engage
Mobilizing the maker movement
photo by mat t roth
By Ryan Imbriale
entrsekt
8
I’ll never forget the choice I had to make in middle school. Enroll in band or industrial arts. The labyrinth that is middle school scheduling didn’t allow for students to participate in both, so I elected to grow my talents in the musical arts. Making that choice put me on an academic path that set the tone for my entire learning journey. While I loved playing an instrument and have never questioned the choice to engage in that experience, sacrificing the opportunity for exposure to the industrial arts bothers me to this day. In the context of school, I was not offered any other opportunities to build, create, design or construct. This lack of design thinking carried forward into high school, and influenced my college major and career path. Fortunately, a new vision for “making” across all subjects has led to an infusion of maker learning within education. In “The Call to Excellence” from the Baltimore County Public Schools’
(bcps) guiding document called Blueprint 2.0: Our Way Forward, we say that our work, once fully implemented, “will provide students with the flexibility to learn in different ways on different days.” The statement adds that students “will be able to access multiple and varied opportunities for learning, exploration and enrichment ...” Baltimore County is home to an incredibly diverse urban-suburban school district. Our students represent 108 countries and speak 85 languages, meaning equity must be at the center of every discussion had and decision made. We’ve made great strides toward creating equitable learning environments – our district’s transformation of teaching and learning, powered by customized and personalized educational experiences, is already well on its way to realizing our initial vision grounded in equity and access – but the work doesn’t end there. bcps continues to push the envelope and raise the bar for excellence, creating access to innovative learning opportunities for every student. As our work of transforming teaching and learning has progressed,
the maker movement, both in and outside of education, has been democratizing design and production, thanks to dropping product costs and increased access. The maker movement at bcps grew organically. Teachers and students clamoring for hands-on, experiential learning opportunities gravitated toward creation rather than consumption. It became clear that we had to provide systemic supports to foster this work and spread making curriculum to all of the district’s 173 schools, centers and programs. While costs for tools and materials have declined over the years, it’s a reality of our system, as well as many others throughout the world, that not all schools can fund and support these efforts at the same level. To fully support equitable maker learning opportunities, we established the bcps Makes program, a multi-pronged approach supporting everything from tool acquisition to fully developed learning experiences. These offerings include direct school