×

MakeHERspace

Girls get hands on with technology at school event

Andrea Johnson/MDN Eighth-graders Danielle Aberle, left, and Justice Nerad work on making candy dispensers during the MakeHERspace event at Minot High School-Central Campus on Saturday.

Thirty-two teenage girls installed lights in a hoody, made sound reactive skirts or made their own candy dispensers out of wood blocks on Saturday during the MakeHerSpace event at Minot High School-Central Campus.

“I like hands on (activities),” said Meah Helm, a ninth grader at Central Campus, who was working on making a pet food dispenser out of a wooden block at the same table as eighth-graders Danielle Aberle and Justice Nerad. Skylar Holte, a seventh-grader at Ramstad, used a saw to cut off her wooden block.

At the beginning of the event, which was funded through a grant intended to help expose girls to non-traditional career fields, each girl was given an Arduino electronic control device and learned how to program it into a practical application.

Gabe Rauschenberger, a tech and engineering instructor at Central Campus, said most of the girls had never worked with the equipment in the classroom, but all of them were tackling it and having fun with the design challenge.

Along the way, the girls were exercising their problem solving skills and using equipment that they might find themselves using in a future career.

“We are preparing these girls for 21st century skills,” said Rauschenberger. He said the activities he has his students do in technological and engineering classes will become more commonplace in the future. The demand for skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics is growing.

According to the school, a makerspace is a “collaborative work space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools.” “MakeHerSpace” is a pun on makerspace.

Rauschenberger also hopes that some of the girls who took the MakeHerSpace class on Saturday will consider signing up for technology education classes in high school.

Andrea Johnson/MDN Eighth-graders Danielle Aberle, left, and Justice Nerad work on making candy dispensers during the MakeHERspace event at Minot High School-Central Campus on Saturday. Andrea Johnson/MDN Erik Ramstad Middle School seventh-grader Skylar Holte saws off a piece of wood to make a candy dispenser on Saturday during the MakeHERspace event at Minot High School-Central Campus.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today