This year, the Hub has added a brand new engineering station for students called the ‘MakerSpace’.
The Learning and Innovation Hub, or simply “The Hub,” is the school library and, according to the LZHS website, it provides “various programs where students can explore, innovate, and reflect.” These include a vast collection of literature, general arts and crafts materials, board games, breakout rooms, and, this year, a ‘MakerSpace.’
“The MakerSpace is an area for students to make things in,” Michelle Emmerich, Learning and Innovation Specialist, said. “We have a bunch of different things that they can do. It’s a little bit of crafting and a little bit of building, stuff like that.”
The MakerSpace is equipped with “over 40+ STEM projects and 1500 components,” says Teacher Geek, a company that “allows students to build real working projects where they can learn and grow through experimentation, redesign and even failure,” according to their website. Teacher Geek manufactures and distributes their own tools, instruction manuals, and components that can be used to build various contraptions like wind-up cars, projectile launchers, and Rube Goldberg machines.
“[The MakerSpace] has a bunch of gears, plates, battery packs, wheels, dowels, tools, tape, and pipes; materials to build and engineer more elaborate things,” Emmerich said.
Emmerich plans to use the new station for a variety of programming.
“I’m looking through some activities [for students] to do,” Emmerich said, “I’m hoping to have some sort of a challenge opportunity for students to come in and create something based on [an] activity [or] let them come in and build things that they just want to build on their own.”
Emmerich believes that the new MakerSpace will have a positive impact in the school, especially on certain students.
“I think engineering students and people who like to be creative would have fun,” Emmerich said, “It’s just a nice change; to come in and be able to build something with your hands instead of just doing paperwork all the time for class.”
