The Maker Mindset
Time to Change: Preparing Tomorrow's Leaders Today Through STEAM
The prevailing model of education was designed for the Industrial Age, emphasizing students learning facts and then proving their mastery through tests. This was to prepare graduates for a world where they took a job, held it for 40 years, and then retired.
In today’s Information Age, students can look up information with a few clicks on their smartphones. Research shows they will shift careers an average six times, often into jobs that didn’t exist just a few short years ago. The imperative now is for graduates to be creative, adaptable, and flexible— attributes that demand a very different kind of education. This new model calls for incorporating STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) across the curriculum.
What is a Makerspace?
A makerspace is a collaborative workplace for making, learning, exploring, and sharing. It’s a destination with the tools and components students need to enter with an idea and leave with a complete project. A makerspace allows students to both design new things and improve things that already exist.
The vision for St. Edmund Prep’s makerspace is to provide students with a dedicated place to create, think, collaborate, and innovate. Studies show that students learn at a deeper level and retain more when they’re engaged in creative thinking connected to the subject. “Making” allows for deeper learning, which then lays the groundwork for critical lifelong learning—a must-have in today’s complex, interconnected world.
Transforming Through Tradition: Encouraging Students to Take Risks in Learning
Our drive to build a makerspace comes out of our strategic plan, Transforming Through Tradition, which calls upon St. Edmund to evolve as a school of distinctive academic excellence and innovation. We’re already a school that encourages bold learning. Fully integrating STEAM through the makerspace will catapult our bold learners into another dimension. This new facility will give students the opportunity to think like makers. They will have the space and the tools to explore, make mistakes, become empathetic, and connect disparate ideas.
The makerspace will encourage students to take risks and be active participants in their learning. The next step in bold learning, it will prepare them for the realities of the global economy.
Educating the Whole Students, Strengthening Them in Character, Knowledge and Wisdom
In a vibrant faith-filled community, St. Edmund engages and educates the whole student. This proposed makerspace—its design, its technology, and its purpose—will give our students access to a whole new set of experiences. The possibilities are endless.
On a very practical level, the makerspace will become headquarters for our burgeoning robotics team, allowing us to grow the team into a full co-curricular program. It will create a place where our Engineering I and II classes can develop and test theories; provide room for math classes to work collaboratively, and art and design classes to create. Above all, it will give all students the opportunity to observe other students in the act of making.