As Kristin Berbawy packed projects into her car, she lingered over one in particular. Two 3D-printed Makerbots with wire hooks—a pair of earrings. They matched the white braces on her teeth and the white strands in her hair. Her students had made them—as they had all the projects in her car—in their high school makerspace. She was proud of them. She was going to display their work to other teachers.
Smack in the middle of AP exams, a growing group of teachers is pouring time, creativity and energy into activities for which there are no standardized tests: makerspaces. The movement is avowedly grassroots and candidly quirky, and its main gathering is the Maker Educator Convening in Oakland, CA, where Kristin Berbawy was headed with a trunkload of laser cut wood and 3D printed objects.
Berbawy teaches science and engineering at Irvington High School in Fremont, CA, and she had come…
