At the heart of Makerspace culture is Lego

Many communities have intrepid Lego Clubs that meet to share the joy of construction and design. Many schools and clubs also participate in Lego Robotics competitions. They create logical allies for building a makerspace of some permanence, a place where Legos also belong and where natural transitions can occur to both older and newer forms of technology. The Learning from Legos article in the Sunday, March 15, 2014 edition of the New York Times offers tribute to the design heredity of Legos in Maker culture.

A MakerSpace for Jackson County

A "makerspace" is physical space and technology within a building that encourages building projects with new forms of 3D design software and "shop" equipment (computer driven manufacturing technology) and with the people who can teach its use. There is much to learn about makerspace, but its implications are far larger. Anderson (2012) in his book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution and Brynjolfsson and McAfee in their book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (2014), have described such developments in much larger and highly significant cultural terms, a new transformed version of the industrial revolution. Its learner centered and project-based nature can also be seen as the transformation of the meaning and methodology of public school and places to provide the digital tools for learning the other elements of the digital literacy palette. This site seeks to organize citizens of Jackson County, North Carolina, to work towards the creation such spaces with its opportunities for education and entrepreneurship. How can we make this happen? Please use the Comments boxes beneath each posting to participate in this effort with your ideas.

Getting Organized

We were able to gather a few of those interested for an initial meeting last month and are just getting started; this is a long term, multi-year effort. We need to meet again. An important initial step is to publish some blog postings sharing the ideas and motivations of those willing to encourage next steps in Jackson County in making its first public  makerspace a reality.  These postings will begin to emerge in the time ahead.

For Twitter folks who like to Tweet and ReTweet, here's a shortened form of the Web site's address, http://bit.ly/1is4toA. A suggested hashtag for the creation of digital makerspace in Jackson County (JC) would be #digimakersjc.

Please suggest other "find your tribe" hashtags that would connect us with related topics and relevant people. Some are: #fablabs, #makers, #makerspace, #DIY