Page 22 - THE Journal, March/April 2018

FEATURE | STEAM EDUCATION
and she’s just as happy to talk about social studies projects that ask students to create virtual tours of Tunisia, Peru or the Ukraine instead of writing a book report.
Taking that approach also allows for a much broader definition of what constitutes a makerspace.
“In my whole career I have never had a ‘makerspace,’” Roffey said. “I’ve never had a dedicated room. I’ve been doing this for six years now, and I’ve always had carts and bins and baskets. So I think what people need
to realize is that this doesn’t necessarily mean you need a $50,000 grant. This can be done with 50 bucks and a plastic bin and a Raspberry Pi and some tinfoil. It’s more about transforming your approach to teaching and learning and student inquiry.”
She added: “Anybody and everybody can do this. It’s any budget, anywhere, any ability of student. Don’t just keep this for
your best and your brightest. This really is for anyone. And I think the humans have been inquisitive since we made fire. And so I just think we can use makerspace to make fire in our classrooms again — to bring that learning alive and to give that a chance. Even if it’s just for one day for one project ... to just see the magic that can happen when you let kids be able to make fire.”
Interlocking Literacies
Hanna Shekhter, director of STEM innovation and education at Brauser Maimonides Academy, said that introducing students to engineering and building things in the classroom can help them to develop the soft skills that they’ll need in their careers, regardless of what those careers might be.
“When you’re in the STEM fields, when you’re a computer science major, you
rarely work in a bubble,” Shekhter said. “You must work with others and you take your piece, and you have to fit it in with their piece, and that’s an important part” of being effective in any career.
“When you go to Apple, when you
go to Microsoft and when you go to laboratories, that is what they look like,” Shekhter added. “It doesn’t help us to sort of compartmentalize their learning and put them in lines and rows and have each one do the same exact project and write the same exact papers.”
Michelle Schira Hagerman, an assistant professor with the faculty of education at the University of Ottawa, studies literacies and explains that, while there is value in disciplinary literacies, there is also a need
to teach students how to transcend those particular approaches.
“Disciplines exist because there are
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| MARCH/APRIL 2018
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