Tinkercad, they are exploring ways to design spillways that would prevent or 00:04:26.919 --> 00:04:31.379 decrease the amount of material being dumped into the sea. 00:04:31.380 --> 00:04:35.940 Taylor: The water would flow in through the opening in the front and then all the 00:04:35.940 --> 00:04:39.370 materials will get stuck in the ridges and the side and the bottom and then it 00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:44.889 will flow out to through the other end. So that only the water that didn't have all the 00:04:44.889 --> 00:04:49.300 materials that could be causing the dead zones to go through. There was no restrictions so we 00:04:49.300 --> 00:04:54.199 could pretty much do whatever we wanted as long as it would help with situation. When we 00:04:54.199 --> 00:04:57.770 write sometimes we're just looking things up and think, of people think this so 00:04:57.770 --> 00:05:00.870 it's not our theories, it's other people's. And this is what we think. 00:05:00.870 --> 00:05:04.130 We're putting our knowledge into something that could actually help 00:05:04.130 --> 00:05:08.760 Narrator: Makerspaces and the design thinking process are being utilized 00:05:08.760 --> 00:05:15.300 together in Dysart schools as a way to shape active creators, collaborators, and 00:05:15.300 --> 00:05:19.320 designers versus passive consumers 00:05:19.330 --> 00:05:26.730 They are a way to inspire wonder and celebrate unique solutions to the problems of the future. 00:05:26.730 --> 00:05:33.180 Valerie Downs: A Maker mindset is a philosophy, it's a way of being. And it's really important that Dysart embodies this and 00:05:33.189 --> 00:05:37.150 embraces this because these student are the future. These students are going to go out into 00:05:37.150 --> 00:05:41.780 the real world eventually and they're going to fail. It's going to happen. And they can't control that. 00:05:41.780 --> 00:05:45.139 But what we can help control as educators is we can try to foster these 00:05:45.139 --> 00:05:49.459 skills in them so that when they do go out into the real world they fail, they don't quit. 00:05:49.460 --> 00:05:53.240 They don't give up. They become problem solvers. They become a critical thinker. 00:05:53.250 --> 00:05:56.940 They try to reach out to other colleagues and collaborate because that's whats going to make them a 00:05:56.940 --> 00:06:01.300 powerhouse in the work force. And that's what I'm really excited about with the maker mindset.