Makers make a di erence
Alumni in Action No. 3
Makers make a difference
Editorial committee
Daniel Alejandro Valderrama Suárez
Yennifer Lombana
Claudia Rodríguez
Alumni Affairs Team
Centro Colombo Americano Bogotá
Nelson Suárez
English Teaching Programs Coordinator
Embassy Bogotá
John Alejandro Arias
Academic Director
Centro Colombo Americano Manizales
Ana María Carmona
Academic Support-Social Programs
Centro Colombo Americano Medellín
Design
Marketing & Comunicaciones
Centro Colombo Americano Medellín
Content
3. American Spaces - Makers Projects at BNCs
Colombo Makerlab: A space for the creation, innovation and collaborative work through the practice of English.
The BNC Manizales expands its MAKE borders- Alejandro Cardona
The Maker journey at the Colombo Americano Pereira- Gloria Liliana Betancourt
10. This is my story: Making great changes
BNC Bogotá- Ana María Mendoza- Egresada Programas Sociales
13. Community service project
International guest Laura Fleming US Expert
STEM and Education: perspectives on how to integrate MAKE and STEM in our classrooms- Edier Gómez
18. Guest Columnist:
Makerspaces: collaborative environments to learn by doing-it-yourselves
22. Makers going beyond
Promoting the Maker movement and STEAM Education
BNC Bogotá- Alejandro Ramirez
24. Cultural Programming
Cultural agendas BNCs Colombia
American Spaces Makers Projects at BNCs
Colombo Makerlab: A
space for the creation, innovation and collaborative work through the practice of English
The Maker Lab Medellin is a place where children, youth, and adult people are encouraged to innovate, create new ideas and projects to foster their learning process. In this order of ideas, the Maker lab at Colombo Americano Medellin has become a space to foster an integral development of knowledge, where people may practice their English skills as well as improve different abilities which are needed in the 21st century. The Maker Lab strengthens collaborative work and creativity; and this is evidenced in the great experiences we have had throughout the last years. The maker lab has held workshops, talks in photography, robotics, drawing, cooking, and many others. Likewise, we have participated in online events like Maker’s week with the Colombo’s network.
The history of the maker lab Medellin has been a path of growth. In 2017, the Colombo Americano BNC Medellin had a transformation in regards to its infrastructure which led to create a dynamic and innovative identity, design and environment based on the principles and concepts of the American Spaces around the world. This renovation permitted the creation of a “MakerLab”
which, as mentioned above, is a space to work collaboratively, share knowledge, and academic/ cultural experiences by practicing English in a fun and ludic way. Additionally, the Makerlab has open spaces and complementary services such as the Friend and E-friend program as strategies that provide onsite and online academic support to students of English in the different programs and projects at the Colombo in order to improve the development of their communicative skills. In the same line, learners, families, alumni and the general public may partake in the Learning Spaces sessions which are an opportunity to learn about different topics such as festivities around the world, traveling stories, gastronomy and cultures through the interaction with experts in lectures and workshops.
The Makerlab is a space for science too. In this place, we develop different activities with the STEAM approach, which integrates fields like science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics in the “Do it yourself” (DIY) philosophy. This allows learners to learn by doing through the creation, innovation, collaborative
Alejandro del Rio
work and other meaningful learning experiences such as Maker clubs where participants can devise creative projects using reusable materials; something that contributes to raise some environmental consciousness and a “Maker culture” in kids, young, adults, parents, teachers and the educational community in general.
In the last 2 years, the Makerlab has consolidated as a space that permits new ways of learning, the integration of activities in the academic and cultural field; and a great network with the maker spaces at the different Colombo Americano centers around the country. In 2020 and 2021, we participated at the Colombo Makers Experience; a programming that held more than 30 virtual activities with specialists and experts in different areas of STEAM and who motivated participants to work creatively and collaboratively in the use of a varied set of technological tools and platforms with which they explored, experimented and created sustainable life options for society. At BNC Medellin, this agenda has impacted both more than 200 students from the different academic programs and Social projects such as ALUMNI, MLK, CHOP, ACCESS, RIONEGRO BILINGÜE and the general public of the city. Such an impact has been very positive in all the participants since it has led them to integrate different knowledge fields and develop new creative skills.
Every educational setting faces big challenges and the Makerlab is not the exception. We want to grow stronger and promote our programs and Maker activities. To do so, we need to consolidate a portfolio that also integrates the design and the 3D modelling in order to reinforce the use of special tools such as our new 3D printer. Likewise, we need an interdisciplinary team of experts (staff of the institution, volunteers, grant holders) who may develop activities for kids, young and adult people in the STEAM and DIY approaches and who ensure the continuation of these spaces; finally, we need to offer workshops with a cost in order to generate income that contributes to self-management.
In essence, the Makerlab is an ideal place for the creation, innovation and collaborative work by means of the exploration and integration of different fields of knowledge -STEAM- and the practice of English. We would like to invite all the alumni community from the different programs and Social projects to be part of this space and share all their experiences with the aim of generating meaningful learnings for all our academic and cultural context.
The BNC Manizales expands its MAKE borders with the endowment of the Palestine Maker Space.
Palestine is a municipality in the South Central region of the department of Caldas, Colombia. Located in the Central Coffee Region, known as the Coffee Region, which has a culture and tradition linked to the colonization of Antioquia and the cultivation of coffee.
The Café Airport is under construction in this locality, with a clear cargo vocation, especially for export, given its proximity to the city of Manizales (an important industrial center), the diversity of agricultural and agro-industrial products in its area of influence, which includes municipalities from the departments of Risaralda, Caldas, Quindío and north of Valle del Cauca (Wikipedia)
The municipality has an approximate population of 18,000 inhabitants, and about two thirds of them live in rural areas, for this reason, the Santágueda Educational Institution, a rural school, was chosen to adapt and provide a Maker Space that impacts the entire surrounding area, both rural and urban.
The BNC Manizales expands its MAKE borders
Among the activities carried out, Maker workshops were given to students and teachers from all the districts of the municipality and joint work was achieved with the government authorities in matters of education, as well as with the rectors, coordinators and English teachers of the five educational institutions in Palestine (four of them rural). This is a clear example of co-work in favor of a common interest, which is the social development of an area with an important agricultural but also tourism call; because of its warm climate and proximity to
Alejandro Cardona
the city of Manizales, it hosts numerous vacation and rest centers and it is a place highly visited by tourists. In addition to this, due to the ongoing construction of the Café International Airport, it is expected that the tourism vocation of Palestine will be enhanced and efforts are being made to strengthen the population in skills that allow the economic development of the area. trying to contribute to this development, the Palestine Maker Space also has a destination as an English teaching room and its endowment, in addition to Make elements, also consists of textbooks for teaching English at all academic levels.
It should be noted that it was arranged with the directives of the school that houses this classroom, so that all the different schools in the municipality have access according to their educational needs.
In this 2022, efforts have already been made to continue a program of Make workshops and the possibility of strengthening the rural region of Palestina with the provision of new Maker Spaces in other schools in the municipality is contemplated.
But the expansion of Make borders does not stop there and these borders are not only physical, because in this 2022, the BNC Centro Colombo Americano Manizales is about to start a process of Make workshops aimed at students of EINED, the School of English for Children with Diverse Educational Needs, a program of the University of Caldas, which benefits children of all ages and their caregivers in the process of teaching English and who will now expand their process in creativity issues related to the STEAM methodology.
The Maker journey at the Colombo Americano Pereira
A long, long time ago, in a town not too far away, there was a small library that wanted to be innovative. One day, in 2013, at the annual meeting of librarians at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, after a talk about the change in libraries and the emerging movements to encourage people to create and invent again, the public bilingual library of the Colombo Americano Pereira organized its first “Science Corner”. Using a filing cabinet and a table, the Colombo Pereira displayed some science books, a world map, and exhibited a toy microscope. And the community responded.
Library users donated test tubes from their personal labs, instruments from their workplaces.
Time passed and, in order to grow the Science Corner and attract new users to the library, the librarians offered basic science and art workshops for the academic community. The workshops became a favorite library activity, and soon the library offered them to public educational institutions and Access students who were beginning their English language learning process.
The science corner grew, with activities, with user donations.
And the Embassy responded.
An Embassy representative visited the library and donated their personal microscope – one they used while studying to become a marine biologist.
And the Science Corner grew.
Time passed …
The Colombo Americano Pereira opened its doors to a new library space, thanks to a grant from the US Embassy, which included two 3D printers, Arduinos kits, robotics kits, circuits, laptops and more.
Now, the MAKER Movement has become an integral part of the Colombo Americano Pereira’s programming -- providing the community with workshops in design and 3D printing, robotics, Digital Storytelling, movie making, and other multimodal ways of communication. The different introductory workshops and trainings
Gloria Liliana Betancourt
with teachers, students, and the community promote innovative thinking, creativity, and collaborative learning, with the goal of sustainability. For instance, the 3D printing workshops were developed hand in hand with a foundation for people with visual limitations to create braille alphabet pieces. Another workshop was developed with an animal shelter, to create tags for the animals.
And the MAKER movement grew. The science corner spilled into all parts of the library, the community.
And Covid-19 came. The physical library closed. But outreach and the science corner workshops continued.
Due to the health contingency caused by the Covid-19 global pandemic, workshops became virtual, including 3D design and robotics, using platforms such as Zoom and Meet. Children
and adolescents narrated their neighborhoods, recording their stories and sharing them over WhatsApp to be published on public radio stations. With the support of the U.S. Embassy and the Department of State, different activities related to digital storytelling such as Stop Motion workshops and photography were also promoted.
And the Embassy responded.
With Embassy support, the BNC Pereira began its Podcast Channel – CCA Connections. With the new sound booth, the Colombo Pereira will continue to grow its MAKER programming and generate training spaces on audiovisual production, podcast and audio and video editing.
Thanks to the strengthening of the Colombo Americano network, the MAKER Movement has grown in the region and around the country. MAKER Week will commemorate its third version in 2022, where the best STEM practices of each Colombo and exchange and sharing of MAKER knowledge among all BNCs and their communities.
Oh … and we still have that first real microscope donated by the Embassy rep so many years ago. It only takes a corner to begin a movement!
This is my story
Making great changes
Ana María Mendoza
This is my history.
Before joining the Centro Colombo Americano I liked to help my neighbors, sisters and children that my mom took care of with issues that they didn´t understand and I always saw it more as a hobby, it was until I turned 15, which was the year I joined as a scholarship holder at the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogota and from there I began to see that it was not just a hobby, at the beginning I only saw it as a great opportunity to learn the English language, then little by little I realized that the CCA not only teaches English but also transforms us and teaches us how to be good leaders, family, friends, history and culture. Finishing my 2 years of scholarship and my school in the middle of the pandemic, I continued with CCA Alumni in which I have been part of them with activities and as a volunteer in mentoring and leadership and still my process does not end.
Community service project
I define a makerspace as a unique learning environment that encourages tinkering, play, and open-ended exploration for all. When planning and creating a makerspace, it is critical to remember that what we are really creating are unique learning environments. Nearly nine years ago, I embarked on my own makerspace journey. Although I established our first makerspace around then, it has taken me all these years to continue to develop my body of work, to help to ensure that our makerspace and others continued to evolve and flourish. In 2018 , I published my second makerspace book, The Kickstart Guide to Making GREAT Makerspaces, driven by the philosophy of not just creating makerspaces, but creating GREAT makerspaces, ones that are are unique, meaningful, relevant to their school communities, as well as sustainable into the future. In that book, I outlined what I determined to be the 7 attributes of a GREAT makerspace: Inspiring, Intentional, Personalized, Deep, Differentiated, Empowering and Equitable. When we integrate these attributes, we create exponentially powerful learning environments. Together, these attributes ensure that your makerspace will be impactful. As I continue to find ways to level up my own makerspace work, I
MAKING an Impact
Laura Fleming
have realized just how impactful our makerspaces can be for our makers as well as the wider world.
Makerspaces that make an impact are more common than one might think. Check out this Maker Care program…STEAM + C for compassion, created by Islip, NY Library Media Specialist, Gina Seymour. Gina dedicated a portion of their space to compassionate making. Their MakerCare program provides opportunities for their students to make a difference in the community through making. Each maker project benefits a person or community agency. Over the past several years, I also have discovered the work of Inspire Citizens who through their Empathy to Impact approach, help infuse the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, global competence frameworks, and media literacy into project-based inquiry, design thinking, curricular standards, language objectives, and 21st-century learning. With their work in mind, Making the SDGs through Makerspaces was launched in Nigeria by Jacob Sule, which aimed to empower and support students in rural Nigeria to help achieve the SDGs through Makers and Design thinking philosophies.
Some time ago, I came across a blog post written by the amazing Mark Sparvell, in which he used the phrase, “Fundamental, not ornamental”. Anyone who knows my work, knows why this phrase would resonate with me in terms of makerspaces. My work has never been about the ornamental “stuff”, it has always been about the research, the philosophy, the pedagogy related to creating these unique learning environments. This isn’t the only reason I appreciated Mark’s post though. Mark used the phrase, “Fundamental, not ornamental”, in referring to social-emotional skills and the potential role technology can play in augmenting, extending and enhancing them. The impact makerspaces have had on mental health cannot be overlooked. When designing a makerspace it is important, especially in today’s world, to find ways to connect mental and emotional experiences to the experience you want your students to have. For example, the AISD Makerspace in Anna, Texas explored how play therapy toys can help elementary students to cope with trauma caused by the pandemic. This research led to their high schoolers designing empathetic toys to help younger children through stressful times.
In addition to creating makerspaces that are impactful, we can help others and their makerspaces be impactful, as well. For example, here at Worlds of Making, with the help of donations through a fundraising campaign, we were able to MAKE a difference by raising funds for libraries in Texas affected by Hurricane Harvey. We also contributed to maker educators’ DonorsChoose.org campaigns. This campaign recently caught my eye. It was created by educator Mrs. Vislosky of Jefferson Township High School in Oak Ridge, New Jersey. Students at her school have expressed the need for a space where they can go to decompress and learn more about their SEL (Social Emotional Learning) needs, particularly in light of the COVID pandemic. They are looking to incorporate a wellness corner in their media center, which connects makerspaces and SEL.
Some important questions to consider: How do we measure the impact of makerspaces? What are our metrics as educators? Should they focus on facilities and resources? What about the equality of results, and not in terms of how much money a school spends on a makerspace, but by how much those makerspaces have taught and meant to the students, and the equality of opportunity? What mechanisms can we put into place that could assure equality of results, disregarding the fanfare for ‘the stuff’, and instead focusing on the actual impact? What strategies could be carried out to reduce the differences in educational opportunities that makerspaces provide, rather than perpetuate them? Can makerspaces do more? Can they make educational outcomes less dependent on money than they are now?
Do you know any makers that have made a difference? Share your thoughts at #Worldsofmaking.
STEM and Education: perspectives on
how to integrate MAKE and STEM in our classrooms
In my trajectory as an English teacher, I have had the chance to try various methodologies and strategies in order to dynamize and enrich classroom instruction. From Total Physical Response to class flip, I was always looking for ways to make my students’ learning process as meaningful and enjoyable as possible. Nonetheless, little had I considered using science, engineering, and math; they entered into the equation when I started learning more about the MAKE movement thanks to American Spaces and the Binational center Colombo Manizales. After many attempts, I was able to put together some ideas on how to use MAKE and STEM for the first time in my lessons; and they did not disappoint. I was thrilled about how much fun students were having at the time they were learning English, enhancing their leadership, teamwork, creativity, and even further, developing critical thinking skills.
As I got more interested in the world of STEM and MAKE, I became particularly curious about what other places were doing in the field, or what they were making. Furthermore, I wanted to learn how we can strengthen bonds between education and STEM. It was not until very recently that I
came across some places, ideas and people that are absolutely inspiring in this topic, and in the next couple of paragraphs I aim at sharing this information with you. However, first off, I would like to set your eyes on Purdue University, a public university located in West Lafayette, Indiana, in the United States. Although all of the programs they offer are high quality, this university is wellknown by their excellence in agriculture and engineering. In fact, it was ranked as No. 4 (tie) best engineering school in the U.S by the U.S News & World Report in 2022.
You may imagine from this how much the value STEM and education, and as a matter of fact, I still do not stop surprising myself every day. With the idea of providing a student-centered space for development, they have what is probably one of the biggest makerspaces in the whole county, the Bechtel Innovation Design Center. There, students have access machinery, electronics, gadgets, and a space to develop projects, explore new ideas and go steps further into innovation and creation. According to Purdue, over 5,000 students have been supported through this center, which highlights the importance of having these types of spaces and the extensive impact they can create in the community.
Figure 1: Bechtel Innovation Design Center (Purdue University photo illustration/John O’Malley & Payton Drake)
Edier Gómez
Figure 2:Curriculum example. Image taken from www.picturestem.org
Now, talking more specifically about the college of engineering, among all the fascinating projects they have, I had the chance to learn about INSPIRE Research Institute for Pre-College Engineering, a unique initiative that focuses on how to integrate science, technology, and mathematics along with literacy. They help developing curricula, supporting afterschool programs and the assessing instruments and STEM policy in P-12 education (Pre-school to senior high). Many thought-provoking projects have come from them, but if it comes to STEM and education, “PictureSTEM” is the best example on how to bridge and integrate STEM and literacy meaningfully. Through the steps “define, learn, plan, try, test, decide”, they support STEM learning through literacy and the incorporation of problemsolving skills towards solving daily life problems.
They demonstrate that such integration is possible and how significant it becomes in order to prepare and educate our children. I highly recommend you go and check their work as I will leave all the sources at the very end.
One last example that has inspired me on this topic has to do with teacher in the Lafayette area, Sharita Ware. She was recently chosen as 2022 Indiana Teacher of the Year, and no doubt why she was selected. By consistently encouraging her students to be creative, innovative, and courageous to think and develop their ideas, Sharita’s work ranges from designing prosthetics for barbie dolls with her 7th graders to building and programming robots with her 8th graders at school. She sets such a role model to follow in the field of education and STEM as she contributes with valuable skills and values that will be of great help for these future generations.
If the question is about how to use STEM and education as a whole, the answer is more likely still under development. There is still much to be explored, much to be researched, much to be learned. Nonetheless, the abovementioned examples are sources of encouragement for all of us to continue in the path, always providing spaces for innovation and imagination within our classes. Citing Sharita’s words from one of her interviews, a “maker space gives kids freedom. You will have desired learning outcomes, but the way that they get to that learning outcome could be totally different from student to student and group to group”, and that is exactly the beginning to support our students to becoming leaders, generations ready for what this 21st century demands, generations that want to make a change in the world.
Guest Columnist
Pedro Lutz
The libraries of the nine different Colombos in the country have been promoting projects that are considered Maker activities for the last decade; our staff has created activities in the English language classrooms, developed fairs, trained teachers, promoted workshops etc. The term Maker has become a household name among the Colombos and we are proud to have integrated the Maker mentality among our everyday activities. Today we want to take a look at these changes and at how we as a network of Binational Centers have gotten where we are in these kind of activities; and where we are going with them.
Makerspaces: collaborative
environments
to
learn by doing-it-yourselves
A little history of the Maker movement
The movement that we now call Maker started some 15 to 20 years ago when some easy to access technological advances were made available to the public. These coincided with a moment of open communities that were willing to share how-to information online. The time line shows us that Dale Dougherty a very prominent Maker launched “Make” magazine in 2005 and the Maker Faire the following year. In his book “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing Our Schools, Our Jobs, and Our Mind” Dougherty discusses the culture of making, describing it as “a transformative and highly creative and societal revolution”. He describes making as “a form of play that performs an essential psychological role”.
Collaborative Spaces that developed later into Maker Spaces or Idea labs started popping all over the United States, and worldwide in the next decade. These new open-to-all-public spaces were the perfect creative environments that merged with Public Libraries that were going through their own reinvention of services. Today all Public Libraries and most schools in the United States have developed these handson spaces as part of their services, where the objective is to learn by doing it yourselves.
Pedro Lutz
So what exactly is a MakerSpace?
A word must be said about the different names that Makerspaces go by, some unique names change based on the purpose and the location of them. That way we can find: fab labs, hackerspaces, tech shop, or idea labs. Regardless of the name or level of functionality, each of these spaces contribute to a new digital revolution—the maker movement.
Makerspaces have become places where a do-ityourself (DIY) mentality has intersected with a hacker culture that revels on the idea of creating new devices or on tinkering existing ones. Makers in general support open-source hardware, and free distribution of know-how; Makerspaces become in these way the best places to transfer knowledge and new technologies. Among the activities that are common to encounter in Makerspaces are engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts. The concept is not new and anybody that has studied project-based learning knows that by “making things” in a collaborative environment one is acquiring other skills and different knowledge besides the construction of said thing. That is where we as Makers think that the visitors to our spaces can get more advantage of this new learning environments.
MakerSpaces in the Colombos
Makerspaces came into being in our own Centro’s Colombo Americanos after receiving encouragement from the United States Embassy in Bogota to start looking into these activities that could take place in their Libraries. For more than 8 years now our nine different Colombos have had Maker activities for our internal (students & teachers), and external (general public) audiences. What is original about Makers in the Colombos has been the addition of the English component in most of its activities. The results of adding a Maker program as extracurricular activities has given a boost in our Library services, and an increase in visitors in all of the Colombos. Our Directors and Board members have understood that the Maker movement is not a fad that will go away in some years, but instead an important addition to the Binational Center mentality. Some of the Colombos have already added full or part time staff dedicated exclusively to design, and lead Maker activities in them.
As a network the Libraries of the Colombos have come together to create a week full of Maker activities for all of their nation-wide audiences. The “Colombo Maker Experience” coming to its 3rd edition this 2022, has hosted more than 80 activities with more than 2,200 attendees. This 2022 we also launched the first SPACE SIMULATOR WORKSHOP. Aimed at 90 teenagers from all the country´s BNC´s, the workshop will allow the student to develop fundamental skills and competencies within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) promoted by the United States as a theoreticalpractical strategy for STEM education. This is the beginning of a partnership between the Colombos and a local non-profit CIPSELA to
improve the quality of its MakerSpace activities. All of the workshop activities will include the use of Kerbal Space Program (KSP) simulator.
Among Colombo librarians the thought that a Maker mentality of project development with the addition of a language component was achievable and worth the risk of trying to do it. Now we can happily tell many success stories of students, teachers, and Alumni that saw in these activities the best way to improve their English skills while learning something new and having fun while doing so. The Colombo libraries will continue to expand and create more and more Maker activities in our spaces and inviting all audiences to help learn something new while doing it among ourselves.
Promoting the Maker movement and STEAM education
Space exploration is one of the most challenging and exciting human adventures. Therefore, the Colombo has launched the Space Simulator workshop to encourage students’ interest in this field. In this workshop, alumni develop their ingenuity to solve multiple engineering problems, the ability to understand and apply scientific concepts, and the skill to generate work teams capable of working in a coordinated and competent manner, among many other aspects that make us evolve as part of the human community.
The Space Simulator workshop is a different learning environment in which, through gamebased learning, more than 60 school age students from the Colombos from the nine other cities in the country, venture into STEAM with an aerospace focus. Through virtual sessions the future Colombo engineers and scientists begin to understand the importance of using the simulator. Then, they are introduced to the theme of rocketry and propulsion, and exploration of the scientific bases that allow these powerful machines to reach space, after going through the complete Earth’s atmosphere. Once they have learned how to reach the vast space, thanks to the mathematical and physical concepts of orbital mechanics, the explorer students are able to embark on missions to and from other bodies in the Solar System.
Alejandro Ramirez
On the other hand, the Maker movement is strictly related to the development of STEAM competences since it allows students to work with Project Based Learning. As we know, the objective of the Maker movement among others, is to foster creative thinking and innovative practices in every classroom. Therefore, this workshop is designed to make students learn about the human explorations in the space by making their own rocket and launching it into space orbit.
In order to inspire a new generation of young people who see science and technology careers as an option for a life project, this workshop is paramount because students will experience and gain knowledge complementary to the formal curricular contents that they receive in their high school courses, where they will be able to assimilate concepts of physics, chemistry, mathematics and engineering, in a fun way. Besides, it will increase the curiosity of students to explore the universe and to believe in themselves as future astronauts.
This workshop is a collaboration among the Red de Colombos, the Cipsela Corporation, the United States Embassy in Colombia, the Boeing Company and the Pan American Foundation for Development.
Cultural agendas BNCs
Colombia
Armenia
Manizales
Cali
Medellín
Bogotá
Pereira