NORTHFIELD — Technology and engineering continue to be a priority for Pioneer Valley Regional School District, with new equipment purchases and adjustments to curricula expected for January.
The woodshop classroom is being reorganized as a “makerspace” with new teacher Lissie Fein, who started at Pioneer Valley Regional School earlier this month. The focus of the classroom will be broader than it was previously, Superintendent Jon Scagel said, with new classes in robotics, computer programming, animation and videogame design, as well as more traditional architecture classes.
The new classes reflect the focus on “design thinking” that Scagel and Technology Director John Heffernan have spoken about previously. The idea is for students to solve problems that are open-ended and that have realistic needs.
The makerspace model is becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the world, Heffernan said. Basically the setup is like a communal woodshop, but oriented mostly around fixing and modifying modern electronic devices.
“People are doing this instead of waiting for companies to come up with expensive solutions,” Heffernan said. “They fix things that companies don’t want to fix anymore, they invent things, and there are machines to do that. It could be 3-D printing, it could be traditional shop machines, circuitry, computers. We want to provide that for kids too. This is what we want them to be able to do when they grow up.”
The hope for Pioneer’s makerspace, called the “innovation center,” is that it will be a resource for students in and outside of class, Scagel said.
The district is also making a large purchase of new classroom computer equipment. The purchase brings the student-to-computer ratio of almost two-to-one, Scagel said. The new devices, which include Chromebook computers, iPads and robotics kits, are being paid for mostly out of state aid money.