My 8th Lesson Learned at ABLA 2016, Houston, TX

Taken from http://www.relacionesculturales.edu.mx/abla-2016/

My 8 th Lesson Learned at ABLA 2016, Houston, TX “CTJ’s Makerspace: Designing Memorable Learning Experiences”

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Thursday, September 15, 2016 Post 292

Many times I have walked into our Binational Center’s (BNC) library to find it empty of users but a handful of elderly ones who are used to coming almost every day. I have had the same feeling when visiting the Campus Library at the private college I also work for, a place where people go to sleep or to get a seat to let the hours pass by. Then I also get to wonder if this is the same kind of experience people are living when crossing the threshold to their community’s libraries or in the higher education institutions they are studying at, too. And if this were the situation across our home countries, what kind of shift in the conception of a library is taking place nowadays?

While attending Daniela Lyra Cardoso’s presentation at the ABLA 2016 convention in Houston, TX, I got confronted with the concept of “makerspace” for libraries. And as she stated in the introduction to her talk, “in a rapidly changing

world, powered by social media and instant information, learning opportunities can be found everywhere” [ CITATION Car16 \l 1033 ]; but are we really taking advantage of all these learning chances that our dynamic world is providing us to teach our pupils? With the panorama described above, walking into a library today is making me believe that language performers in a BNC’s library do not take advantage of the treasures it has and that college students lack the ability to profit from a library’s services to get information for their course projects.

Cardoso (2016) introduced many of us newbies to ABLA to the concept of “the makerspace movement.” I must confess that though I work for an BNC in Costa Rica in the area of curriculum, I have never heard of this movement before, but when I had a chance to see what libraries in the US and in other BNCs are doing nowadays, I started wondering why it is that we fell so behind in this learning, collaboration trend. Cardoso, who is working for Casa Thomas Jefferson in Brasilia (Brazil) showed us the great things that a makerspace in a library can do for a BNC and for the community where that institution is located. The more that Cardoso spoke, the more interested I became in the topic and in the initiative this Brazilian institution had devised to reach out to the community surrounding them. Was I then witnessing a change in paradigm in the conception of what libraries should be now that we are far into the 21st Century?

Trying to give an answer to my question linked to a paradigm shift in what a library should be today, I first needed to understand the importance of the makerspace movement. As it is explained by Rendina (n.d.), “The Maker Movement has been around for a lot longer than many of us realize. Really, the desire to make things with our hands has existed since the dawn of man, and DIY culture has long played an important role in humanity.” And somehow all of us are part of the Do-ItYourself (DIY) culture since we like to do things with our hands; hands-on activities

can be more memorable and long-lasting for our learning than a mere explanation.

Creativity is exercised and boosted with the aid of a makerspace for all kinds of library users. “Makerspaces combine manufacturing equipment, community, and education for the purposes of enabling community members to design, prototype and create manufactured works that wouldn’t be possible to create with the resources available to individuals working along” [ CITATION Maknd \l 1033 ]. This is a space open to the community and the students so they can exercise their creativity and collaboration and people skills with other members of that very same community. The library becomes a “think tank” for collaborative library users.

Has the concept of libraries changed or evolved in this post-technology Internet revolution? With the advent of the Internet, an information revolution was to come; by having information a click away from home or from one’s mobile device changed the way we learn today. Libraries are not massively visited by learners nowadays. And this is happening because library’s decision-makers have not yet comprehended that the concept of what a library is has been evolving and including more ways of using the library space. And depending on the kind of library that is being run, we can get learning spaces like the one depicted by Cardoso during her presentation at ABLA 2016 where learners are everywhere in the library exercising their creativity regardless of the language that it is being used by library users.

Having all these ideas revolving in my mind for several weeks now, I wanted to contribute a bit with this new conception of libraries in the 21 st Century though I am no expert in the field. It seems to me, a practical educator, that we are in the verge of time where libraries’ effort needs to be refocused to embrace different ways of learning, to bring the people to make use of resources they have to offer, to help people develop multi-literacies and not just the black and white print books, to promote the learning of history, values, culture and so on, differently. The checklist

created is indeed based on many of the sensible words spoken by Cardoso and my particular way of seeing a library in a BNC like the one we have in Costa Rica.

Living Reality Library Assessment Criteria Checklist In order to assess your library services and social projection, circle  if this criterion is already present and  if the library lacks this service, activity, or rationale. # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Living Reality Library Assessment Criterion Participation in the library targeted to be a customized, immersive community experience.

Focus on the development of new interests by learners and library users Strengthening of work and/or language competencies for the local or foreign language Development of multi-literacies for various age groups coming to the library venue Promotion of the local culture, talent, national history, and the country’s highest values Promotion of the target, US culture, its talent, history and distinctive values Focus on experiential education rather than passive, nonproactive experiences Development of a critical pedagogy to engage learners in the co-construction of their knowledge Strong development of critical thinking skills among the library’s users Bridging opportunities for collaboration among library personnel and the community Strengthening of library users’ reasoning and resilience to continue growing personally or professionally Implementation of action plans to reach out to the community with various learning, experiential activities Creation of meaningful learning programs for students all of ages with series of talks, movie forums, etc.

Innovation-orientation in the library’s open and/or public activities (breaking the usual, trivial way of doing things)

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Rubric created by Prof. Jonathan Acuña based on Cardoso’s (2016) Talk and Contributions at ABLA 2016 Convention in Houston, Texas

As Cardoso (2016) explained in her ABLA 2016 Presentation, the library of the 21st Century is a place with a people-focused mission. A vital institutional space like

a library needs to be a place for innovation. The space must invite learners to experience it differently with creativity boosters and spaces to help them coconstruct their knowledge collaborativiely. As Cardoso (2016) also stated, it needs to be place where BNCs or higher education institutions, and why not community organizations, help all individuals become better for the world, for their families, for their nations, and for themselves. A library needs to be a place where learners can come to investigate the world to comprehend what is happening around us and take action when such things affect us all; we are providing them with spaces to become globally competent since discussions held in our libraries can become ways to help all individuals weigh perspectives coming from different angles. Libraries can become spaces to promote positive changes in our communities.

If innovation is to think out of the box, the libraries can be those places where creativity can be boosted and exercised. Part of this think-out-of-the-box perspective for library use –no doubt- connects with the ideas presented by Cardoso (2016) during her presentation; by means of these public spaces we can create in our local libraries can help our citizens to learn how to communicate ideas to diverse groups of individuals. A makerspace or other action plans we can devise for our libraries are ways to help education in our home countries to be much better and ready to reach out to our communities. I hope not to ask my learners in the future, “how often do you check material from a library?,� and get statistics like this: Number of Sts polled: 12 Topic: Library Use 1 out of 12 checked out a book in the last 2 years 5 out of 12 have never been to the campus library 7 out of 12 have been to the library for other reasons not connected to consulting material 0 out of 12 have participated in a talk organized by the campus library 2 out of 12 have heard of multi-literacies and how they can boost their learning

Ages: 19-26 8.33% 41.67% 58.33 0.00% 16.67%

4 out of 12 have actually used the library to get together to collaborate on school projects

33.33%

Libraries’ need for innovation is more than present in this quick poll I made among my university students. But the fact that a library needs to invite learners to experience it differently is more than evident nowadays. I wish our libraries became makerspaces and places to generate discussion and consolidate communities of learning and communities of practice.

References Cardoso, D. (2016, August 16-19). CTJ's Makerspace: Designing Memorable Learning Experiences. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016 Convention Program, Houston, TX. Monterrey, Nuevo LeĂłn, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.

Makerspace.Com. (n.d.). What's a Makerspace? Retrieved from Makerspace.Com: http://spaces.makerspace.com/ Rendina, D. (n.d.). MakerSpace Resources. Retrieved from Renovated Learning: http://renovatedlearning.com/makerspace-resources/