Makerspace at St. Mary's encourages technology

By Tanya Connor  | The Catholic Free Press

SHREWSBURY – You could say that the makerspace at St. Mary Elementary School is a multi-purpose room.
Simply put, a makerspace is a “space in which to make things,” said Gabriel Beltran, St. Mary’s technology director, who has three children in the school. Students come in with nothing, make something there, and take it with them.
Besides being a place, makerspace is also a movement, Mr. Beltran said; there are such places where the public can go to make things.
“The original ‘maker’ was God,” he said.
A “generous donation” enabled St. Mary’s to transform the fifth-grade classroom into the makerspace for use by students in kindergarten through grade 8, school personnel said. (It’s still the fifth-grade homeroom, but fifth-graders have their classes in other rooms.)
The room, which opened this fall, got a new rug, new desks, a white board and a Lego wall, among other things. Mr. Beltran said.
Donors were school parents Matthew and Laura Beaton, and school grandparents Gene and Julianne DeFeudis. Mr. Beaton graduated from St. Mary’s in 1992.
Faculty, staff and students are excited; “everybody’s doing something with it,” Mr. Beltran said. “I think it’s very exciting for people to know their kids are learning” 21st century technology.  
“We’re doing this not just for the education of the children, but the advancement of the school,” said Venerini Sister Rosemarie Borzi, who teaches religion, math and cursive writing. She said they hope to “change the perception of Catholic schools in our society.”  
Mr. Beltran said one of his motivations for proposing the makerspace was “to prove that we can be technologically advanced.”
“And if this room does not do that, I don’t know what would, because there’s so much in the room that encourages them to think outside the box,” said Sister Rosemarie. “By exposing children to this type of learning we are forming future scientists, engineers, mathematicians.”     
“I think this is very useful to motivate them” to keep learning “because students are attracted to technology,” Mr. Beltran said. By the time they graduate from eighth grade there, they are aware of the newest technology.
“When I was in school I literally used a quill,” Sister Rosemarie said. “It wasn’t a feather. It was a wooden handle and it had a little metal point at the end. If you broke the point you had to pay the nun 2 cents for a new one.” You used a blotter to absorb the extra ink.
Sister Rosemarie said she has worked at St. Mary’s for 25 years. She said Ellen Ethier, a teacher who’s been there 20 years, got the school started with technology. But 20 years ago they did not have the computers they do now.
The idea of the makerspace came up through St. Mary’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program, said Mr. Beltran. He said St. Mary’s integrated religion and art into the program too; it could be called STREAM. Sister Rosemarie said they started their STEM program about three years ago.
“It seemed natural to move from STEM activities to STEM projects,” Mr. Beltran said. “An activity can be accomplished in one session. A project can take several weeks to complete.” So it’s helpful to have a space to store projects and equipment.
Students using the makerspace experience teamwork, problem-solving, and teaching others what they’ve learned, Mr. Beltran said.
“I like to find something that’s fun for them,” he said. One project is having them scan each other with a 3-D scanner, modify those images on the computer, adding an animal’s body to their own head, then printing the resulting “mythological creature” on the 3-D printer.
Products from the makerspace can also be used for fundraising. Mr. Beltran told about plans to make a chess game with teachers’ faces on the pieces, to be auctioned at a social event for parents.
A recent use of the makerspace was having students in Patricia O’Brien’s second-grade class make a recording to enhance their classroom learning. They told The Catholic Free Press they’ve been learning about stories and reading fluently, loudly and clearly.
After they record their story Mr. Beltran enhances the recording by adding sound effects, such as someone biting into an apple, which was part of the “News from the Market” they read.
“It’s different and it sounds much more better,” said Sabella Then.
“And when we’re up here, there’s no sound effects,” said Daniela Rossi. But when they listen to their reading in their classroom, they hear sound effects.
“The technology is just a tool to interest the students and increase their learning,” Mr. Beltran said. “I call it innovative learning.”
But they also learn about technology – in order to use the technology and in classes focused on technology, such as the one for which eighth-graders made a replica of a stop light.
Eighth-grader Lina Scheffel said they made it with Arduino  boards, an open-source platform used to make electronics projects.
“It’s like a mini computer and we put a program in it,” she explained.
“We did it from the computer and transferred it to a battery,” added her classmate Lainey McCormack.
“They set up the values of the timer for how long each light is going to be on, just like a traffic light,” Mr. Beltran explained.
Lina demonstrated one of the positive effects of the makerspace: “I’m not actually … good with electric stuff or technology, but I got the hang of it … and it was fun.”