What kind of maker skills do you have? What kind of maker skills would you like to acquire? Steph Piper has been thinking about upskilling and, inspired by video games, has started to think of skill sets as tiles that form a tree. She has created an online repository of Maker skill trees at:
github.com/sjpiper145/MakerSkillTree
Her insight is that upskilling is a process of adding new skills one at a time, but not necessarily in order. Plus, if you’re part of a group, learning more about what skills you have can help you find someone to teach you new skills.
Steph is a creative technologist with a passion for maker culture, hardware development, and education technology. Her day job is managing the library makerspace at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. Her side job is maker queenwhere she sells colorful electronics kits for young children. In her book’s foreword, Steph asks, “What would happen if all the skills we learned were visualized on a video game dashboard, revealing a path to our future goals?” . Make: So we’re excited to publish her new book, Skill Seeker Maker Edition.
About the book
You can order this book from Makershed.com Or through other bookstores.
back cover
Fireside chat with Steph Piper on December 3rd
Join Steph Piper and I for a live fireside chat on December 3rd. We welcome your questions and ideas about how to use the Maker skill tree.
Two guests who contributed to the skill tree will also be in attendance.
- Billie Ruben: An eclectic maker, Billie loves exchanging skills in the online maker community she leads, fusing digital fabrication with traditional craft. Billy currently works at Lightburn Laser and is putting together a laser cutting skill tree.
- Luke Henderson: Luke is an edtech expert with an international career spanning from M5 Stack in Shenzhen to Vex Robotics and now Maker’s Empire in Australia. Luke created a robotics skill tree.
