About a dozen children shuffled down a blue-green hallway into a well-lit classroom on the South Side of San Antonio on a recent Friday afternoon, giddy with excitement as they sat at tables — each with a small white drone at the center.
Guided by an instructor, Eugene Jimenez, the students worked together to explore the parts of the drone, learned how to pair it with a controller and flew the small gadgets around the room in a scene that soon devolved into controlled chaos.
“Never hurry, never worry,” Jimenez advised students as one drone flew under a table and out of sight, and another blew stray papers to the ground.
“Remember, failure is a first attempt in learning,” he added.
Within a few minutes, the drones stabilized, hovering quietly above the square brown desks as the mostly third- and fourth-grade students beamed with pride, taking turns maneuvering them around the classroom.
Since October of last year, students from across the district have had a chance to learn, explore and experiment in this Jewel C. Wietzel Center “makerspace,” created in collaboration with the DoSeum to bring the hands-on style of learning the children’s museum is known for to the Harlandale Independent School District campus.
The special needs school that was housed there previously was closed along with several other schools as part of a district-wide restructuring amid declining enrollment.
So-called makerspaces are increasingly popular areas where students or researchers tinker, create and build, with 3-D printers and laser cutters allowing for endless possibilities of experiments and products to be made.
In just a few short months, the campus, which community members helped to paint, has also become an esports center, a garden, a drone obstacle course, an audio-visual studio, a culinary kitchen, and a sewing lab — with plans to add more in the coming months as students and Harlandale community members express interest.
Jimenez, a senior educator at the DoSeum, which has a museum along Broadway, said the collaboration brings students experiences and opportunities they might otherwise find inaccessible.
“What we would hear at the DoSeum is when individuals would come visit us they would turn to their teachers and say why can’t my school be like that?” he said. “We wanted to work with community partners to make sure that the students get that same opportunity and don’t have to turn to their teachers and ask that.”
The unique space is one of the largest campus-based makerspaces in the region, according to Meghan Guerrero, the CTE, STEM and gifted and talented coordinator for the district.
Guerrero said creating the space has been an innovative process, with desks, computers, craft supplies and more coming from other closed campuses after teachers had the chance to take what was needed for their classrooms.
“We’re still learning and growing and building and prototyping,” she said. “We haven’t quite worked out the logistics of how to get all the kids here.”
Back in the classroom, as students chatted about the different parts of the drone and how they worked, Jimenez reflected back to them how they were gathering evidence and conducting investigations as part of the scientific process.
After successfully deciphering the components of the flying machines, the instructor tasked students with creating a system to transport a Lego figurine across a gap using the drones, with the assistance of tape, a paper plate, string and pipe cleaners.
One student noted the importance of keeping the figurine safe, referencing recent news about aviation safety concerns surrounding Boeing 737 MAX planes, which have come under scrutiny after several incidents, including a door plug blowing out of a plane mid-flight.
Jimenez said that is one example of the endless lessons included within the short sessions students experience at the center.
“Not only that, but they were looking at the relevance,” he said. “They were talking about how ‘we hear about things falling out the sky all the time … now we’re going to do a solution for that.'”
As some students drew plans for the contraptions, like a seatbelt for the Lego, others discussed the physical characteristics of the drones. Eddie Ramirez, a fourth-grader who helped show other students how to pilot the drone, pointed out how stable the machine was compared to others he had piloted.
“It is very stable,” he said, noting the rounded plastic that protect the propellers.
Debriefing after one chaotic flight that saw drones cross paths with other groups and one get stuck on the ceiling, another group member, Khloe Starr, went over the successes and failures of the mission.
“What did work is when we put the engine in,” she said. “What didn’t work was when I flew it, it was kind of hard.”
As she watched the students, Dolores Madrid, a reading and social studies teacher at a nearby elementary school, recalled bringing the first robot to campus decades ago and shepherding the expansion of STEM extracurriculars in the years since.
“I had to learn how to use it for a couple of days … and I reached out to everyone in the district and said you need to come see this,” she said.
Beyond traditional STEM applications, Madrid said she has found creative methods to teach other subjects, like a robot that follows a line used to teach storytelling or legos to teach conflict resolution.
With methods like that, and outside opportunities like those in the makerspace, Madrid said she has seen students blossom.
Both STEM and other opportunities have grown substantially since she brought the first robot to campus, she said, and with the new space just starting, Madrid said she is excited about even more possibilities: “It’s a dream come true.”
Correction: This story has been updated to correctly refer to the DoSeum’s location along Broadway.
