Guest Columnist

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ALUMNI IN ACTION

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

Pedro Lutz

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.

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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.

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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.

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Promoting the Maker movement and STEAM education Alejandro Ramirez

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.