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Adobe Spark Book Trailers

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The Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation - Application

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At MakerBot, we're dedicated to making the journey into 3D printing easier for you, your students, and your school. Many schools and universities may not have the budget-allotted or the other resources needed to purchase a MakerBot 3D printer. To better assist you, we've put together a collection of applicable grants that can provide external funding.

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Future Ready Librarians - Future Ready Schools

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An essential component to becoming Future Ready, is making a digital learning plan before purchasing technology. The Interactive Planning Dashboard offers districts a five-step collaborative planning process. Upon completion, districts have a complete digital learning implementation plan, full of research-based strategies, including stakeholder input, local context, and district team leadership responsibilities.

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What Does the Next-Generation School Library Look Like? | MindShift | KQED News

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Function Over Form_ Transforming School Libraries From the Inside Out - Demco Interiors

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Divine Design_ How to create the 21st-century school library of your dreams | School Library Journal

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There's so many amazing books coming out now related to starting a school makerspace, and many of them are fantastic. But for this post, I want to take a look back and focus on the five books that had the biggest impact on me as I was planning and creating my makerspace at Stewart Middle Magnet School. This was back in late 2013/early 2014, when there wasn't a ton of stuff out there that specifically focused on school makerspaces. Even without a direct focus on library makerspaces, these books still had a profound impact in shaping my thinking about creating an innovative, playful learning environment.

Maybe this one is obvious, but it still has to be here. My copy of this book is heavily highlighted, dog-eared and sticky noted (and signed by both authors!). If you only have time to read one book on the Maker Education Movement, this should be the book. Martinez and Stager do an amazing job of covering everything from the history of making in the classroom to practical ways to incorporate making in everyday instruction. They help you to critically think about what types of projects kids will make and how to make them more effective and creative - no 24 birdhouses that look exactly the same here. There are ideas for how to help students with project design, prompts to get them thinking, creating a physical space conducive to making, etc. There are fabulous lists of resources to check out and supplies to consider. The section on advocacy and research is an excellent resource for grant-writing.

This book comes from The Exploratorium, an amazing hands-on science museum in San Francisco. They created a makerspace for their patrons called The Tinkering Studio and they also run a fantastic MOOC every summer.

The Art of Tinkering looks at over 150 different artists and makers and how they weave science and technology into their work. It's a beautifully designed and inspiring work that clearly demonstrates the important part that art, whimsy and creativity play in making. Each chapter focuses on a different technique, from aerial photography to cardboard automata to wearable circuits to toy take apart. The chapters each feature an artist or professional who uses that technique in their work, with an intimate look into their design processes, studios and tools. The chapters then follow up with step-by-step instructions for a DIY activity, which are often excellent for maker stations. I'm eager to try out the DIY wind tunnel and the marble run with my students.

When I was getting started with Makerspaces, I kept hearing over and over again that I needed to read this book. It focuses more on the learning environment as a whole rather than just on makerspaces, but there's lot of amazing ideas for creating spaces that inspire creativity.

At first, it took me a bit to get used to the design of the book. There's a lot of different typefaces, pages of nothing but quotes, and articles that get interrupted by shorter pieces. But once I was able to get into the flow of the book, I loved it! It was such a wonderful reaffirmation for me on the importance of creating physical spaces that are conducive to learning, of taking care of the health of our students through things like clean air and good food, of creating opportunities for students to be exposed to nature. Over and over, The Third Teacher emphasizes that our learning spaces need to change to reflect the way that students learn today. Rows and rows of desks set up as a lecture theater are not helping our students to learn and grow. We need to be willing to invest time and money to create spaces where students can develop the skills they will need to become productive citizens: critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, inquisitivenss. See more of my review of this book on Renovated Learning.

This book is a phenomenal look at how design and creativity are essential for success with today's students. Each chapter had a different author and focused on a different aspect. At the front and center of much of the book was the Maker Movement and Maker Education. I think this book would be great both for those who are already in deep with the Maker movement and those who are just getting started.

Several chapters offer wonderful anecdotal examples of what is going on in the Maker/design/STEAM world of education. From museums with makerspaces, to science-y fun block parties in NYC, to tools like Squishy circuits, Scratch coding and MaKey MaKey. The final chapter helps to give a vision of what this can look like in actual schools, by telling the inspiring story of Manor New Technology High School in Texas. All in all, this is an amazing book, and definitely worth the read by anyone in education who thinks that we need more creativity and play in our education system.

This book, created by the Stanford d.school, is an amazing source of design inspiration. While it tends to be geared more towards open office spaces and college environments, there's plenty of ideas and resources for educators as well. Make Space tells the d.school's story - it's need for flexibility and economy when being shuffled all over campus, what worked and didn't work for their collaborative spaces, and how they finally figured out how to get it right.

Interspersed throughout the book are projects and action steps that you can take to immediately change your space. There's so many practical ideas, and the stories throughout the book give you a better sense of what students need in collaborative spaces, even if they don't know it themselves. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to change up their learning or work space.

Categories: Blog Topics, Makerspaces/Learning Commons, Professional Development, STEM/STEAM

Tags: makered, makerspace, professional development, professional reading

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5 Makerspace Books You Need to Read | Knowledge Quest

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There's so many amazing books coming out now related to starting a school makerspace, and many of them are fantastic. But for this post, I want to take a look back and focus on the five books that had the biggest... Read More ›

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Coding

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Scratch Jr is a free app from the developers of Scratch at MIT. It is designed for younger children to learn coding. Different from other coding apps for young children, it encourages storytelling as well. With the many interactive functions, parents and teachers can use it as a customizable tool to teach kids many other subjects, such as following instructions, counting, coloring.

When you first start the app, there is a tutorial video. I highly suggest going through the video with kids together. You might even have to watch the video more than once to remember all the functions. Once you go through the video, the app just becomes a playground for kids to create stories - using coding blocks.

There are different settings and characters for kids to choose from. Kids can change each setting or character using the painting tools. They can change the colors, add objects, or add text in the setting. Among the 30 provided settings are 4 seasons, different sports background, different room settings. There are over 120 characters for kids to add to the stories: animals, people of different ages, different transportation tools, plants, buildings, furniture, and more.

kids can use different coding functions shown in the tutorial to create their stories: moving a character forward or backward, making a character jump or turn around, having two characters carry a conversation, making a character disappear, ... These are just some examples of things the program is capable to do.

When kids want to be more precise on the steps of each character moves, they can turn on the x-y coordinate grid on the screen. This is a good place to set up a program to teach numbers and location.

Having kids adding narration and conversations to the story will be a great way to develop language and storytelling skills.

Here is an example how one school used Scratch app to have kids challenge each other in coding and math.

Give Scratch Jr a try. It is a programing and coding tool, but it goes beyond coding. You can use it for so many different skill areas. Both you and kids will enjoy it. It is available on iPad. It is Free.

If you would like to check it out or purchase it, please use the App Store link provided below. The cost is the same to you, but iGameMom gets a small percentage. Thanks for your support! Note: The link works for all countries.

Looking for more learning tools for kids to learn computer coding? Check out Best Learning Tools for Kids to Learn Computer Coding.

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Free App: Scratch Jr Coding App for Young Children

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Scratch Jr is a free app from the developers of Scratch at MIT. It is designed for younger children to learn coding. Different from other coding apps for young children, it encourages storytelling as well. With the many interactive functions, parents and teachers can use it as a customizable tool to teach kids many other subjects, such as following instructions, counting, coloring.

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Use this writing center to help your students develop their creative writing skills! Students build a story by picking out a setting, character and event card and placing them on the writing center. Then they write a story about the cards using a vis-a-vis marker (or

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Elementary and Middle School QR Code Book Trailers: Set #1

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QR Book Code Trailers Scan, Watch, Read. That's what your students will do with these QR codes. This is a pack of 75 QR codes for popular upper elementary and middle school books. Book publishers have realized that making book trailers is a great way to showcase their

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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One of the most exciting models of learning is "design thinking." It combines hands on learning (tinkering) with independent problem solving methodologies. This concept is basically the same as the problem solving-based creative process taught in many design disciplines, like architecture, engineering, and game design. The basic steps of design thinking can be characterized as follows:

1. Identify the problem and research to understand the problem better
2. Brainstorm possible strategies and identify solutions
3. Test these solutions (welcoming failure as a learning tool)
4. Apply what you learn to evolve best solutions

When students practice design-thinking projects in the classroom, they not only master the concepts within the project, they exercise their skills of collaborating with teammates, investigating their topic thoroughly, using empathy to generate ideas for solutions, prototyping, and testing. Most importantly, they learn that failure is not a setback. This activity fosters the lifelong skill and mindset that learning new things to help solve problems is part of day-to-day practice and no longer confined to the classroom. Because this quest for knowledge is self-initiated and involves the direct application of learned skills, the retention of information that kids have as a result of this process is significantly higher.

Everyone who cares deeply about education wants to find creative ways to engage the next generation of learners. The thinking about these spaces will continue to evolve and change as we try them out and learn from these experiences.

A challenge for many public and cash-strapped schools is that this hands-on, project-based learning approach needs to be directly supported by the spaces where the learning occurs. Design thinking in education requires open spaces with flexible, moveable pieces that can be used in different ways each day depending on the topic being explored. Schools like Brightworks in San Francisco and the Nueva School in Hillsborough have fashioned their learning spaces and laboratories specifically for this type of culture, but similar results can be achieved without renovating your classroom or school. Here are six ideas that any school can implement.

1. Put wheels on classroom furniture.
Spaces need to be flexible to accommodate a wide variety of student-use scenarios and project-driven set ups. Furniture that can be easily rolled out of the way can go from collaboration lounge to prototype lab with little effort. A variety of casters can be found at IKEA or your local hardware store. Use casters with stems for desks and tables. These have sleeves that can be inserted into the legs. Plate mounted casters can be screwed directly into the base of the furniture. Look for wheels that swivel in all directions so that students can move them easily. Many casters have locks which help to keep them from moving once you've got them in place.

2. Create comfortable and customizable "break-out spaces" with couches or soft chairs where students can work together.
Stanford University's "d.school" (design and engineering school), where the current design thinking trend was jump started, exemplifies the importance of comfortable collaboration spaces. d.school students draw from a mobile "kit of parts" to assemble work environments shaped to their project based activities and then put them all back afterwards. d.school has created a culture of creating the space for the environment you need. Furniture here easily rolls or stacks out of the way to leave an open room after the activity is finished. Working in this space requires presence of mind of how you will interact and how the space should be shaped to accommodate that.

3. Look for spaces on your campus that can be transformed into a student-driven collaboration classroom.
The Australian Science and Mathematics School, a public high school in Adelaide, repurposed a basement storeroom as their innovation "shed." The shed supports 17 students in self-organized learning and tinkering on Thursday mornings and was designed to be a "funky" place teenagers would be comfortable perusing what they are interested in. Sivam Krish directs programs at the shed, but does not teach in the traditional sense. He encourages peer-to-peer learning in the space. The shed is furnished with cheap garage equipment and relatively inexpensive technology. Nothing is fixed: monitors, 3-D printers, computer workstations, and other equipment are mounted on wheeled scaffolding carts so that students can frequently adjust their space to suit their projects.

4. Create a shared design-thinking space for all students to use.
By being inclusive of all students, the program can serve as a compliment to the rest of the curriculum. At Marin Primary and Middle School in Northern California, the kindergarten through 8th grade classroom curriculum links to hands-on projects that kids do in the school's "Projects Lab." The lab is a locus where all the equipment that can facilitate student tinkering and prototyping is concentrated, with some inherent flexibility in its layout to accommodate student creativity.

In San Francisco, Lick-Wilmerding High School's Design and Technology Center takes sharing a step further by bringing together many of the schools communal resources. The center houses teaching workspaces and shops for wood, metal, glass and electronics, as well as a multi-purpose room, computer lab, and two conference rooms. The central, single level, configuration of the spaces allows for a shared work area between disciplines and encourages student interaction and interdisciplinary collaboration.

5. Create a design-thinking space is a design-thinking exercise.
Assign students the task of designing the design-thinking environment. Groups of the students enrolled in the one-semester design-thinking course at Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia came up with blue-sky proposals for redesigning the school library. At the end of the semester, two 11th grade participants, Jack Morrissette and Zane Homsi, used an independent study credit to further consider how design thinking could be expanded at the school. Their study culminated in a more feasible library redesign based on the collective ideas from their classmates-including a proposal to free up space for design-thinking environments by going completely digital. With no more shelves full of hard copy books, there would be room for comfy chairs and moveable white board walls for collaboration spaces, and an innovation lab with 3-D printers, visual design technology and other tools. Their proposal is currently being considered by the school board.

6. Ask for help.
Ask students' families and the community to donate gently used furniture, construction tools, sewing machines, fabric, wood remnants, and other tools and materials they no longer use. Power tools, an integral component of any decent maker-studio space, empower kids with confidence and the independence to prototype and test their ideas. Ask parent volunteers to demonstrate how to use them correctly and with the necessary safety equipment. Ask the PTA or your board to help raise the funds for your program.

You can also ask to visit design thinking programs other schools. The Willows Community School in Culver City, California visited Castilleja High School's Bourn Idea Lab in Palo Alto where parent and resident tinkerer, Diego Fonstad, showed the space and offered insights into how the school integrates the classroom learning and physical aspects of making into one project.

Rethinking learning environments will play an important role in education in the years to come. Are you rehashing old models or covering new ground? Everyone who cares deeply about education wants to find creative ways to engage the next generation of learners. The thinking about these spaces will continue to evolve and change as we try them out and learn from these experiences. This is the design-thinking process for creating the next generation of learning environments.

Let's keep this conversation going. What ideas for bringing design thinking into schools have you tried?
Peter Pfau, FAIA, is the founding Principal of Pfau Long Architecture in San Francisco and a member of the AIA's National Committee on Architecture for Education. Pfau is a modernist who balances conceptual rigor with a love for building.
How a Moveable Space Can Ignite Creativity in the Classroom

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How a Moveable Space Can Ignite Creativity in the Classroom

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One of the most exciting models of learning is "design thinking." It combines hands on learning (tinkering) with independent problem solving methodologies. This concept is basically the same as the problem solving-based creative process taught in many design disciplines, like architecture, engineering, and game design.

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Learning by making has been around since long before edtech-just think about what the adventurous explorers or intrepid settlers of yore would have thought of "Do-It-Yourself." But with thousands of kid-friendly tech tools and a whole World Wide Web of resources out there, creative, interesting opportunities for learning-by-making abound for everyone.

Okay, so with all those resources, where should you start to build a makerspace? Here at EdSurge, we've rolled up our sleeves, put on our protective goggles, and built a Maker Guide from scratch, just for you.

Read on for ideas from the educators and entrepreneurs who think making 24/7, including what is involved with project-based learning and making in the classroom and tried-and-true lessons from the field on starting your makerspace.

Making on a budget? We surely do. We've got ideas for stocking your space with resources from your arts and crafts closet, plus inspiration from educators working to bring makerspaces to low-income and all-girls classrooms.

Looking to create a makerspace in your home or classroom? Here are some supplies you might need, ranging from ones you can find in your desk drawer or arts and crafts closet to ones you can buy that are specially designed for makers like you!

What supplies do you use in your makerspace? Share your suggestions in the comments section below!

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How to Build Your Makerspace - EdSurge Guides

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Learning by making has been around since long before edtech-just think about what the adventurous explorers or intrepid settlers of yore would have thought of "Do-It-Yourself." But with thousands of kid-friendly tech tools and a whole World Wide Web of resources out there, creative, interesting opportunities for learning-by-making abound for everyone.

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This post may contain affiliate links.

We love fun and easy STEM ( Science, Technology Engineering and Math) activities.

This engineering challenge activity can be done by young kids and older kids alike and uses what you already have on hand-no need to buy any supplies.

We are going to test the strength of paper, folded in differently shaped columns, by piling books on top. This is very similar to how columns are used to support buildings and other structures.

Triangle, square and circle. Which paper is the strongest?

Watch this video to see how we conducted our STEM challenge and what the results were.

{This post contains affiliate links. Your purchase helps with the costs of providing free activities on this blog. Thank you!}

The Science Behind It

The cylinder can support the most books because it's walls don't have any edges. The force of the books cannot become concentrated in a particular area. The load is distributed evenly. In other words, all parts of the cylinder are sharing the load of the books. All parts of the cylinder, therefore, contribute to it's overall strength until, finally, it collapses.

The square and triangle deform more easily. They shift the weight of the books to their edges and corners, which deforms their walls and leads to a quick collapse. They are unable to carry weight only at their edges.

Have you noticed columns in buildings and other structures, like parking garages? What shape are the columns? Are they on the inside of the building/structure to serve their practical purpose of supporting beams or arches? Or are they exterior columns which lend support but also beauty to the structure?

Early architects in several ancient civilizations used columns in architecture including the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.

We used this LEGO kit to demonstrate both interior and exterior columns in architecture.

Challenge Instructions

Use regular copy paper, not card stock for this challenge.

Fold each paper into the three shapes and secure with tape.

Slowly pile books on top of each shape.

How many books can you pile on top of each shape? We did this experiment three times and got three different results, although the cylinder always bore the weight of three to four times the amount of books as the square or triangle.

We were inspired to do this experiment by Janice VanCleave's 200 Gooey, Slippery, Slimy, Weird and Fun Experiments .

More fun STEM activities for kids:

Share this idea on Pinterest:

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STEM Activities for Kids: How strong is a piece of paper? | Creekside Learning

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This post may contain affiliate links. We love fun and easy STEM ( Science, Technology Engineering and Math) activities. This engineering challenge activity can be done by young kids and older kids alike and uses what you already have on hand-no need to buy any supplies.

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This Pin was discovered by Stephanie Smith. Discover (and save!) your own Pins on Pinterest.

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Makerspace STEAM Activity: LED Circuit Bookmarks

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Makerspace STEAM Activity: LED Circuit Bookmarks Are you looking for a great way to get all of your students involved in a Maker activity while learning about important concepts of science? Then this activity is for you! These sheets will give you and your

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Despite all the press makerspaces receive, not all are successful. Oftentimes when schools create makerspaces, excitement builds for the first few weeks as students create and explore. But as time passes, students lose interest, and the makerspaces languish silently, gathering dust. The tools that filled those makerspaces - big and small, expensive and reused, high-tech and no tech - waste away, a constant reminder that the schools' investment was all for nothing.

An autopsy reveals the cause of death: "They didn't really plan and create a makerspace that's authentic to their community," said Laura Fleming, library media specialist at New Milford High in New Jersey, and author of Worlds of Making: Best Practices for Establishing a Makerspace for Your School.

But it doesn't have to end this way. By following four steps, education leaders, students, teachers, parents and community members can work together to plan vibrant makerspaces that go the distance.

1. Understand your learners

Each school has a unique DNA made up of students with different interests, so a makerspace that's designed for students who create art in New Mexico may not work for students who hike in the mountains every week in Colorado. While school leaders talk a lot about student-centered learning, not many of them actually ask students what they like to do for fun on the weekends, what kind of hobbies they have or what they're interested in, Fleming said. Instead, they ask other district leaders what tools they bought for their makerspaces and buy the same things.

"Without the voice of a learner, you really just have a bunch of stuff in the corner," she said. "It's their voice that gives the space meaning."

She recommends asking questions to find out more about who students are, either informally by walking up to them in the hallway or formally with an online survey. The answers will help shape the makerspace so that it will be authentic to a school's community.

2. Assess existing programs

To justify a makerspace, district and school leaders often want to know how the learning that happens there will tie back to the curriculum and content standards at each grade level. This step in the planning process is the perfect time to address those questions.

By looking at what's already happening in formal classroom learning environments, education leaders may find areas they thoroughly cover, as well as holes they need to fill, Fleming said. Then they can pull themes together that connect with and enrich what they're already doing.

For example, a high school already focused so much on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) that its students were overworked, under pressure and would have hated a STEM-themed makerspace. So they created a health and wellness theme instead.

"It's really not about the technology, it's really not about STEM or any of those things," Fleming said. "It's a unique learning environment that encourages tinkering, play - and the key is open-ended exploration for all."

This open-ended exploration allows students to decide what learning adventure they will go on each day, which they can't do in most classrooms.

3. Consider global trends and best practices

The planning team should look at what's happening in the world around them. Oftentimes, hot topics that make the news don't make it into the curriculum that's taught in class. But they can be quickly incorporated into makerspaces.

When drones first took off in the news, Fleming mixed them into her makerspace under the theme of flight. She's also pulled in wearable technology and molecular gastronomy themes.

4. Develop, update themes

Frequently, makerspaces lose student interest because they have the same themes for years on end, Fleming said. If there's nothing new to draw students in, they won't come. But by going through this four-step planning process at least once a year, the makerspace team can keep the space fresh and sustainable so it will draw students back over and over.

Themes also allow students to go deeper with their learning. For example, a theme that includes engineering, design and architecture will be richer because it pulls together different types of materials, guest speakers and literature to support it. In an unthemed environment, students would just play with LEGOS and miss out on opportunities to design something differently.

A unique makerspace

By using this planning process, three different school districts would come up with three different makerspaces that don't look anything alike. Some will have a large budget and some will have no budget. Some will have big tech tools including 3-D printers and laser cutters; others will have paper and string. Some will be in libraries, and others will be in hallways or spread out all over campus. And that's the beauty of makerspaces - they can be created on any budget with any material in any place.

"There is no one right way to do this," Fleming said. "It's all about doing it in a way that works best for your school community."

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4 Steps to Planning a Successful Makerspace

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Despite all the press makerspaces receive, not all are successful. Oftentimes when schools create makerspaces, excitement builds for the first few weeks as students create and explore. But as time passes, students lose interest, and the makerspaces languish silently, gathering dust.

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Last fall, high school librarian IdaMae Craddock got an unusual call from someone at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. The college was piecing together a human skeleton that had been found in the dorms during summer cleaning. Reportedly missing from the science department since the 1970s, the skeleton was being used as a mascot by a secret society on campus.

The Lynchburg official asked Craddock if her students would help them out by creating 3-D scans of the teeth, a task that built on some of the things they'd done in their school maker space the previous year. They had hacked an Xbox to generate 3-D images, usually scanning faces and heads-even Craddock's.

"This year, [they did] some real work with it," says Craddock, who works at Monticello High School in Charlottesville, VA. "And that's nice."

The maker zeitgeist has evolved far beyond the day when an educator might set objects-say, a box of robotic LEGOs-in a library corner and call it a "maker lab." Educators are now focusing on how the maker movement can be truly meaningful: it's not about where making is happening, but about how creating, experimenting, and collaborating impact education. In addition, some high schoolers tinkering their free periods away can discover a passion-sometimes leading to a future educational focus or even scholarship money.

"The maker movement...encourages a growth mind-set, which tolerates risk and failure and maybe even encourages it," says Laura Fleming, library media specialist with the New Milford (NJ) High School. "It has been the great equalizer within, and in some ways against, our modern education system by allowing opportunities for creativity and innovation to take place through informal learning."

Call it the second wave of making. From Texas to New York, students build their own stations, ideas come as often from mishaps as upcycled materials, and librarians see their labs as training wheels for students-a chance to play their way into real-world skills.

"It's a secondary level of learning," says Priscille Dando, coordinator of library information services with Fairfax (VA) County Public Schools. "They may understand discrete facts they can parrot, but making activates different parts of their brains....You're getting more bang for buck, not just regurgitation."

No space required

Where can kids explore these deeper learning opportunities? Many librarians fear that without a dedicated area, launching their own maker movement may be out of the question. A space can be anywhere you lay out a project-even for a day, says Shannon Hyman, the school librarian and information specialist at Kaechele Elementary School library in Glen Allen, VA (a second runner-up for SLJ 's 2014 Build Something Bold Award). Those worried that they lack the perfect lab are missing the point.

"Sometimes librarians say, 'I can't do that because I don't have a space,'" Hyman says. "I have maker spaces throughout the library, wherever there is an open spot. I also use trays that have been upcycled from crafting drawers, and those define an area. But you can take them and move them if you need the space for something else."

Don't wait for a perfect space-or frankly, any space, says Tim Carrigan, senior library program officer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which has supported learning labs since launching its first partnership with the MacArthur Foundation in 2010. Doing so could take valuable programming from students and patrons.

Melissa Techman originally thought that she would donate her office to create a maker lab at Broadus Wood Elementary School at Earlysville, VA. But the school librarian says her students asked her to keep her office as is. They liked having the quiet corner where they could record videos or work in small groups. So instead, making happens in spots around the library-and classrooms. "I've been wrestling with what a maker space has to look like," Techman says. "If you want to say my whole library is a maker space, well, sometimes it looks like one."

In Dando's district, schools take whatever area they can get and adapt their tinkering to suit, she says. One has an outdoor courtyard, more optimal than a library for large, STEM-based projects. Another uses its cafeteria, while a third co-opted its gym when not in use, assigning each grade a time to come down and work, which resulted in the whole school building a Rube Goldberg-type machine last year. "You just have to be creative with what things can take place where," says Dando.

Others librarians see an upside to not having a specific room-or tools. With a more fluid environment, projects can be flexible, says Cindy Wall, head of children's services at the Southington (CT) Library and Museum and coauthor of The Maker Cookbook: Recipes for Children's and 'Tween Library Programming (Libraries Unlimited, 2014). "The positive of not having a maker space is that [you don't] depend on what's there," she says. "If you have a space with a bunch of 3-D printers, then you're going to do a lot of 3-D programming, because that's what you have."

Lessons learned

A failed program can lead to insight-as Dianne Connery, library director at the Pottsboro (TX) Library, discovered. Her library spent $9,500, part of a grant, on SLR and GoPro cameras, touch-screen computers, and other tech tools to launch a class to attract local teens to the library. About 15 signed up for the six-week course in 2014. But since then, few have shown much interest. Connery now encourages local professional groups, including realtors, to use the equipment, and the local high school borrows the cameras. "I thought [teens] would be knocking down doors to get in, but they weren't," says Connery. "Here was my learning curve."

Craddock is also learning that she needs to keep an eye on the number of boys and girls in her lab. "[The] ratio is off," she says, with three girls and 12 boys. "But I'm working on it. And you have to start someplace."

Her efforts are yielding results. A former student spent hours of his own time on the sewing machines inside the maker lab, designing and creating an eclectic collection of clothes that earned him a full scholarship to Virginia Commonwealth University. Fleming mentions another student "who had no idea what she would do when she graduated." She tinkered whenever she could in the maker lab's Take Apart station, building computers. Today, she's studying internet technology at college.

Scenarios like these prove that maker culture is vital to education today, says Techman. With standardized testing almost a linchpin in school districts, tinkering, making, and exploring opens up minds-and literally doors-to new ways of thinking. "Loosening things up," she says, sparks opportunity. "There are no good grades or bad ones. You try, discover, take what you've learned, and you start again."

Teacher training

Getting teacher and administrator support was important to Hyman, who focused on her school's vision. She scheduled orientations with classes and teachers so "everyone [would] know this wasn't going to be about making pretty art projects," she says. Her effort paid off, with a $400 stipend from the PTA, bumped to $800 for 2015-16.

"I worked hard to see what the goals were at the school to make sure we were moving forward in terms of literacy," Hyman says. "If you don't, it's hard to get buy-in from stakeholders."

Many of the projects at Monticello High are teacher driven, Craddock says. Instructors reserve space and collaborate with her on how to weave their lesson into a making experience. One class researched how tennis shoes were put together. With Craddock, they built a sneaker, using cardboard, fabric, and hot glue. For a Spanish class, they produced workout lessons-in Spanish.

Teachers and librarians may have different objectives while working making into a curriculum. But Dando believes that librarians still should consider how to stretch learning around a specific assignment-and they don't need the nod of approval from a principal, or even a teacher, to do so.

"It's [about], 'How can we elevate that content to be more engaging so that it becomes more relevant than words on a page or questions on a test?'" she says. Getting to the answer through collaboration is best, "but if not, that's still your responsibility."

Out-of-the box programming

With the right outlook, serendipity can lead to innovation. Over the holidays, Hyman asked parents to save leftover packing peanuts to use for crafting activities, and to send them in when the children returned to school. When some stored near the sink got wet and dissolved, Hyman discovered that a little water would make the peanuts stick together-not disappear. She set up a portable station with a cup of water, a bucket of peanuts, and displayed two stuck-together peanuts-with no explanation. "The next thing I knew, the students were building what looked like ice sculptures," she says. Wall augments her library lab with ideas gleaned from BuzzFeed and TEDTalks, and The Maker Cookbook.

Shawn Hinger, teacher librarian at Clarke Middle School in Athens, GA, mines ideas from her college intern, Rachael Lehner, a math major from the University of Georgia who is pursuing an undergraduate certificate in learning, design, and technology. "She's in a class they call Maker Dawgs," says Hinger. "We put those elements into play at the library."

Fleming notes that many librarians think maker labs need a STEM connection or that they require a STEM background. Fleming has "zero expertise" in STEM, she says-but that just gives the high schoolers more opportunities to figure things out on their own and explain them to her.

"Sometimes I see people are hesitant to have a maker space because they're not experts, which holds them back," she says. "People just have to put the learning into the hands of their students."

Lauren Britton, a doctoral student at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies, believes that type of engagement is optimal for transformative learning-the kind that encourages curiosity, allowing children (and adults) to figure things out by themselves-and from their peers. "You give them the tools and knowledge to discover on their own," says Britton, a former librarian at the Fayetteville (NY) Free Library, who is credited by many for helping to bring the maker space movement at libraries into existence. "The magic of these spaces is about the informal aspect of learning, rather than sitting in a classroom and trying to be a recital of information."

Cost concerns

Tight budgets, like worries about adequate space, are top concerns to most school librarians. Hinger has about $7,000 in her annual budget to cover the library and lab for the 675 students at her school. So she gets creative. She proposed students build their own LEGO Mindstorms table with materials from plywood to light tubes, which they plan to do this year with a $50 donation from Home Depot (plus 10 percent off the rest of the $250 cost). She also posted on DonorsChoose.org, where she recently turned $1,000 in seed money into $3,000 for a 3-D printer.

With an annual budget of $10,000 for the 2014-15 school year, Craddock looks for donations wherever she can get them. A community member who couldn't sew anymore recently gave 70 pounds of fabric-and a cancelled home economics program yielded sewing machines. A construction company offered a five-foot-wide plot printer‚ plus toner. MIT's Edgerton Center, a maker space and community center for college and K-12 students, sent the school electrical components, LED lights, and other items. And when funding for the U.S. Air Force's ROTC program was pulled at Craddock's school, the organization left behind storage bins after they took the uniforms, insignia, and shoes.

"We raided those," says Craddock, adding, "I'm surprised how much the students fund their own projects as well."

Fleming takes things from wherever she can get them-including old computers from the school's technology department that would normally get discarded. She puts those in her lab's Take Apart station. "I would rather have a budget," she says. "But it's times like this when you are the most creative and find ways to make things happen."

Making things happen is what matters most. "I think of maker culture as a renaissance for education," Techman says. "Education wasn't always 'sit in a chair and suffer as you prepare for standardized testing.' Once you bring real-life problems into the experience of students, it's a better education."

School Library Journal contributing editor Lauren Barack writes about the connection between media and education, business, and technology. A recipient of the Loeb Award for online journalism, she can be found at www.laurenbarack.com.

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Where the Magic Happens: library maker programs | The Maker Issue

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Last fall, high school librarian IdaMae Craddock got an unusual call from someone at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. The college was piecing together a human skeleton that had been found in the dorms during summer cleaning. Reportedly missing from the science department since the 1970s, the skeleton was being used as a mascot by a secret society on campus.

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Several of you have asked me to keep you updated on the Circulating Maker Kits that we started in late July and early of August 2015 at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH).

To date we have 16 kits and yesterday 6 of them were checked out.

To date the 16 kits have circulated 25 times.

The most popular kit seems to be the Stop Motion Animation kit. It was returned on Tuesday and I went to look for it Wednesday on the shelf because I needed something in it, it had already been checked out again. It has circulated 3 times total.

One kit already seems to be overdue and we fear it may not be coming back. However, we expected there would be some loss just as there is with all of our other material types.

We did have to tweak some of the table of contents to make it easier for the staff to check the kits in and out and make sure all of the items were present in the kits.

All in all, the Circulating Maker Kits appear to be doing well for us.

And just for fun, here's a picture of The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County's library director John Chidester checking out one of the Circulating Maker Kits for his grandson.

You can read more about the Circulating Maker Kits at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and some of my other MakerSpace posts here.

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Several of you have asked me to keep you updated on the Circulating Maker Kits that we started in late July and early of August 2015 at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County (OH). To date we have 16 kits and yesterday 6 of them were checked out.

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By Katie Darty on

One built a whiteboard tabletop out of shower board. Another painted a wall to create an easy green screen. Librarians dream up ingenious ways to save money and get creative in their libraries, and they're more than willing to share ideas. You, too, can be part of this thrifty crowdsourced design movement, inspired in part by Jennifer LaGarde and Mark Samberg, who hosted the presentation " MacGyver Librarianship: The Art of Doing More with Less" (#macgyverlibrarianship) at the NCTIES ed tech conference in March in Raleigh, NC. After attending, I was inspired to transform my school library with a little help from our school's Interior Design II class.

the power of paint

Our library had institution white walls, so we decided to paint our drop ceilings to pull in more color. The design class contacted our county's paint department and discovered that it had lots of white that it would tint and donate to our remodel for free. The class then worked with us to create a color palette and vision for the library that would fit with our youthful clients. Using donorschoose.org, we started a drive to add more fun elements to the library. Within weeks, the project was fully funded, with $1,189 dollars. We used that to buy pillows, bean bag chairs, and rugs. Employing leftover donated paint, we jazzed up our old card catalog stand and used it to store maker space supplies. TOTAL SPENT: $0

A Circ desk that rules

For a fun focal point, we tiled our circulation desk with rulers we had transformed with our donated paint. We ordered the rulers through our Ingles Tools for Schools program and were able to get more than 500 of them for free. For this project, we bought paint brushes and construction adhesive to glue the rulers to the old desk. TOTAL SPENT: $25

CRAFTY CARTS

The quickest update was spray-painting four of our dull gray library carts. We chose Valspar's Golden Maize and Nautical to add a splash of color. Each cart needed between two and three cans of paint at four to five dollars per can. TOTAL SPENT: $56

fun with fabric

Our biggest expense was purchasing fabric to reupholster our dated furniture. The wood frames were sanded, primed, and painted gray by our carpentry and interior design class. Our library assistant is also a master tailor, and he reupholstered all five fabric chairs and four couches with updated fabrics in our new color palette.

Our design class enlivened our five end tables by painting them gray and using extra copies of past school yearbooks to collage the tops. We covered them with a thick layer of Mod Podge, an all-in-one glue sealer and finish used for decoupage, to protect the photos. We purchased sandpaper sponges ($10.97), primer ($19.98), Mod Podge ($19.98), and fabric ($374.19). The local fabric and craft stores also gave us a school discount! TOTAL SPENT: $425.12

name that masterpiece

Lastly, the interior design class freshened up our wooden tables with the same gray paint as the chairs, and we painted the tabletops with a tinted oil-based paint that was donated by the paint department. To make our space more flexible, our janitor gave us casters from broken
computer chairs that we attached to the bottoms of the table legs. We bought additional casters from the hardware store for $100 and added the wheels to all the tables in the library. Now it's a breeze to change the space for different events happening in the library. We also painted our plain wooden bookshelves with blue chalkboard paint ($25.96). Our Art II students painted wooden computer chairs with their renditions of famous works of art as a final project for free.The recreated imagery from the "Water Lilies" series by Claude Monet and The Scream by Edvard Munch (above) as well as The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo and Still Life with Parrot and Fruit by Frida Kahlo (right).
Katie Darty is a librarian at North Buncombe High School in Weaverville, NC. She transformed her library with the help of fellow librarian Cindy Mackiernan, assistant Tony Sykes, and interior design teacher Stephanie Griffin. She lives in Asheville, NC, with her husband, Josh, and their daughter, Charlie. Contact her at anna.darty@bcsemail.org, or follow her library on Twitter.

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Sprucing Up My School Library for Less than $600

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By Katie Darty on One built a whiteboard tabletop out of shower board. Another painted a wall to create an easy green screen. Librarians dream up ingenious ways to save money and get creative in their libraries, and they're more than willing to share ideas.

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Teacher to Teacher Ideas in the Top Teaching Blog | Scholastic

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Exciting lesson ideas, classroom strategies, teaching tips, book lists, videos, and reproducibles in a daily blog by teachers from the classrooms of extraordinary mentor

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We all have one, that ONE stinking string of holiday lights that only blink on momentarily when we shake it against the hard floor thinking that if we do it hard enough we'll be able to shake it on for good. Or maybe you have the set that only half lights up when plugged in, then when you go to unplug the piece of rubbish that it is, it all lights like a bad joke. Well, do me a favor, before you ball up that string and toss it in the garbage, check out how to make some fun circuits that you can challenge kids to make at any age.

To begin, you will need to get the following supplies: file folder (or something to attach it to - I'll explain why I use a file folder in a sec), tape, aluminum foil, brass fasteners, scissors, 9-volt battery and that darn string of holiday lights.

To prepare the lights, you will need to cut the string apart and score the bottom of each light with scissors - just enough to remove the plastic coating. At first this will be time consuming, but you will be able to use these lights for years if using them in the classroom.

Next, you will want to cut the aluminum foil into strips to serve as the students "wires". You will use three brass fasteners to create a "switch" and of course the 9-volt battery will be the power source. A very simple series circuit is shown below. Notice the space left in the aluminum foil for both the switches and the battery:

Depending on the grade level of the students, you can have them build a very simple circuit or a very complex circuit with both series and parallel circuits combined. For my students I have them use file folders in order to design and build a series on one side, then a parallel on the other with certain parameters for the switches. The students have an amazing time and there is always 100% participation and together we saved those lights from a trip to the landfill!

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We all have one, that ONE stinking string of holiday lights that only blink on momentarily when we shake it against the hard floor thinking that if we do it hard enough we'll be able to shake it on for...

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Google Classroom Teacher & Student Guide

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Google Classroom is your mission control for class. Create classes, distribute assignments, send feedback, and see everything in one place. Instant. Paperless. Easy. (google.com/edu/products) My own personal experience with Google Classroom...

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Building Challenge STEM and Writing Centers

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Building Challenge STEM and Writing Centers These centers have students building and writing about their build. There are challenges that include measurement, research and writing that go along with each build. There are 9 different building challenges with differentiation in some of the builds.

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Want to see my STEM Bins setup up close and personal? Watch the following video!

How many times during our teaching day do we hear these words from our students? Oftentimes, it is much too often, and students are provided a handful of the same options to keep them busy until our next transition. Sometimes students are instructed to read, sometimes to write in journals, and others are given yet another worksheet to complete. Lately, I've been considering a way to change up our game, and I've thought to myself:
Instead of giving our kids MORE work, let's give them more MEANINGFUL work.
For elementary students, meaningful work should be hands-on, engaging, and open ended. Why?! Because children have a natural drive to play, explore, and engineer whenever possible.

Enter STEM BINS!

STEM Bins are plastic school boxes filled with an engineering manipulative of your choice, such as Legos, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, unifix cubes, toothpicks and playdough, or popsicle sticks with velcro on the ends. The boxes also contain small sets of task cards on metal rings that picture a variety of basic engineering structures. STEM Bins can be placed on an easily accessible shelf in the classroom or inside a classroom MakerSpace area. When students' regular classwork is complete, they can take one STEM Bin at a time, either to their seat or a more quiet carpet area so as not to distract other students who are working, and get a quiet moment to engineer. They use the materials in the box to construct as many different structures on the cards as they can. And instead of being just "busy," students are engaged in creative, complex tasks and are encouraged to think like inventors. Kinesthetic learners, spatial learners, and logical learners will love exploring the different possibilities for the building materials as they try to construct more challenging structures.

Even better? The prep and management on the teacher's part is minimal! The task cards are interchangeable with any building material and include real world photos to encourage students to visualize more realistic structures.

Upper Grade teachers, STEM Bins will even work for you! So many third through fifth grade students and teachers are loving the hands-on engagement that STEM Bins provide. I've added task cards with no photo cues and written response sheets that are just right for big kids:

Most of the suggested materials for STEM Bins are math manipulatives or inexpensive crafting materials that you likely already have in your classroom or can pick up at the dollar store. I'm always on the hunt for anything and everything that my students can build with so I can add it to my STEM Bins!

Click below to purchase a set of 12 school boxes through my Amazon Affiliate Link:

Since every classroom has a variety of manipulatives already on hand, I've also included editable box covers and task cards so you can customize them to your needs. Some of my favorite places to find engineering materials are Target Dollar Spot and the Dollar Store.

STEM Bins aren't just ideal for early finishers! Here are some ways you can use them elsewhere during your day:

You can also take students' engineering a step further by adding a written component. The youngest students in Pre K and Kinder can can draw pictures of their different structures. First through fifth graders can "Build, Draw, and Write" with descriptive sentences or imaginative stories about their structures. If you'd like to save copies, simply place any of the templates inside plastic page protectors and students can use dry erase markers to write and wipe drawings and responses.

Click below to see my answers to Frequently Asked Questions about STEM Bins:

Looking to keep your STEM Bins fresh and exciting throughout the year? Check out the post below:
How to Spice Up STEM Bins
Also, check out my Bundle of Seasonal Task Cards, literacy and math Quick Writes, and all new Outdoor Discovery STEM Bins below!

I hope you will consider giving your students a hands-on alternative to busy work with STEM Bins in your classroom!

***Fonts by KG Fonts and Styled Image by Jen Jones of Hello Literacy.***

***This post contain an affiliate link for Amazon. By purchasing an item on the Amazon site using this link, I will receive a small commission on your purchase.***

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STEM Bins: Hands-on Solutions for Early Finishers - Teach Outside the Box

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STEM Bins for Elementary Students Want to see my STEM Bins setup up close and personal? Watch the following video! "I'm finished! What do I do now?" How many times during our teaching day do we hear these words from our students? Oftentimes, it is much too often, and students are provided a handful of ...