Mar 14, 2021 3 min read

A Matt’s Maker Space lab is opening at Point Park University, offering School of Education students the opportunity to immerse themselves in modern teaching and learning concepts related to maker education and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education.

The lab is named for local nonprofit Matt’s Maker Space, which donated to the University to bring the vision to reality. The organization was founded by Noelle and David Conover in 2018 in memory of their son, Matt, a Mt. Lebanon student who passed away from cancer at age 12.

The organization has created 27 maker spaces in the area, including spaces in Mt. Lebanon School District, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital. Point Park is the first university to house a Matt’s Maker Space.

“Prospective Point Park students should be aware that this new maker space is a unique and differentiating offering for the School of Education,” Noelle Conover said. “They will receive cutting-edge training that will give them an advantage when they become teachers.”

Maker spaces are transforming learning far beyond Pittsburgh, according to Darlene Marnich, founding dean of the School of Education.

“While we see these maker spaces in many local school districts, they are being incorporated in education environments throughout the country,” she said. “Additionally, while visiting schools for our international student teacher placements, we found that the schools in Ireland and Spain were using the same spaces in their buildings.”

Students utilizing the Matt’s Makers Space lab at Point Park University will have an opportunity to explore and engage in maker space pedagogy through an interdisciplinary approach across various courses in their certification program. Faculty members will build on their own STEM teaching practices through structured professional development focused on cross-curricular maker space teaching and learning.

Maker education is an approach to problem-based and project-based learning that relies on hands-on, collaborative learning experiences as a method for solving authentic problems.

The first time alumnus Daniel Strickland heard of a maker space classroom was when he did his student teaching placement at SEK Dublin International School in a sixth-grade English classroom in Greystones, Ireland. He said his students preferred the maker space to the typical classroom in a lot of ways, as it offered an alternative learning setting with a variety of materials and technology tools.

“Point Park investing its time and resources into a maker space just adds to how committed the School of Education is to bring and implement modern teaching strategies and approaches from around the world to its halls and classrooms,” said Strickland, now a special educator at Baltimore County Public Schools.

For more information, visit www.mattsmakerspace.org and www.pointpark.edu/news-education/point-park-university-school-of-education-opens-matts-maker-space-lab.