Maker Corps could not be implemented successfully without the commitment and participation of its partners. Maker Corps partner sites are youth-serving organizations, such as science centers, children’s museums, schools, libraries, and community organizations, dedicated to providing children with rich summer making experiences. Our partner sites include a diverse mix of organizations ranging from those who are brand new to making, to those who are leaders in the movement, and everything in between!
An Expansive Network of Maker Education
We asked our partner sites to tell you a little about themselves, and share the craziest/coolest/weirdest thing a young person has ever created in their space. Click on each organization’s name to see what they had to say. And make sure to check back as we continue to add more descriptions.
Museums and Science Centers
Arkansas Discovery Network - Little Rock, AR In 2012 the Arkansas Discovery Network partnered with the Exploratorium and Science Museum of Minnesota to design and install The Tinkering Studio at the newly renovated Museum of Discovery in Little Rock, AR. The Tinkering Studio is a workshop for playful invention and exploration. Each month features a different activity or theme. Guests of all ages are invited to join our resident makers and educators to imagine and investigate. The space provides opportunities to be inspired and empowered by real materials, processes and tools. One of the coolest projects was when a girl in first grade came to the studio wanting to learn how headphones work. We dissected a pair of headphones and identified the key components. Then we built our own speaker using copper coil, neodymium magnets, and a paper cone. For further exploration, we tinkered with the components by using varying the size and gauge of the copper coil as well as the size and material of the cone, observing how these changes affected the sound produced.
The Bakken Museum - Minneapolis, MN Our youth programs allow students to design and build their own inventions, work through creative problem solving challenges, make magic tricks, and play games. The primary goal of the week is for all the campers to make a project of their own design using the tools and materials from The Bakken’s student workshop, guided by mentors and educators. We like to say if you can think it, you can make it at The Bakken Museum! Probably the craziest thing a student has ever made in our workshop was a tesla coil capable of producing 6’ sparks. It took them almost a year to make, but it was super impressive once they got it working. Learn More.
Children’s Museum of Houston – Houston, TX The Children’s Museum of Houston serves an audience of more than 1 million children and families. Average annual onsite attendance is approximately 800,000 with another 251,339 served through offsite outreach programming at 248 centers throughout the Houston area, in collaboration with 642 community partners. The mission is transforming communities through innovative, child-centered learning and our vision is to spark a passion for lifelong learning in all children. Our summer programming plans include creating various STEM based activities for our guests at the museum each month. We are also providing in-depth maker programming for the Girl Scouts of America with various workshops including upcycling, woodworking, coding, 3D printing, art and more! The weirdest creation made in our maker annex was a device to ring the sweat out of your socks, it even had a collection cup for sweat….gross! Learn more.
Cincinnati Museum Center – Cincinnati, OH Cincinnati Museum Center is a one-of-a-kind, multi-museum complex housed in Union Terminal, a historic Art Deco train station and National Historic landmark. Union Terminal is currently undergoing extensive repairs and restoration repairing the steel infrastructure, windows and limestone exterior as well as upgrading our HVAC and electrical systems and much more. Two of our three museums are currently closed due to these repairs, leaving our Duke Energy Children’s Museum and changing exhibits hall open. During this transition, we are opening a new exhibit in our children’s museum (this Friday!!) called KidSPACE (acronym for Science Play Art Creativity and Exploration). In this exhibit we will play with light and shadows, gears and tubes, paint and clay, circuits and LED’s, yarn and cardboard and much more. We will repurpose with purpose, build on each other’s ideas, all while being playful with materials and processes. This summer includes breaking in this exhibit and figuring out how to best serve our guests with these types of experiences. Lots of reflection and evaluation and trying new things! Our Maker Fellows will be integral to this process, and will get to help with 2 weeks of camp including Design, Build, Create and Amusement Park Science which will keep them busy helping our youngest makers! Learn more.
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History – Fort Worth, TX
MAKESHOP at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh, PALearn more.
Science Museum of Minnesota – St. Paul, MN We have thousands of people go through our program – last October – January we had a giant cardboard gallery, 3500 sq. ft filled with cardboard boxes and tools – groups of kids created a cardboard shanty that would last a couple days then be torn down and completely rebuilt – so I would say the creation of a cardboard town is currently the craziest thing made. Learn more.
Libraries
The Bubbler at Madison Public Library – Madison, WI Our craziest thing as of last week is this amazing UFO fort (below) that is taking up 1/4 of the Bubbler space. Our current Artist in Residence, Lesley Numbers helped a group of kids construct it for a more imaginative take on Together We Rise!
CreateSpace at Middletown Free Library – Media, PA Summer is always jammed packed with activities at the library. We will hold our third TechniGals Summer STEAM Camp, our fabulous teen volunteers will run a summer coding camp, and Minecraft in Real Life Club will return. This summer we will be working closely with the J. Lewis Crozer Library in nearby Chester to bring maker programs to the kids and teens of that community. Kids will connect via Skype and in-person working on projects and getting to know each other. We are excited to be a part of the Maker Corps program. Craziest thing? We are running a Music Creation series where a dedicated group of tweens and teens are learning how to create a song from the ground up. So far they’ve created beats, laid down some melodies and are working on lyrics. The sound pieces have been fantastic so far but the lyrics is where it’s really getting crazy, creative and weird. My favorite idea that has grown out of this are lyrics that tell the story of a lonely chicken nugget and a lonely french fry who fell out of the fryer and are now sitting neglected under the counter. Can’t wait to hear what they come up with to expand upon this idea. We’re showcasing on April 18th so this will be an updated creation story. 🙂 Keene Public Library – Keene, NH Millvale Community Library – Millvale, PA Sharpsburg Community Library – Pittsburgh, PA State Library of Pennsylvania – Harrisburg, PA White Plains Public Library – White Plains, NY The craziest thing a teen has created is probably not appropriate for the website, but a teen used Roblox to create a digital replica of White Plains. Learn more. Inspire School of Arts & Sciences – Chico, CA Craziest things a young person has created at our site? Too many to list, but here’s a couple. A student choreographed a dance that followed the patterns and algorithms of the Fibonacci sequence. Another student created a 12’x40’ mural with a panda riding a bike, a two-headed whale, a cello playing satyr, dancing silhouetted couple and more… it was even restored by the student after it was grossly tagged with graffiti. The Art of Invention at ASU – Mesa, AZ Design Den at Baylor University’s Mayborn Museum – Waco, TX The craziest thing that a young person has ever made in Design Den was a functioning bow and arrow made using only dowel rods and rubber bands! I am hoping to top that with all of our programming this summer! Learn more. Digital Youth Network at DePaul University – Chicago, IL STAGES at Duquesne University – Pittsburgh, PA Fab Lab Carnegie Science Center – Pittsburgh, PA Fab Lab DC – Washington, DC One of the craziest/coolest things made at our space: A flying mobile home made of Graycen’s “hair.” Fab Lab NOLA at Delgado Community College – New Orleans, LA For the summer we will be working with Excite Allstars who is a city wide program for at low income students. We will focus on weekly skills for these students to culminate in a student-directed free build at the end of the summer. We will also be working the Delgado STEM summer camps, but those projects will focus more directly on instructor outcomes rather than free fabrication. The coolest thing a student has build in the lab was a self balancing robot for his school science fair. The student designed the chassis so it was adjustable and cut it out on the laser. He also modeled and printed the rims and wheels for the project. He ended up going to the state finals. Learn more. Fab Lab Tulsa – Tulsa, OK Art 120 – Chattanooga, TN Assemble – Pittsburgh, PA One of the craziest yet inspiring things a young person has made in our space was a glitter cannon. Lynniah, who has been coming to Assemble for over 4 years now, was inspired by what she was learning with tubes, balloons, waves, particles, and sound. She also LOVES glitter. (Still loves glitter.) In our old space, our glitter was tucked away but accessible if you were headed to the bathroom. During a Saturday Crafternoon program, she went in the back and took her engineering to a new level. With what she had learned from making instruments, she applied it to produce a GLITTER CANNON! This project has become infamous due to the amount of glitter that was distributed across our space. Lynniah did a great job. She also did learn that glitter can’t solve everything. We all needed to clean it up but did it together in the end. Learn more. Boys and Girls Club of Fitchburg and Leominster – Leominster, MA DIY Girls – Pacoima, CA Invention Dimension – Albuquerque, NM This summer we will give children the space and tools necessary to ask questions, get messy, and challenge themselves to explore their world, to make mistakes and to enjoy the process of tinkering. Each camp week will end with a bang on Friday with a fabulous mini-maker faire for parents and friends, where campers will exhibit several of their awesome inventions. The craziest things that have been made (so far) are these two franken-toys. We spent a few weeks taking apart technology, and then putting it back together again, this boy and his sister started the club a few weeks earlier, and got over their fears of making and tinkering (it took them 6 months to try the club). They win for the oddest things made so far. Lab:Revolution – Farmington, MO I’d have to say the coolest thing I remember is the stop motion animation video my then 9 year old daughter made with our maker corps member in 2015. I watched her plan, design, and produce the entire thing. She spent at least 2 full weeks of our 3 day maker camp working on that project. Learn more. MAKER Break – Sheboygan, WI MAKER Break is a collaboration between The Étude Group of schools and ARTery at The John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Drawing on a combined 60 years of experience in public arts programming, MAKER Break is committed to empowering all young people as creators and not consumers (and not just in the arts). Funding for our second year of free programming during breaks in the school year is generously provided by The Black Spring Foundation, Inc. Last summer, MAKER Break participants used circuit bending techniques to reimagine old noise-making children’s toys as instruments and engaged in performative making for emergent theatre. This spring, our youngest participants are inventing solutions while making their thinking visible in side-by-side workshops with their parents! MakerHut – Lusaka, Zambia Our summer program (though it will be winter in Zambia!) will focus on weekend classes in modules that incorporate electronics, programming and/or crafts for primary and secondary school students. In addition to some core modules, students can focus on sessions which interest them so by the end of the 12 weeks you might have either built your own robot, crafted a luminescent bracelet, made your first game or all of the above! We like to make projects that are useful and also projects that are simply creative and fun. The coolest and most useful thing someone has made is a power outage notifier that sends an SMS to you when the power is out at your home. As for the weirdest? Perhaps a collage made out of magnetic film from old floppy disks. Learn more. MetaMedia at McGaw YMCA – Evanston, IL At MetaMedia, youth discover their passions through tinkering with computers, digital media, and fabrication tools. Youth choose how they navigate MetaMedia’s resources, and instructors design experiences around their shifting needs, interests, and levels of engagement. This open-ended learning environment and flexible, student-centered approach allow youth to hang out and build enduring relationships with peers and mentors while simultaneously pursuing deep projects. This summer, we will be running our MetaMedia Summer Experience (MSX) program, a 6-week invention and entrepreneurship camp where students work in teams to solve a community-based problem through digital fabrication and digital media. This program is run in partnership with our local school district and helps students develop traditional literacy skills as well as maker skills and mindsets. As for the craziest thing that has been made at MetaMedia? Currently, we are working with a student who wants to make a realistic squirrel puppet loaded with an Arduino mini camera so that he can capture close-up footage of squirrels like they do on the showSpy in the Wild. MindAfrica Leadership Initiative – Port Harcourt, Nigeria MindAfrica Leadership Initiative is a not-for-profit organization based in Nigeria. We organize enrichment programs for children and youth to stimulate their creative and innovative potential in ways that enable them become makers, creators, inventors and not just users. MindAfrica is leading the maker movement in our communities by organizing maker programs and makerspaces where children and youths can explore, make and share. 75% of our program beneficiaries are economically-disadvantaged children and youths. We love making! One of the ‘coolest’ things made in our programs recently was a “multifunctional radio set.” Made from cardboard paper and bits and pieces from faulty electrical appliances, this radio has a USB port for connecting phones and mobile devices, a memory card slot, and a jack for headsets. It receives signals from some local radio channels and also has rechargeable batteries to keep it powered. ReCreate – Roseville, CA S.C.R.A.P. Gallery – Cathedral City, CA STE(A)M Truck – Decatur, GA STEM Alliance of Larchmont-Mamaroneck – Larchmont, NY Co-op Camp in Mamaroneck has been partnering with Maker for the past 3 years, (last summer excluded). It has been a wonderful educational experience for all from campers to interns to teachers. Our work has included, circuitry, 3-d printing, cardboard construction, and recycled art construction. Storming Robots – Branchburg, NJ Our programs are broken into three tracks – Robotics Track, Algorithms Track (computer programming focus on computational and algorithms thinking), and Independent Project Track. We provide a learning roadmap to help students to grow with their interests and strengths. There are quite a few cool projects you can check out on our page. Learn more. T4T – Gardena, CA Thanksgiving Point Institute – Lehi, UT World Learning – Algiers STEAM Center – Algiers, AlgeriaSchools
University-Based Programs
Fab Labs
Community-Based Programs
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