Pedagogical Violence and Language Dominance

Dr. Maggie Melo’s chapter, “Pedagogical Violence and Language Dominance,” will be published in the forthcoming book, Hybrid Pedagogy: Pedagogy, People, Politics. The book will be released tomorrow, February 23, 2020.

Cover of Hybrid Teaching: Pedagogy, People, PoliticsBook Description

How can education survive in a post-truth era full of alternative facts and a reality-TV star armed with nuclear codes and a Twitter account? We must recognize that teaching is political. Schools need to help students counter the social erosion of trust in knowledge. Preserving that trust, we have seen, can help preserve democracy. Trust, like politics, involves people. In their classes, people learn to see themselves as members of communities and also to engage the world around them. Schools have a responsibility to support students as they learn. With the rise of anger-fueled nationalism around the world, it is clear that caring for others has never been so vital.

It is also clear that technology and capitalism will not solve education’s problems. Social media companies promise connection but create echo chambers and conspiracy-mongering. Ed-tech companies promise insights and solutions while delivering surveillance and suspicion. Education must connect the personal to the technological—it can no longer afford to work offline. All teaching is necessarily hybrid.

Pedagogy, people, and politics influence each other, and educators of all stripes have an opportunity—a responsibility—to build human connections with ethical technology.

Gathering the voices of over two dozen progressive educators, this volume combines perspectives from across academia and around the globe. The authors in this book use critical digital pedagogy as a guide for navigating today’s turbulent global political climate. Timely and accessible, Hybrid Teaching challenges higher education faculty and administrators to consider the political implications—and the political power—of teaching.

Read more on Hybrid Pedagogy’s website.

Webinar: Makers Gonna Make

Makers Gonna Make: Maker Ed in Remote/Hybrid Learning Environments

Wednesday, October 28, 2020 – 12pm ET/ 9am PT

Webinar Signup

Many libraries use makerspaces to teach and engage, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, buildings have been closed and people have been distanced. So libraries are doing what they always do: innovate. From student-led remote projects to take-home kits to lists of resources that can be found around the house (sticky rice adhesive!), makerspaces have gone virtual.

Please join Leslie Preddy, Stacy Brown, and Maggie Melo as they discuss big-picture questions about how makerspaces can work at a distance. Moderated by Heather Moorefield-Lang, it’s sure to be a lively and informative conversation, and there will be plenty of time for comments and questions. Bring a friend!

  • Of interest to school librarians, library students, and other librarians working with makerspaces
  • Discuss how makerspaces can work well virtually
  • Get and share ideas for innovative maker programs

To get the ideas flowing, check out these short video lessons made by our webinar presenters on creative ways to conduct maker activities with your students—even from a distance!

Sponsored by ABC-CLIO

Can’t make it on October 28? Register to be updated when the recording is available for viewing!

Presenters

  • Stacy Brown is the 21st-century learning coordinator at The Davis Academy in Atlanta, GA. Brown is a national presenter and contributor to professional books and journals on topics relating to libraries, technology, innovation, and education. She is the author of The School Librarian’s Technology Playbook: Innovative Strategies to Inspire Teachers and Learners. She is a regional director of the Georgia Technology Competition and a board member of Savvy Cyber Kids, Inc. and Atlanta Area Technology Educators. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram @21stStacy.
  • Maggie Melo is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She co-founded the University of Arizona’s first makerspace, the iSpace, in the university’s Science-Engineering Library. Her research resides at the intersection of innovation, critical maker culture, and the development of equitable and inclusive learning spaces (e.g. makerspaces) in academic libraries.
  • Leslie Preddy is the school librarian at Perry Meridian Middle School in Indianapolis, Indiana, and instructional leadership editor for School Library Connection magazine. Her book SSR with Intervention: A School Library Action Research Project was named one of the best professional books of 2007 by Teacher Librarian and her book Social Readers: Promoting Reading in the 21st Century, was highly recommended by Library Media Connection. Her latest book is School Library Makerspaces.

Moderator

  • Heather Moorefield-Lang serves as associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in the department of library and information science. Her research is focused on emerging technologies and their use in education and libraries. She has had the honor of being nominated for the White House Champion of Change for Making in 2016. Heather is also the editor of School Library Makerspaces in Action. To learn more visit her YouTube channel “Tech 15” or follow her on Twitter @actinginthelib.

Webinar graphic with headshots of speakers and covers of books that will be door prizes

Lightning Talks – Dr. Maggie Melo on YouTube

Dr. Melo presented her SILS Lightning talk on Friday, September 18, 2020.

Lightning talks by faculty members include individual brief (10 minutes or less) presentations on their research interests and projects.

View the full SILS Lightning Talks playlist on YouTube.

Position Opening: Ph.D. Student (Fully Funded)

The EITM Lab has an opening for a fully funded Ph.D. student at SILS beginning Fall 2021. Funding is secured through a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award that will support a graduate student. The project is entitled,Equity in the Making: Investigating Spatial Arrangements of Makerspaces and Their Impact on Diverse User Populations. 

I am currently recruiting a doctoral student with research interests in makerspaces, critical making, inclusive and equitable making, and/or virtual reality. This Ph.D. student will join a research team exploring topics connected to the spatial design of makerspaces in academic libraries. I invite applicants with interests across any or all of these areas to apply. 

SILS Ph.D. applications are due December 15th, 2020.

View full PhD Recruiting Document

New Book: Re-making the Library Makerspace

Re-making the Library Makerspace: Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices

Editors: Maggie Melo and Jennifer Nichols

Expected: November 2020

From the Publisher:

Book cover of Re-making the Library Makerspace: Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices with an outline of a face set against abstract shapesThe Maker Movement is a social phenomenon that has generated excitement around tech-centric making and learning throughout the world since the mid-2000s. Hailing from Silicon Valley, the Maker Movement has inspired hundreds of libraries across the US to integrate makerspaces into their own ecosystems to further support users’ learning and discovery. While the affordances of the Maker Movement have been highlighted extensively over the past decade, the limitations and drawbacks of this movement have been largely overshadowed. The Maker Movement has popularized a narrow, classist, predominantly white, and heteronormative conceptualization of maker culture. Makerspaces, like libraries, are not neutral, but rather are imbued with ideologies stemming from Silicon Valley that consequently dictate who makes, why making occurs, and what is considered making. This edited collection centers the limitations and challenges emerging from this particular brand of ‘maker culture,’ and emphasizes the critical work that is being done to cultivate anti-oppressive, inclusive and equitable making environments.

Many authors have focused on how to start a makerspace and/or the benefits of integrating one within a library. Alternatively, this edited collection captures how librarians and educators have disrupted and re-made their makerspaces in response to the constraints of the Maker Movement’s ‘makerspace.’ This collection offers readers a critical examination of library makerspaces at the site of praxis: theory, reflection, and action. Particularly, critical considerations around race, age, class, gender, sexuality, power, and ability will be centered in this volume. As such, the intended audience for this body of work are librarians, educators, administrators, and library professionals who work with(in) or are interested in library makerspaces.

View more and pre-buy online!

Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium (CLAPS)

Centering voices from the margins: Unsettling the exceptionalist lore of makerspaces

Jennifer Nichols, University of Arizona & Maggie Melo, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Tuesday, September 15, 2020: 1-2 pm PDT (Zoom/Online)

This talk centers on the limitations and challenges emerging from this particular brand of “maker culture,” and emphasizes the critical work that is being done to cultivate anti-oppressive, inclusive and equitable making environments. The Maker Movement has inspired hundreds of public, school, and academic libraries to integrate makerspaces into their own ecosystems. This social phenomenon purports an enthusiasm and techno-optimistic approach to engaging with the world with STEM-rich technologies, and consistently overshadows the material limitations and drawbacks that this movement simultaneously purports. The Maker Movement has popularized a narrow, classist, predominantly white, and heteronormative conceptualization of maker culture. Makerspaces, like libraries, are not neutral, but rather are imbued with ideologies stemming from Silicon Valley that consequently dictate who makes, why making occurs, and what is considered making. Specifically, this talk will highlight the voices within the edited collection, Re-making the Library Makerspace Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices. The book captures how librarians and educators have disrupted and re-made their makerspaces in response to the constraints of the Maker Movement’s “makerspace.” This collection extends a critical examination of library makerspaces at the site of praxis with critical considerations around race, age, class, gender, sexuality, power, and ability will be centered in this volume. 

View more and register online!

Maker Ed: Remaking the Library Makerspace

The Sixth Annual Maker Educator Convening

Remaking the Library Makerspace: New Moves toward Equity and Joy

Co-presenters: Jennifer Nichols and Brianna Marshall)

October 2-3, 2020

  • This panel is a discussion between contributing authors to Re-making the Library Makerspace Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices, a forthcoming book from Library Juice Press (October 2020), edited by facilitators Jennifer Nichols and Maggie Melo. The volume contains the following four sections, and will be used as a framework to guide this discussion. 
    • Who Belongs in the Makerspace? Power and Critical Theories
    • Movement, Empathy, and Inclusion in Youth Makerspaces
    • Counternarratives
    • Re-imagined Makerspaces: Policies, Procedures, and Culture 
  • Chapters celebrate successes and progress, acknowledge power and structural issues and offer reflections on moving forward toward social justice and equity. By highlighting authors who offer new ideas and perspectives for cultivating both equity and joy, we propose the use of liberatory design practices to both encourage self reflection and facilitate meaningful connection between participants.

View more and register through Makered.org!

EITM Lab Welcomes Kimberly & Laura!

Kimberly Hirsh (MS, MAT) and Laura March (MS, MEd) joined the Equity in the Making Lab for its inaugural 2020 year. Hirsh is currently a sixth-year doctoral candidate and March is a third-year doctoral student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

More information, including short biographies, links to websites, and contact information, can be found on the EITM Team page.

Maggie Melo Awarded $715K NSF Grant

From UNC-Chapel Hill SILS Website: 

Maggie Melo, Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how the physical and affective characteristics of makerspaces encourage or inhibit participation by students from marginalized communities.

The NSF CAREER award will provide more than $715,000 in funding over five years to support the project, titled “Equity in the Making: Investigating Spatial Arrangements of Makerspaces and Their Impact on Diverse User Populations.”

According to Melo’s grant proposal, as makerspaces have grown in popularity and importance at universities across the U.S., educators have struggled to attract users from marginalized undergraduate communities, particularly Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC).

Melo believes a student’s first impressions of a makerspace can significantly affect their attitude and future behavior.

“When you’re visiting a university makerspace, it isn’t uncommon to see students stop at the door, peer inside the room, and within a matter of moments, walk away,” Melo said. “This interaction may seem banal, but it has profound implications for makerspace educators as they strive to engage with students from diverse backgrounds.”

Through interviews, surveys, and naturalistic experiments conducted in both physical and virtual reality (VR) environments, Melo and her team will seek to develop a better understanding of the everyday life information seeking (ELIS) practices that students perform when deciding whether to use a STEM-rich learning environment like a makerspace.

The research will evaluate both macro features, such as the paint color of the walls, the arrangement of furniture, and the organization of various tools and technologies, as well as micro details, such as the background music, lighting, projects on display, signage, and decorations (e.g. laser-cut Star Wars fighter jets hanging from the ceiling).

Melo will be working closely with Carolina’s BeAM, a network of makerspaces that serves approximately 4,000 students during the academic year. Through this partnership, Melo will re-design the training curricula for staff members with attention to equity and inclusion. She and the BeAM team will also pilot a re-designed makerspace that embodies key findings from the research program.

In edition to publishing through open access venues, Melo plans to circulate an open-source VR makerspace simulator for communities, STEM educators, and administrators to leverage for their own design and re-design efforts. She also intends to work with BIPOCand women-owned businesses to develop the necessary tools for the project.

Melo joined the SILS faculty in 2018 after completing her PhD at the University of Arizona, where she co-founded and operated an R1 makerspace for over four years. Her NSF-funded project will support two doctoral student research assistants.