Klint Kanopka still remembers the time when technology’s purpose in school could be boiled down to defeating your classmates on the Oregon Trail.
“And even shop class used to carry a negative stigma, and it was never really taken seriously,” Kanopka said.
Today, the flourishing of makerspaces in Philadelphia is meeting a local tech community commitment to growing STEM learning in schools to bring about new goals .
Earlier this year, the makerspace at the Academy at Palumbo was just a storage room. Kanopka, a physics teacher at the school, recognized an opportunity to turn it into a space for innovation and hands-on learning. With the help of a crowdfunding campaign, it’s becoming something more.
“It’s still slow, it’s still growing, and we’re still getting more stuff in here,” Kanopka said.