The Case for Makerspaces: 6. Access to New Technology

Preparing students for 21st-century jobs that have yet to be imagined will require teaching “soft skills” and new teaching strategies, a worldwide study by the Economist’s Intelligence Unit found.

The benefits of educational makerspaces are many and varied. While they do not come without their challenges, makerspaces can have a significant impact on student learning and development. In fact, makerspaces were recently identified as one of six important developments in educational technology for K-12 education by the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report for 2015, which states, “Makerspaces are increasingly being looked to as a method for engaging learners in creative, higher-order problem-solving through hands-on design, construction, and iteration” (p. 38).

“Today’s teens are part of an increasingly global and competitive society. Success in that environment requires an expanded set of skills that goes beyond traditional academic skills and includes learning and innovation skills (i.e., creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration), and information, media, and technology skills (i.e., information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy, and ICT literacy)”

In the last three decades, the skills required for young adults to succeed in the workforce have changed drastically, but the skills emphasized in schools have not kept up with these changes.