Makers Space

A hub for so very many different competencies and skills to be applied and tested.

Your role as the mentor has great potential, much of it, but not all of it good.

There will be many questions which, if the greatest amount of learning is to take place, need to be explored and answered by the candidates.

At the very least we can look for the following ;

• Development of fine motor control
• Planning
• Drawing of plans in 2D
• Preparing models in 3D
• 3D printing
• Laser Cutting
• Time Management
• Use of instruments
• Communication Skills
• Decision Making
• Problem Solving
• 2D to 3D and 3D to 2D mapping
• Soldering
• Glues
• Physics
• Electronics
• Circuits
• Magnetism
• Teamwork

The more that you have in the space the more options you have to engage the candidates.

Safety is always a consideration and we have always allowed children to recieve instruction on things like modelling knives and hot glue guns, Drills and more.

The parents know this and the reasons we allow the use and the risks and rewards.

Prototyping

There are definate benefits to prototypes, not least that there is an inherant expectation that a prototype will be subject to some future development.

As the mentor there are strategies and appropriate language and questions that you can use to question whether a project will run through prototyping or not.

Managing Change

This is an often occurance in the Maker Space. An initial idea, plan, conversation becomes something else altogether, sometimes much to the dismay, frustration and anger or one or more of the team or to the individual.

It does offer opportunitied to look at stratgiess to deal with sometimes sudden and significant change aswell as small adaptions.

From time to time an individual might be the reason for the change and sometimes the entire group. There are too may potential scinarios to mention here however this is a dynamic area to be in.