The “Maker Movement” in Education: Transforming the classroom into a laboratory

Through a new initiative, The Michaelis Foundation promotes incentives to global education

Photo: Students presenting innovative project during Science Days PBL

An educational methodology that seeks to inspire young people into “getting their hands dirty”. Through the Maker Movement, creativity is stimulated for the development of entertaining projects in schools. While having fun letting their imaginations flow, students learn to deal with problems and challenges that may arise during the process of elaborating an idea.

Imagine, design, build, make mistakes and learn. The five pillars of the Maker Movement establish the step by step that students must follow to outline their ideas and turn them into actions. The first pillar represents the act of dreaming, the beginning of the preparation of a project. The second marks the transformation of that dream into a plan, an outline on paper. The third, reflects the change of the outline to something concrete. The fourth pillar, followed by the fifth and last pillar, makes a statement that no positive result is easily achieved, being necessary to learn from the mistakes made to obtain the expected success.

Always focused on quality education, the Michaelis Foundation seeks, through its activities, to bring the Maker culture to more schools. "There is a phrase that says: 'not knowing it was impossible, it went there and did it'. It is this philosophy that we want to pass on to our young people, this certainty that, with willpower and dedication, they can conquer the world. There are no barriers that they can´t break”, said Jefferson Michaelis, founder of the Michaelis Foundation.

It was in this chain of thought that, in partnership with Editora Melhoramentos, the Michaelis foundation started a new project: The Global Thinking initiative. In honor of the anniversary of the developer of the Michaelis dictionary, Carolina Michaelis, 170 school dictionaries will be donated to promote bilingual education in the lives of students from different schools around the world. In Brazil alone, 10 cities will be positively impacted.

“We want to increasingly impact the world with our projects, always working to ensure advances in education to guarantee a promising future for new generations” - Carla Michaelis (Coordinator of the Global Thinking project)

- Luma Keily
MFGE International Correspondent