Harvesting an Orchard of Innovative Makers! Orchard School District Teachers share 1st year RAFT Makerspace Experiences
Written by Peter Holley, Middle School Orchard teacher and this year's Makerspace Cohort Lead Teacher The maker space at Orchard School came into being this year with a community build in October. Although our space is small, it is well put together and well stocked. Several teachers have had the opportunity to use the maker space this year and we hope that more teachers will discover the maker space and use it in their lessons in the coming year. This year we had a cohort of teachers that was comprised of those that are passionate about making. We met together monthly to learn how to use the space effectively and to incorporate making into our curriculum. Each teacher in the cohort used the maker space with their classes and all had a positive experience and indicate that they hope to use it more frequently in the coming year. In the cohort we learned about a design process developed at Stanford called “design thinking”. In this process students first use emp