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ALUMNI IN ACTION
Makerspaces:
collaborative environments to learn by doing-it-yourselves Pedro Lutz A little history of the Maker movement The libraries of the nine different Colombos in the country have been promoting projects that are considered Maker activities for the last decade; our staff has created activities in the English language classrooms, developed fairs, trained teachers, promoted workshops etc. The term Maker has become a household name among the Colombos and we are proud to have integrated the Maker mentality among our everyday activities. Today we want to take a look at these changes and at how we as a network of Binational Centers have gotten where we are in these kind of activities; and where we are going with them.
The movement that we now call Maker started some 15 to 20 years ago when some easy to access technological advances were made available to the public. These coincided with a moment of open communities that were willing to share how-to information online. The time line shows us that Dale Dougherty a very prominent Maker launched “Make” magazine in 2005 and the Maker Faire the following year. In his book “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing Our Schools, Our Jobs, and Our Mind” Dougherty discusses the culture of making, describing it as “a transformative and highly creative and societal revolution”. He describes making as “a form of play that performs an essential psychological role”. Collaborative Spaces that developed later into Maker Spaces or Idea labs started popping all over the United States, and worldwide in the next decade. These new open-to-all-public spaces were the perfect creative environments that merged with Public Libraries that were going through their own reinvention of services. Today all Public Libraries and most schools in the United States have developed these handson spaces as part of their services, where the objective is to learn by doing it yourselves.
