The maker movement’s many entry points create a welcoming environment for tech ed

Alongside these top-down efforts to actively increase the number of women in tech careers, the grass-roots, bottom-up maker movement has been quietly attracting tinkerers and DIY-ers of both genders. At Maker Faire, 100,000 folks got together to share projects, skills, and materials for making. The maker culture thrives on open sharing of techniques and knowledge and innovation, often leveraging open source software and open source hardware. In a perfect example of what John Seely Brown refers to as “Pull,” thousands of people are enabling themselves and each other to create freely using tools from the medieval to the hyper-modern. The goal is to make things: for their own sake, for utility, for artistic or technical exploration, but the side effect is the creation of a wide variety of the actual makers, themselves.

Good piece on education and women in the maker movement by Marie Bjerede. It was good seeing Marie and her family at Maker Faire Bay Area.