We kicked things off by learning about each other and our projects during our online meetings using a digital collaborative whiteboard to share pictures, stories, resources and much more. From Kirsa Merrell’s quest to create robotics and maker lab mobile outreach units in Utah at the Spanish Fork Library to Julie Gauthier’s journey of inspiring the next generation of female designers with “Girls in Gaming” at MakerspaceCT in Connecticut, and so many other incredible maker educators, each maker educator started building connections with the other as we began our journey for the year.
In our meetings, we discussed successes, challenges, and opportunities within our respective spaces. The cohort included a diverse group of maker educators across the United States, spanning a broad spectrum of experiences from just starting out to veterans in the field. Guided by the Digital Promise Maker Learning Leadership Framework, educators chatted about different types of maker equipment, expanding programs through lessons and curriculum, and outreach to the community. The foundation for all of our learning was in the theme of asking, “How do we make computer science more accessible?”
One experience that stood out to everyone was discovering we each had a particular interest in learning more about a wonderful microcontroller found in the makerspace, the BBC micro:bit. Some educators were looking for advanced applications and extensions while others were interested in getting started. I reached out to the micro:bit Foundation and with the help of Katie Henry, International Partnerships at micro:bit Educational Foundation, Head of North America, and was connected to the network of micro:bit ambassadors. Karie Huttner, an Infymakers alum, responded to the call to do a presentation during one of our sessions. Infymaker Kate Dillon shared resources for expanding capabilities with Strawbees and Amanda Gray from BirdBrain Technologies shared a mini session on more possibilities with the micro:bit. Kate valued the connections she made saying, “..the cohort group is such a great network that creates an uplifting and motivating group of people with which to collaborate.”
One of my goals for the Infymakers cohort is to empower cohort members as leaders in the peer to peer professional learning community. All teachers are designers and I encouraged them to lead some of the sessions. Jeff Branson from the Possible Zone in Boston, Massachusetts, led an incredible session featuring resources from MIT around reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence. He was a wealth of knowledge for the cohort. Superstar teacher Tiffany Pace from Cross Lanes Elementary in Charleston, West Virginia, also led one of our meetings, presenting a vast array of funding and travel opportunities for educators. She shared her experience of visiting the Galapagos Islands and Germany through special grants and programs, as well as how she turned those amazing trips into engaging maker projects for her classroom.
Tiffany said of the cohort experience “This was beyond anything I could have imagined. I have learned so much and have already begun trying new things in my classroom and sharing it with my fellow educators.”
Dr. Mark Lucas of Ohio Museum of Discovery was grateful to have expanded their offerings to the community, saying, “I have really appreciated the professional development meetings, the resources, ideas, and the networking.”
The 2023-24 Infymakers was an incredible year that touched the lives of many educators and students. We are already gearing up for the 2024-25 Infymakers cohort and can’t wait to see what the future holds. If you’d like to learn more about Infymakers and all of the amazing initiatives at Infosys Foundation USA to make computer science more engaging and accessible we encourage you to check out the links below.
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