Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Tim McNulty: MakerCon New York 2014”.
I’M to McNulty from Carnegie Mellon University, I have to tell you I thought I had pretty much figured that seeing the 3d printed car would be worth the trip alone, but you’re just the inspiration from that last session on hacking. Healthcare’S is incredible, and you know I i think that the real product you get from Maker Faires is optimism about the future and that’s a priceless product. Travis asked me to do two things today. He asked me to talk a little bit about the maker revolution on college campuses and community colleges, and I had a small role this spring in helping with colleagues around the country bring together 153 universities who made a common commitment to advance maker activities as part of The president’s national Maker Faire, so that gave me a window on these activities around the campus as much as Travis just gave you a window on the activities of the mayor’s and then. Secondly, I want to share some ideas: I’ve gotten from talking to faculty and both at my college, my university and campuses around the country of ways that you can harness and leverage and be a part of that campus revolution. So, first let me start with just a little bit giving you a little bit of the parameters of this amazing maker movement that has come to campuses in just the the three month window that we were working on the maker letter. The joint maker letter of the institutions, universities and community colleges and art institutes made commitments to launch an open over a hundred thousand square feet of new makerspace.
You know representing millions of dollars of investment in facilities and equipment and programs. In addition to that, there is reference to MIT with expanding the using the maker portfolio and admissions since the spring. That there’s been a steady increase in the number of institutions doing that as well and at the University of Iowa.
You can apply for scholarships in their college of engineering using a maker portfolio and nothing reflects the chain change in the DNA of an institution. Then changes in its emission process. So, in addition to just all that dramatic new expansion of space when institutions start adapting their admissions process, that’s a signal that you’ve got something that is fundamentally changing the institution.
I think 11 other indicator of this revolution on on higher education institutions. There’S been an explosion in the last six months of new curricula, new degree programs, new miners, just in my own institution, Carnegie Mellon, introducing eight new miners that relate to making all across the disciplines. So the major activities that used to be maybe a club, sport and engineering are now you know, spread out across the entire campus and engaging majors from the arts, to computer science, to music and, of course, engineering and business.
So, what’s driving this this revolution, I think there are a number of factors. First, as I like to say, cognitive neuroscience has caught up to Dale. So basically, you know the essence of cognitive neuroscience and the science of learning is that we all fundamentally learn one way as we learn by doing, and so major activities and the embodiment of maker initiatives within curricula is, is definitely here to stay.
The second thing is, I think, it’s probably always been true, that the frontiers and discovery are at the intersections of disciplines, but it’s especially true now and what’s a better contact center for research and education at interdisciplinary areas. At the fusion point of disciplines than maker activities, you know which bring together artists and engineers and computer scientists and so forth. So again, the maker movement on campus is creating a context for the very fundamental elements of research and education. And third, I give an enormous credit to the president by using that what is the least appreciated tool. The president, I think in these days, which is the power of convening you know, stephanie, is here from the White House. I mean how cool is it that somebody in the white house every day who gets up thinking about maker activities and maker initiatives? I mean that is amazing, it it says a lot about this administration and this president, most fundamentally it says a lot about you, obviously, because you’ve made that all possible. So we’ve got this tremendous explosion of maker activities on college campuses. How do you take advantage of it? You know one obvious baseline activity is that these new maker spaces should be your spaces and they should be open to the community. I don’t have a scientific sample, but my hunch, my gut feeling, is about thirty percent of colleges and universities. Right now have designed maker spaces on their campuses that are also open to the community.
For example, university of massachusetts at amherst has a maker space that they specifically built to be both for their students and the community. James madison just converted their spaces to be open to the community, and you have arizona state which decided to base their maker space at TechShop in arizona so that it would be shared with the community. I can tell you we’re all going to get there. I mean eventually it’s all going to get if you give us a little bit of time.
In essence, I mean for a number of our institutions. We need to learn about our student demand. We need to learn about how students use this space and what the what the essence of the of the curricula is. But you know you already know making is in essence a community activity and so we’re all going to get there. So that’s one baseline but as I talk to faculty about how we can come together as a maker movement and a university maker community faculty stress to me that the starting point should really be about what we need from each other and what university and it’s need From you is, we need your ideas, we need your projects. Most importantly, we need your inspiration. We need you to give our students a sense of safety that is worth it’s okay, to try starting a company around something you’ve made and to share everything that you’ve been through in terms of its ok to fail its and here’s how you work as a community. We really need that fundamental inspiration. What can you get from us we’re great at making tools right, I mean, I think, there’s going to be an explosion of new tools coming out of this huge investment in maker activities on campuses, particularly at the intersection of the hardware and software and at the intersection Of digital making and physical making and those tools should be yours to help develop, to refine and and most importantly, to use right away. So one, in addition to shared space, are a couple of concrete steps that we can take. I got a number of ideas. I share a couple with you from from the folks I talked to. The first is: there’s this great trend developing and having makers in residence where colleges will create either permanent or part-time opportunities for makers to come in and simply beyond the campus and be around the campus and share their experiences and maybe co-teach and maybe do some mentoring And that, I think, is a fundamental great way for our communities to come together and because it will reinforce what we need from each other and what we can bring bring to each other. And the second idea just to take away is, I think, there’s one place that we can naturally readily meet and that’s in the schools and the libraries where you’re, already partnering you’re already doing maker activities and universities are seriously committed to using maker initiatives as a way To build our stem pipeline and to build our pipeline into schools and the libraries my institution, Carnegie Mellon, has done a number of things with with the children’s museum and with the public libraries.
I think that that space in the K through 12 space is where we can also get to know each other, because I think it’s going to be a major commitment of our institutions and you’ve already been a major force in bringing maker activities to citizens and kids Through the through the roles you play in those institutions, let me let me end on just what one note i think you know from my own vantage point. I don’t think, there’s any bigger, more important challenge for the country than to reinvent higher education, to make it more accessible to make it connected to communities to ensure that it is a driver for innovation for the next 50 years. As it’s been for the last 50 years, I don’t just think that maker activities are going to be an element of that reinvention. The more I see on my campus and this little portal I’ve had on what’s going around the country. I think the maker movement is in essence, a fundamental driver of that transformation and in many ways the biggest contribution you can make is to keep doing what you’re doing in building a movement that we’re responding to. And it’s in attracting our students to want to be part of it as well. Thanks a lot .