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The Maker Space, a 5,000-square-foot street-level workshop, will offer high-end manufacturing and assembly workstations outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, available to Harvard creators of all skill levels. The space will include several facilities clustered together to encourage interaction among its users and accommodate diverse demands for equipment. Once the facility is completed in 2020, it will be open to the entire Harvard community.

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College of San Mateo Library is committed to building a sense of community within our community college. We have a long strong history of outreach and collaborative public programming with classroom faculty. What has really excited us about the makerspace initiative is the breaking down of barriers to teaching, learning and sharing between faculty, students, and staff. No one knows that the person who is leading the jewelry workshop is a biology professor or that the person leading the workshop on building geodesic domes is an architecture student. An unexpected surprise has been the number of classified staff participants who primarily work in campus offices and rarely have the opportunity to engage in college events outside of their departments.

In our opinion, makerspaces are a logical next evolutionary step in academic libraries’ traditional role of providing access to information, people, and technological resources that support discovery, teaching, learning, creativity, and application of new knowledge.

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Wellesley and Brandeis have both created makerspaces in the past year with a focus on providing access to emerging technologies and introducing users to an interdisciplinary approach to the practice, culture, and values of making.

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From developing bicycle helmets to robotic arms to wearable health sensors for elite athletes, the prototyping lab plays a pivotal role supporting entrepreneurs and startup teams in the Venture Incubation Program. It eliminates the added expenses — for the i-lab’s student-led startups — that can come with outsourcing design, prototyping, and manufacturing to outside labs and third parties. The prototyping lab is a resource for any student that has access to the i-lab from across Harvard’s 13 schools, as well as the teams working out of the Launch Lab co-working space for Harvard alumni ventures.

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As an entrepreneurship center, the i-lab is unique in its accessibility. The i-lab is open to any student from any Harvard school with any idea at any stage of formation. Every semester cross-university student teams apply to participate in the Venture Incubation Program, a 12-week integrated program that combines mentoring, workshops and community to help the teams move their startup ideas “further, faster.” Post-graduation select teams and other qualified applicants move onto the Launch Lab, a prototype co-working space and program of funded alumni ventures.

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What is the PCC MakerLab? It is a place for the curious. It is an interdisciplinary innovation studio dedicated to the art and science of making – making ideas real, making friends, making yourself marketable in a high-tech world.

Equipment. The MakerLab is full of cool machines. It has over a dozen rapid prototyping machines including 3D printers and scanners, CNC machines, laser cutters, vinyl cutters, sheet metal tools, plastic injection molder, and sewing machines. Make almost anything – gearboxes, games, replacement parts, pewter castings, and wearable tech.

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More than 35% of libraries surveyed plan to offer a maker/hacker space and 78% are reclaiming shelf space to offer some other form of collaborative space or lab.

Makerspaces prepare students for lifelong success 

Makerspaces support cross-disciplinary learning 

Makerspaces prove that you’re willing to evolve to support your community

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Our mission is to enable access to and understanding of world-changing technology for all people. We are scientists, artists, fashion designers, researchers, and entrepreneurs. We are activists, inventors and creators. We make amazing things happen through rapid prototyping, aggressive tinkering and iteration with low cost technology. Everyone can be a Maker. Come Make with us!

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Jordan Tynes is Manager of Scholarly Innovations at Wellesley College. He works across campus to develop interdisciplinary workflows and methodologies for many aspects of the higher education experience. Jordan often uses cutting-edge technologies to enable previously unfound ways of teaching, learning, conducting research, and communicating scholarly efforts. He also supports experimental combinations of well-tested technology, which often results in the formation of new academic collaborations. Jordan has overseen the evolution of a new media center by contributing “maker” technologies, as well as developing an associated internship program for students to learn and support the most recent technology available on campus. His latest research involves new methods for 3D scanning and aerial imagery in support of curricular experiments in VR/AR. Jordan is also excited to be a part of a growing consortium of higher education professionals interested in expanding the “maker mindset” on college campuses.

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“We see students of all disciplines,” says Ian Roy, research technology project director of the Brandeis University MakerLab in Waltham, Massachusetts. The Brandeis lab, which is free to students, is “accessible to anyone who has the time and is willing to commit to it.” Roy says the value of makerspaces is not limited to their shared tools—3D printers, scanners, and the like—but also includes the knowledge that is exchanged in the space.

One of the advantages of academic makerspaces is the often cheap, or sometimes free, admission cost. At the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), the makerspace offers students the use of materials and machinery to which they wouldn’t otherwise have access. That, says Tod Colegrove, director of the school’s DeLaMare Library, is something libraries do best.

“The makerspace activity is integral to the role of the library,” he says. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this sort of activity will continue to expand.”

“I think libraries are not going to be a place where you store dead trees anymore,” says Roy. “I think this is the future of libraries.”

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Our makerspaces (one on each campus) include 

3D printers 

Media production 

Circuitry and programming kits 

LEGO robotics kits 

Invention kits 

Textiles and sewing machines

Canterbury’s makerspaces strengthen a mindset and culture of curiosity, creativity, collaboration, trust, resiliency, and problem-solving in our community. The makerspace is an incubator for innovation where questions are valued above answers, students learn by doing, and the final product is determined and assessed by the individual.

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Making and Constructionism 

In pedagogical terms, Making is aligned with constructionism, a learning theory developed by MIT Media Lab founder Seymour Papert. 

Papert’s constructionism is more individualized than Piaget’s theory, focusing less on the commonality of learning experiences and more on individual experiences, and hones in on learning through making and creating, involving external objects and forces. While both theories concern the construction of knowledge, constructionism, in the words of Papert and Harel, “adds the idea that this happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it’s a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe” (1991, p. 1). According to developmental psychologist and MIT Media Lab contributor Edith Ackermann, the three key factors that differentiate constructionism from constructivism are:

1. The increased role of external aids in learning and development 

2. The emphasis on digital and technological aids 

3. The hands-on initiative a learner takes in the creation of tools, objects, or knowledge (Ackerman, 2001, p. 5) 

Research by John J. Burke of Miami University Middletown indicates that, as of 2013, more than 100 libraries in the U.S. offered Makerspaces. These library Makerspaces range in size and scope, often owning just a single 3D printer. Since their inception, libraries have sought to give the public access to knowledge and new ideas; in the 21st century, libraries, especially those that invest in new technologies and digital manufacturing equipment, have increased potential to reach new audiences, offer new skills, and play important roles in the Maker Movement (Lynch, 2015). Makerspaces struggling for membership, support, or funding can join forces with libraries to create a shared Makerspace. Those that are currently successful can expand their reach by partnering with local public libraries as institutional partners or school libraries for project or school-year partnerships. The MakeSchool Higher Education Alliance’s State of Making Report reiterates the importance of such collaborations, stating that developing new partnerships “with industry, government, K-12 schools, and the broader Maker Movement [helps] create rich Maker ecosystems” (2015, 8).

Lynch, J. (2015, July 27). Libraries are the future of manufacturing in the United States. Paci c Standard. Retried from http://www.psmag.com/nature-and- technology/libraries-are-the-future-of-manufacturing-in- the-united-states

The MakeSchools Alliance is a group of 153 higher education institutions who seek to support the growth of the Maker Movement by working to implement Making activities and efforts on their campuses (Byrne & Davidson, 2015).

MakeSchool Higher Education Alliance State of Making Report (June 2015). http://make.xsead.cmu.edu/week_of_making/report

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Steve Jobs once said that Apple's innovation was a result of the company's existence at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. Learn by doing. Learn by making. Not learn by clicking. Makerspaces give students -- all students -- an opportunity for hands-on experimentation, prototyping. problem-solving, and design-thinking. Makerspaces expose students to cutting edge technologies that could in turn lead to employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. And because of makerspaces' connection to open source hardware and software, students aren't learning just how to use proprietary tools. They aren't just learning a specific piece of software. Instead, they learn how to find resources and -- this is key -- they learn how to learn. By and large, these makerspaces are not associated with any one department. Indeed, that's the argument that many librarians are making about opening makerspaces with them. The library is already open to the entire campus community -- students and faculty of all disciplines. This openness -- openness to the public and openness to all disciplines and skill levels -- makes the makerspace very different than the science lab, for example, or the art studio -- the two places that are perhaps the closest -- in terms of equipment at least -- to the makerspace. A makerspace is a safe place to learn. And unlike the sorts of scripted experiments that often happen in the undergraduate science lab -- look at this slide, identify this rock, add this chemical, measure this arc, and so on -- the experimentation in the makerspace is inquiry-based. It is learner-driven. It is cross-disciplinary and as such undisciplined in the best possible way.