On Thursday, September 17th, Andrew Goodin and Royce Martin of GCAA both delivered a speech for the 2015 Blog Out Loud at T-Rex on Washington downtown. Goodin’s speech mostly revolved around why he teaches, and how students apply the things they learn in Makerspace today. Martin delivered a speech on police brutality and his experiences with the police.

Goodin talked about how our teachers today often tell us that the information we take away from their class will be applied to our lives much later in the future, however the skills students learn in the Makerspace, applies to their lives today, and can be used in their daily lives.

“My speech was highlighting awesome student projects from throughout the years of Makerspace and how I believe that Makerspace is a model that can reform education to make it more innovative,” said Goodin.

Goodin’s speech began with an interactive lesson for his audience in which he instructed them to draw what they perceived a scientist to look like. After the drawings were completed Goodin did a poll, in which the drawings showed that most people see a “white, nerdy male” when they think of a  scientist. Goodin then looked at Google images of a scientist, and discovered that Google too showed images of the “white, nerdy male” when images of the scientist came up.

“I challenged their perception and challenged the perception of Google by showing the awesome work that is happening in the Makerspace, and with the vision that one day when you google famous scientist or famous entrepreneur it will be much more colorful,” stated Goodin.

GCAA was the first school in the St.Louis city and county to have a Makerspace, and today there are a total of 26 Makerspaces. Since GCAA was the first, the school is considered the flagship in which all the other Makerspaces look to, since each one is connected to GCAA’s makerspace in some way.

“A brief description of the message is that Makerspace is a potential solution to our current crisis in education,” said Goodin.

Royce Martin’s speech focused on police brutality, and how he has dealt with it over the years.

“My personal experience wasn’t an experience of police brutality itself, but it was an experience with just the police and that experience kind of helped me to realize not to trivialize people’s protest or complaints with the police, and I mentioned that a lot throughout my story,” said Martin.

Martin’s main goal was to inspire people, though he was not personally victimized by the police,  he did realize that it is a common thing. He realized these things last year, where he had his first experience with the police, and learned of more stories dealing with police brutality.

“What I hope is that people, like I said don’t trivialize police brutality, but recognize it as an American issue, and in my story I also mention black on black crime and how people just like to criticize it without looking at the bigger picture,” stated Martin.