We had planned for a couple of years before we opened our first Maker Space, then we planned a Maker Club After School Activity and finally we planned a Maker Camp…..here is a little story about our experience.
My name is Leandro Segura, I’m the IT Manager at Asociacion Escuelas Lincoln, the international school of Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the Tech office we have been very enthusiastic always about new technologies and how we can apply them to our School. We have not yet been very successful in getting our teachers to come to the Maker Space with their classes. Probably we did not announce it properly or we did not take (or have) the time to get more involved into what they were teaching in order to suggest activities to replace or add to what they have been doing.
So we decided to take another approach: let’s bring in the kids and show them what we can do, what they can do.
Last year we started with Maker Club as an after school activity, we had more than 30 kids from Elementary and Middle school who signed up, 5 different members of our tech department were the facilitators. But we wanted to take it into another level. In January 2018 (during our Summer Break), we ran our First Maker Camp at Lincoln with 15 Kids, The camp was one week long from 1:00 to 4:00 pm.
Our goal was to have a fun week for kids and for us! Using as many tech tools as we could including 3D Printer, Laser Cutter, Virtual Reality Headset, Ozobots, Creating Bristle bots, Paper Circuits, Sphero Races, 3D design with Tinkercad and Creating their own electric little car. We were surprised about what kids were able to do and about their ideas.
We were asked by parents and students to run this again during our Winter break and we did it again.
During last week of July and first days of August we ran our Second Maker Camp at Lincoln with 15 students again (only one kid did it twice) So we decided to repeat some of the fun activities that worked out in the first one, and also added some new stuff like, Ollie Sphero, Drone Flying, T-Shirt stencil design, laser Cutting and T-shirt painting.
At this moment, we are starting our school year and we have more than 60 kids signed up to our Maker Club (also we are running a Coding Game Design Club with 15 kids!) and that number looks to be growing every year.
We did face a lot of challenges during these years, and we will continue to face them, we made a lot of mistakes and we will also continue to make them. We did all this because we strongly think our kids will benefit from it….we can always make things better and we will keep trying!
Our next big idea is to create a Makers Competition around South America, similar to the ones we have now for Soccer, Basketball or Swimming, Fine Arts. Who would like to join us ??????
Leandro Segura – IT Manager, Asociacion Escuelas Lincoln, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Email = Leandro.segura@lincoln.edu.ar
Twitter = @chunisegura
Instagram = Leandro.segura.395
Facebook = Leandro.segura.395
Short BIO: I have been working at Asociacion Escuelas Lincoln for the past 21 years, last 4 as IT Manager. I was born in Montevideo Uruguay and Lived in Argentina for 40 years. Chairman of the Innovate Team for the past 5 years. Member of the School improvement team and Founder of the Eco-School Committee