Let them Lead -- From Learners to Leaders in Makerspace Vision and Design

This is the beginning of a series of a few blog entries on KMIT Summer Academy Boot Camp. KMIT is our "Kettle Moraine Innovation Team" (learner tech team). In an effort to train our learners prior to next school year we ran a Boot Camp for learners in grades 5-9 (for 6 weeks, 2 hours/day) to learn the ropes of what KMIT is, be challenged to exercise leadership and good customer service, create videos, design websites, and create the vision for our KMMS Makerspace. This is another instances in which learners became co-creators of a learning experience.

Whether you currently have a makerspace, are looking to start a makerspace, or are looking to add greater learner ownership to your makerspace, this blog might be worth a read!

Last summer at Ledyen's 1:1 Teaching and Learning Symposium, a participant from PA shared that learners created the vision for their makerspace within their school. I immediately thought this was genius. Why are we as adults creating the spaces that our learners should be designing? As a result I decided to implement something similar during a two week study of makerspaces during our KMIT boot camp. The first week had a vision focus, and the second week had a focus on tools.

The project initially started as a research project and presentation that emphasized the following:

• What is a makerspace?
• What would be the vision and mission for your makerspace at KMMS?
• If awarded a grant of $10,000, what would you purchase?
• What is your plan for marketing and getting others involved in the learning experience?

Here was the inital prompt to kick off the project: 

Task Card: Kettle Moraine Middle School Students have just been notified that they have been awarded a $10,000 grant to get their makerspace off the ground.  Before the money can be spent, learners have been challenged to use the design process to come up with a makerspace vision, plan, and budget for how they would spend the money to get their makerspace up and off the ground.  Within teams, learners will do the initial research and go through the design thinking process to elicit a plan.   The plan should include:  what makerspace is, a vision for our KMMS makerspace, ideas for how the makerspace can be utilized and run, and a budget for spending the initial funding.  They will then create a shark tank like presentation in which they will pitch their idea to school administrators, the superintendent, and school board members.  The winning design and vision will be adopted and modified with teacher support and it will become the plan for the makerspace.  The winning team and design will also be highlighted on the Media Club video announcements to share with our school community.

This is one of those instances in which it didn't go as initially expected, but when the experience is co-created with learners it GETS GOOD! When planning this project with learners it became the following Shark Tank Presentation (and the action steps are part of a Makerspace Vision badge that was created by our learners):

• What is a makerspace? 
• Why do we need a makerspace at KMMS?
• What is the mission and vision of your makerspace?
• How are we going to make this happen?  What is your plan for operation? (Before school, Lunch, Advisory, After School, Weekends, Summer)
• Who would be involved?  How are we going to train both learners and teachers? 
• How would you spend the $10,000?  What is the compelling why behind what you would purchase?  Identify a few items.
• Thank you + ask for support

Learners worked in teams to research, define, and present the following questions listed above.  Our awesome administrative team came in to serve as sharks during learner presentations. It was fantastic hearing the ideas that our learners came up with.  I could not be more proud of their work.  They had so many great ideas and I found myself taking notes from them.  Learners emphasized getting the community involved, having parent volunteers, the need to train learners how to run it, a need for it to be open outside of school hours, an opportunity for learners to visit during advisory for "Makerspace Challenges" that would be emphasized on our Friday Video Announcements, and the need for a community Maker Faire.

Our next steps involve assembling a team of learners to create the action plan to get our makerspace running for the 2017-2018 school.  My key takeaway was that the learners are ready and anxious to lead this effort!

As is with everything we do, here are some of my reflections of what I would do differently next time.  

a. More focused mini-lessons and checkpoints. Learners would have to get each of the following steps approved for completion before being allowed to move onto the next category. All resources should be placed in Canvas our LMS. Below you will find some of the resources that we used.

• Research a makerspace
• Benefits of makerspace on learners (Why do we need a makerspace at KMMS?)
• Creation of a Mission & Vision 
• How to Create a Mission & Vision 
• Example Mission & Vision Statements
• Creating a Budget
• Identify Needs to be fulfilled by Makerspace
• Appropriate equipment + Quantities Discussion 
• Spreadsheet Calculations
• Plan of Action & Implementation (Who is involved?)
• Creating a Presentation
• Presentation Skills (Shark Tank) themed (Identify characteristics of Shark Tank Presentations)
• Shark Tank Example 1
• Shark Tank Example 2
• Shark Tank Example 3

b. Scaffolds and multiple learning activities should be provided for each checkpoint. Each of the checkpoints above should consist of different learning activities and mini-lessons to support learners. Some are identified above.

c. Learners should be provided more feedback throughout the process at checkpoints (both from teachers and from other learners). This was challenging this first time around because I had a guest teacher while I was away at training.

d. Learners need more time to craft the presentation and practice.  We should have recorded the performances so that learners could watch themselves present before the final Shark Tank presentations.

e. Provide learners multiple opportunities to present in front of peers to elicit feedback.

f. Provide the concept of an authentic learning audience from the start. Having our administrative team participate raised the stakes for our learners and provided a bit of additional pressure for our learners.

g. Provide an inventory of what we already have (equipment). This did not happen this time around because we did not have the necessary information available.

h. Present task cards each day identifying the "next steps" in the project. Learners could get links to Task Cards/QR codes/Challenges when they are ready to move on to the next steps.

Here are a few highlights from what our learners came up with: