The show must go on! Strategies for making and makerspaces during pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging for Fab Labs and makerspaces where the use of digital fabrication machines and working with physical materials in collaboration with others are at the heart of the activities. We have been actively promoting children’s technology education both by training local teachers and by working with children themselves. The restrictions have resulted in limiting the number of participants or moving to online working, or even closing the workspaces and cancelling the events. To continue our work, we needed to explore new solutions for the situation. We have provided online training for teachers, experimented with working in family groups and fully online, while access to the digital fabrication machines and children’s engagement in online activities were the largest challenges we encountered. We report in this paper our experiences with different solutions as well as challenges we have faced, both as regards technology education of children and collecting research data related to that.