Basically the article says that as librarians retire they are being replaced with staff who can facilitate Maker areas. It also says several school principals have been discussing doing away with libraries and using the space for these Maker rooms. Of course librarians are not happy about this.
I think this kind of makes sense. Most kids get books on their electronic devices and their is less and less of a need for a library where lets face it, most of the books go unread anyways.
Yes.
Here in Ontario, Canada the school libraries are getting smaller and the number of books on the shelves is a fraction of what they used to be. School libraries have evolved to gathering areas, studying spaces, computer labs, etc… to adapt to the times.
Non-fiction books become outdated quite quickly due to the internet. Fiction is obviously very popular but kids collect their own books and are pretty fickle on what they read, depending on the latest trend.
So… how long do you store books that no one checks out?
School librarian numbers are also dwindling into part-time employees working at different schools on alternating days.
Are you sure? I don’t think this is correct, and definitely doesn’t match my experience with kids.
That said, our school does have a Makerspace, and it’s awesome. It complements, doesn’t replace, traditional library purposes.
The problem with relying on digital sources for reading is that it’s still pretty clunky. Open E-books does have a lot of trade books available, but lacks a lot of picture books; and you need a 1:1 device ratio before you can rely on kids reading online, which a lot of schools lack. And if you want kids to take books home, you have to let them take those devices home, as many kids lack devices at home.
In DC they’re going strong. Many of us have maker spaces in the library. The library’s always hopping, and teachers depend on me for support. It really varies among jurisdictions.
I went to a meeting in the new (now 10yo) high school library a couple of years ago, and while it was the largest, most welcoming space in the place, I actually had to look around to find the book stacks, which were smaller and fewer than my older elementary school had back when.
Our town is expanding our library, but they are only adding two long shelving units for a small number of books currently shelved in a back room. The rest of the expansion is going to a small business center, AV meeting rooms and a “maker space.”
Libraries are certainly changing, yes. School libraries more than public ones. And it’s all for the same reason that we finally, painfully, regretfully dumped our ca-1982 World Book in the recycle bin.
That said, though, I have a lot of trouble seeing how “maker spaces” enable much of anything except for a very marginalized segment that (in the apparent driving element of the moment) needs 3D printing but doesn’t have any other access to a 3D printer. So it’s for those who (1) have a computer and skills and (2) some facility with solid art software and (3) need something 3Dprinted but (4) are too broke or too occasional in need to buy a printer. Yay.
As a tangential aside, over a dozen of the larger towns in Upper Michigan have no Public Library as such, and the school library functions as the official city library, presumably (but I can’t say for sure) funded partially by municipal revenues… Open to the general public during school hours and by special arrangement during school holidays.
For the elementary level, it’s a chance to teach some skills that otherwise don’t enter the curriculum much. For example, all my kids now know how to use a simple autoCAD program called TinkerCAD, and many of them have used it to create trinkets on the 3d printer. The Makerspace at our school comes with deliberately ill-defined challenges (“use these materials to make a car that can carry a cap eraser”), asking teams of students to solve the problem in creative ways.
It’s not a major part of the curriculum–the average kid will spend about twenty minutes every week or so working in the maker space–but it does add an element of engineering problem-solving and hands-on work that doesn’t always make it into the regular curriculum.
Can anyone explain what the Maker movement is and what a Makerspace is in painstakingly succinct, to-the-point language? “Maker” (always capitalized - why?) is dropped into A LOT of articles and online stuff with no explanation, as if it’s something that’s been around for generations and needs no explanation.
Yes, I’ve done some cursory Internet reading about “Maker” … and it looks like a “Makerspace” can be anything from a computer lab, to a robotics table, to a place to knit, draw, fold paper airplanes, tend an aquarium, etc., etc., etc.
Is the concept THAT diffuse?
(I miss my childhood … it’s sad that libraries as I knew them are slowly going away. :D)
Wait … “Maker” and “Makerspace” are inextricably tied to 3-D printing? Hadn’t run across that in my cursory reading on the topic, save for this thread.
“Maker” stuff and concepts IS really crazy-new, right? I mean, did any school or place have anything specifically known as “Maker”/“Makerspace” back in, say, 1990? 1995? 2000? 2005? 2010? What/when was the watershed?
Feel so out of the loop … and I have two kids in school right now. Is “Maker” stuff kind of regional? Or does it perhaps depend on the dollars going into the schools in a given area? Reading this thread, “Maker”/“Makerspaces” seem to be a tidy investment.
I mean, words and concepts just show up, fully-formed these days. There’s no evolution of concept … things just go from “non-existent” to “huge cultural cornerstone” in five minutes.
Hang on a sec … gotta go chase some kids off the grass …
The “Maker” thing is not totally tied to 3D printing but it is a part of it. “Maker” is more of a generic term for people who make stuff. What is more unique about it is the social and interconnected nature of “makerspaces” like the one I belong to Ideaworks/
The cool aspect of it is you get people who like lots of nerdy or not so nerdy stuff and they start collaborating.
Our shop covers
woodworking including an 4’x12’CNC Router
machine shop
welding gear
a 14"x20" laser cutter
2 flash forge 3D printers
a CNC plasma cutter (under construction)
a full glassblowing shop
a ceramics and pottery shop
and electronics shop
about a dozen odd computer workstations
several meeting/class rooms
Arduino programming
knitting
sewing
costuming
basic robotics, we run an ongoing sumobot league.
The fusions of skills are what make it so cool. I have learned so much.
I’ve been aware of the Maker movement for a few years, but I didn’t know that Maker spaces were being favored over school libraries. It seems like a valuable environment as an addition to the curriculum, but it shouldn’t encroach on the library.
I could maybe see it if schools were employing unused library space, which I guess could happen if traditional printed material is being purged – I hate the thought of that, but I suppose it’s inevitable. I also hate the thought of getting rid of quiet reading and studying spaces; I spent a lot of my childhood in the spaces hidden by bookshelves and in little cubbies paging through books and magazines.
I wouldn’t be surprised at this trend. I taught at a military prep school that got rid of its library over 16 years ago back in 2000. At the time, I was shocked.
There’s a little bit of difference between what the schools are doing, and what public libraries are doing on behalf of community users. What public libraries are expanding into didn’t really have any predecessor except maybe crafting groups and clubs.
