Maker Spaces that Reflect Their Community’s Diversity #4thOfJuly #AmericanMakers
How do we ensure that the excellent Maker Spaces all around the United States reflect their communities? At Adafruit we’ve worked to make sure that we are part of New York City. How do Maker Spaces do the same thing? Here’s more from WGBH:
Maker spaces, sometimes referred to as hacker spaces or fab labs, are member-groups where people build DIY projects using shared tools. You could build a bench, a picture frame, a robot or your own drone. These spaces were partly devised to take the concepts of science and technology out of the ivory tower and into communities, to benefit the people who don’t already have access to the things that Technocopia has.
But the maker space movement struggles with diversity, “across the board, across the country,” said Dorothy Jones-Davis, president of Nation of Makers, a national maker space organization. A 2018 study done by her organization surveyed hundreds of makers and found that maker space users and leadership were over two thirds male and around 85 percent white.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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