LIS 5970 Makerspaces

This artifact is for LIS-5970 Makerspaces, taken in the Fall of 2022. The paper chosen was the final blueprint for a makerlab project. The project was to design a program that would be run in a makerspace and evaluate the program to meet the community's needs.

While I have run makerspace programs before, the readings from the class and hearing feedback from others in the class about the makerspace I worked in made me create a different program that could fill a need that was missing in the library programming. The idea was to create a process in which students could learn more about STEAM and progressively build projects based on previous projects that they built. I also noticed from looking at various projects and programs on both Instructables and various STEAM programming boards that there were no projects in which reverse engineering is used to create an item. I tried building the program's first iteration, a bottle car. I used an image from Instructables for an electric bottle car and replaced the driving mechanism from battery to rubber band. The project taught me some STEAM concepts I had not expected, even as a mechanical engineer. It allows students to learn about forces, design concepts, and troubleshooting. It taught me how to look at programs not as just one-offs and standalone programs but as a system that can provide educational paths and more opportunities for easy access/affordable programming in the community.

The project showed me there are always ways that STEAM can be incorporated into making and that plenty of programs have not been implemented. I have been applying principles from class about guiding each person's learning style, where they are within the making process, and how I can best serve the patron to achieve their goals while allowing them to try and fail positively when something goes wrong. This programming also ties into SLIS SLO 6 (2022) Diversity. The program planned to create a cost-effective program that allowed everyone in the community to participate, supporting diversity and not creating an economic boundary where participants could even try the project at home with minimal cost and no cost placed upon participants. It also tries to create a pathway that participants can learn and make using STEAM principles. This ties into my second learning goal of learning more about makerspaces and programming. It challenged me to look at programming in a new way which also ties into ALA Core Competences (2023) Information Resources from my learning goals.

Reference

American Library Association. (2023). 2022 ALA core competences of librarianship_final. In American Library Association. Retrieved February 28, 2023, from https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/sites/ala.org.educationcareers/files/content/2022%20ALA%20Core%20Competences%20of%20Librarianship_FINAL.pdf

School of Library and Information Studies. (2022, October 10). Goals and student learning outcomes. The University of Oklahoma. Retrieved February 27, 2023, from https://www.ou.edu/cas/slis/about/vision