Welcome back to our ongoing series highlighting “What’s Happening” at our Maker VISTA sites. Each monthly post will quickly introduce what our subsites have been up to during the past month, and include a link to more information.
Maker VISTA is dedicated to eradicating poverty and supports Maker Ed’s mission to create more opportunities for all young people to develop confidence, creativity, and interest in science, technology, engineering, math, art, and learning as a whole through making. Members develop the capacity of subsites by building infrastructure, expanding partnerships, securing resources, organizing maker education training, and linking communities to the maker movement.
To learn more about the Maker VISTA Program, click here.
To learn more our Maker VISTA Members, click here.
MIA Made received a $10,000 Miami Foundation Accelerator Grant! The grant will fund its collaborative development, Liberty to Make makerspace, with the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, Florida. The makerspace will engage locals of all ages by fostering their entrepreneurial and creative talents while bringing the community together through STEAM (science, math, engineering, arts, and math) principles. Learn more here.
Sierra Seabrease, a Baltimore sophomore and an active maker at Digital Harbor Foundation, was selected as one of the 36 projects exhibited at the White House Science Fair. In addition to working on technology projects at DHF, Sierra founded the Digital Harbor Foundation Makerettes club, a group for female students at the DHF Tech Center. She was featured both on the DHF blog, the Maker Ed blog, and the White House blog.
At Lighthouse Community Charter School, ninth graders partnered with kindergartners to create scribble machines – robots that draw as they move. With some plastic fruit crates, masking tape, motors and felt tip markers, they created both scribble bots and beautiful art. Check out videos and descriptions.
At Assemble, Saturday Crafternoons promote hands-on learning and community engagement through free, drop-in workshops with local makers and community partners. Any youth in grades 1 – 8 can attend a free educational workshops every Saturday that involve collaboration, skill-building, and neighborhood connections. Check out some recent 1st, 2nd, and 3rd weekends in March.
The Exploratory: Maker Guilds had 25 librarians making music from homemade instruments! Instead of taking the detail-heavy and scientific approach to teaching, the Sound Studio workshop emphasized the importance of design thinking and process. The workshop allowed for the ability to fail, work through the kinks, and find solutions to problems as they arise. The educators combining recycled materials, tools like Makey Makey, and their own lung power to created beautiful music and art. Librarians left with a new exposure to enriching curriculum that they can use at their own libraries to teach classes and workshops. Check out more here
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