“We as educators try to make our lectures engaging, but when we allow people to make something, it’s completely transformative. You don’t have to fight for kids’ attention when making.”
Curiosity is the name of the game at Maker Faire. Makers are curious so they make things. Makers are curious about the things that other makers make. Attendees–who are really participants–are curious about the things that makers make. Often they come back the following year with the thing they got inspired to make. The tongue twisters can go on and on, but the short of it is–Maker Faire is a great place to get curious about something new, learn how things work, check out new tech and innovation, and get inspired to do it all yourself. Simply, its a great place to learn.
This is what makes Maker Faire a great place for kids of all ages. And, a stellar destination for a school field trip. Since 2008, Maker Faire Bay Area has set aside Friday for precisely this purpose: Welcoming students from across the region and focusing programming on the kind of hands on learning, science, and making that ignite curiosity and compel young people to get their hands dirty and find joy in learning how to figure stuff out. Indeed, many other Maker faires around the world have followed this model and promoted Maker Education through special days and activities at their events that are curated for students.
The trajectory of Alameda, CA educator Michael Kim is an object lesson in how this works. Michael came to Maker Faire while in his first years of teaching in 2018 and 2019. “I think I had been teaching chemistry for about 2 years in Oakland. I already was feeling that what I was doing wasn’t working very well and I had already started shifting to building devices for demonstrating science principals such as air pressure cannons. Attending Bay Area Maker Faire was a significant event in my life as I saw what could be done in school and decided to create my own maker class (Creative Technologies) which is what I’ve been working on ever since.”
For the 2023 Bay Area Maker Faire we bought 7th and 8th grade along with most of 12th and 11th and some 10th and a few 9th grade, so majority of the school attended. I had them do a scavenger hunt where they had to find certain things. Going was absolutely worth it. The middle schoolers in particular were fairly energized/invigorated and I feel that that was directly observable by the quality and interestingness of the projects the projects they produced later in the year (our school does a large science fair in March). For my own students, going to Bay Area Maker Faire really helps them understand what it is that we are working on. I’ve always had a hard time explaining exactly what it is we are trying to do/go for so by attending, in addition to just being cool, they could really get a better sense of what it is all about–creativity, sharing, independence, figuring-it-out, building the world you want.
And the programs and opportunities keep growing. Given the attention of educators like Michael Kim to making in their curriculums, students have more opportunity than ever to come to Maker Faire, get inspired, and find support to learn skills to enact their ideas. Alongside this, the the growth of robotics and other collective and competitive STEAM enterprises has expanded the experience of science and technical learning in the classroom to incorporate more hands-on building, experimenting, and innovation. Technical tools like VR, which science and maker educator Christine Mytko (now at The Berkeley School and previously an upper school science teacher at Black Pine Circle, both in Berkeley, CA) brought to Maker Faire with students back when the technology was new(er). She’ll attend again this year on Mare Island with students in tow.
Kristin Berbawy, who teaches high schoolers and has run the Berbawy Makers club for many years, will speak this year on building up classroom makerspace resources alongside educators from MIT’s Edgerton Center which focuses on maker education. In 2015, Maker Faire made it to the White House, where it was part of an effort at kickstarting science education across the country. Maker education at Maker Faire and in the classroom still going strong – join in this October 18th at Maker Faire Bay Area on Mare Island!
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