Digital Harbor Foundation has new data on youth maker programs

Digital Harbor Foundation is gaining another foothold in the national conversation.

Politico trained its lens on the Federal Hill rec center–turned–tech center with a pair of features that point to the maker nonprofit’s growing influence.
The five-year-old nonprofit’s approach to maker education has long been interesting to educators. That’s why they frequently hosted visitors from the U.S. Department of Education, and current board chairman Andrew Coy was tapped to work in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama administration.
Now there’s data to go along with the model. In a Politico Magazine piece, DHF points to findings about education that researchers are gathering by spending time at the space. Students showed a 10 percent increase in “divergent thinking,” defined in the piece as a measure in creativity. There was also an uptick in “persistence of effort,” and a decrease in consistency as students tried new things. Researchers from UMBC are conducting a two-year study at the center, the report states.
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The work of youth also gets plenty of attention from Obama’s youngest advisor and Baltimore Innovation Award winner Jacob Leggette to Darius McCoy and his duties overseeing DHF’s youth-run 3D Print Shop.
Sierra Seabrease, who interned with Fearless and is now enrolled in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, also shows off the digital jukebox piano she made in some of her earlier days at DHF in a slideshow.