Program Summary:

HOW CAN WE
PASS OUR BIGEST IDEAS TO THEM?

HOW CAN WE GET OUR
CUTTIN EDGE TECHNOLOGY IN THEIR
HANDS?

HOW CAN WE SUPPORT
THEIR VOICES AND
CREATIVITY, AND INCLUDE THEM INTO CREATIVE
COMMUNITIES?

  • In recent years there has been a spread of programs that have attempted this. Most of them at the university level. The Design Thinking School at Stanford University, ITP at NYU, the Media Lab at MIT, Beyond bits and atoms at Columbia University among very few.
  • The access to these programs is extremely limited, but the recognition of their importance keeps growing.
    More and more 6-12 grade schools are considering giving the experience of students creating projects to solve real-world problems using the latest technology.
  • We want to help those schools, makerspaces, libraries, colleges or community centers.

Make designed and implemented a version of these programs throughout the last four months: Learning Labs. The program served young people, 16-26 year old, who were not in education, employment or training, and belonged to an underrepresented group in STEM in Mexico or the US.

As always, we were just in awe. All participants finished the program with spectacular real-world solving projects inspired by their own realities. Projects ranged from an integration of machine learning and drone technologies that were able to identify corrosion in public structures, to an open source raspberry pi project that helps verbally challenged autistic individuals communicate and the cost is 25% of market devices.

Participants worried about femicides in Mexico and developed a GPS monitoring system. They cared for chronic pain and built a backpack that can transform any space into a safe nuck to rest. More artistically inclined participants developed customs, wrote articles, or designed the logo of the program.

Before we launched this pilot we asked who in the maker community was interested in implementing the program. Several organizations responded.

Today we are offering professional development, and the creation of a community of practice interested in designing programs beyond technological powered projects.  Programs designed to foster meaningful experiences that make learners active creators of their reality and personal narratives.

In college I just learned a lot of theoretical material, calculus and python programming,... I thought that experience was very intense and time consuming, but it was all goal oriented. Wasn’t creative based. We all have restrictions, we had to do whatever our professor wanted. And I felt that that didn’t prepare me for the real world, to kind of think of my own ideas and add on what I want.
Brian Mustafa
Brian MustafaMaker Dozen Fellow
Throughout the program, I learned how to problem solve by myself, like actually working through it. So actually sitting down and being like OK, this is what's going wrong. Let's do the small mini steps to try and figure out exactly what is going wrong there and then. Like going from there. And I think I'm also a lot more adventurous and trying new things now 'cause I think before I didn’t have the chance to but now that I had like it's so much fun.
Mia Farraday
Mia FarradayMaker Dozen Fellow
At least… now you have a language to pursue and just kick start your own learning for topics such as machine learning and eTextiles, and all that, at least you have now the language. Before the program was like this huge barrier, trying to get into machine learning or getting to electronics, or whatever… by yourself. And now you have the skills to start doing it. It's less scary than it looked at the beginning.
Regina Alatorre
Regina AlatorreMaker Dozen Fellow
At the very beginning of this program, I was really anxious about it. I’ve pretty severe social anxiety, so I was really, really worried about all of the stuff with people. But in the end, I'm really, really glad that I did it, because I've learned so much, not even just about technical things, but about myself, like: “Oh! Maybe I do want to go into programming” and “Oh! You know? Maybe I like working in groups to some extent. You know that's good stuff.
Kate Southern
Kate SouthernMaker Dozen Fellow
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