iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

My Dad and I met for lunch recently, and he showed me plans for a custom potting bench he had already designed and built for my mother. Before I get too far, I should say that it is a beautiful piece and received rave reviews from the ladies at bridge club (nice work Pop).

He wants to market the product online and was looking for pointers from a trusted Xennial on website design, marketing and distribution so he could determine whether or not a larger market existed for the beloved potting bench (i.e. beyond bridge club).

I don’t know where my Dad’s project will land, but it got me thinking about how DIY could revolutionize our idea of traditional manufacturing.

“The next generation of manufacturing wisdom is more likely to bubble up from local experiments than trickle down from legacy institutions” — Mark Muro and Peter Hirshberg

According to this Los Angeles Times article from 1986, “The national education reform movement of the 1980s added a host of academic courses to graduation requirements, leaving little room for students to take electives. Because shop classes are usually electives, even students who want the classes have discovered they do not have the time.”

I checked out my old high school’s course catalog, which offered shop classes when I graduated in 2002, and found shop classes are gone there, too. But, the rumor around town is that they plan to open a Makerspace soon!

If you are unfamiliar with the Makerspace in schools, the most common type of Makerspace aims to both better expose students to STEM related fields and revive the lost art of making with one’s hands. Basically, it is Shop class 2.0. And like Shop class, the Makerspace is doomed. The Makerspace has five years left, ten if it’s lucky. Why? Two main reasons: