ZANESVILLE, Ohio – People often have ideas that can improve ways things are done but seldom have the means to shape those ideas into reality. Throughout the past decade several communities around the country have built maker spaces that provide the tooling for people to tinker and create.
One such place has been created here locally at Maysville High School and Overseer Zach Goldsmith along with Lead Teacher Jared Cox explained how it was built to inspire students to learn by allowing them an opportunity to create.
“It was made to help provide an opportunity for students to get twenty-first century skills that they’re going to have to have to be successful in the world,” Goldsmith said.
“We talk a lot about the engineering design process and creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking. Those are some of the things that we work on, all our projects are geared toward that,” Cox said.
The project employs a curriculum called STEAM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics that gives students a hands-on approach to learning by providing opportunities to use specialized equipment to construct their ideas.
Students Owen Lutz and Bailey Silver explained how they interact and benefit from the program.
“I came in last year as a freshman and I’ve just been able to explore a bunch of machines and software that I had never even heard of before” Silver said. “So it’s definitely learning about new stuff that I’ve never seen and it teaches me a variety of soft and hard skills. I was working on epoxy pens, I’ve worked on vinyl letters for like fire-code letters and a bunch of general stuff.”
“I participated in a t-shirt sale for our football games and we made money off of that and stuff and also I’m making a car, it’s like an electric car and I made it out of cardboard,” Lutz added.
Maysville High School held an open house of their maker space to the public to show how STEAM can be taught and the students praised the program for its originality and motivation.
