3 Ways Your MakerFair Can Be An Awesome Advocacy Tool As I reflect back on these three MakerFairs, I’ve come to realize what a powerful advocacy tool they have been for our space. You can tell people about how awesome your makerspace is all you want, but when they actually get to see it in … Read more
Reflecting on “Defining Makerspaces” Just over a year ago, I wrote my post on Defining Makerspaces. It was inspired after receiving a criticism about how my makerspace wasn’t a “real makerspace” because we didn’t have any power tools. The focus on that article was how a makerspace is defined more by the learning experiences of … Read more
How to Organize Your littleBits Back in the summer of 2014 when our makerspace was really starting to take shape, I won a littleBits ProLibrary in their Summer of STEAM contest. The library came with the now optional wall storage but I knew that I didn’t have a wall space where I wanted to put … Read more
This post is part of an occasional Makerspace Logisitics series, where I answer reader questions about the logistics of running our makerspace. Here, I address what happens to my makerspace when I’m out In an ideal world… I would have a secretary and a second librarian and I would always get substitutes when I’m out. … Read more
If you’ve been following Renovated Learning for awhile, you might remember the Catapult Challenge my Stewart Makers Club did last year with Colleen Graves’ students at Lamar Middle School. My students had SO MUCH FUN with that challenge, although I always felt like Catapult Challenge was a bit of a misnomer, since our students’ creations … Read more
I’ve admired littleBits as a company pretty much since I got started with the Maker Movement. So when they asked me last week if I’d like to try out a sample of their new STEAM Student set, I was more than happy to oblige. I played with it a bit myself over the weekend and … Read more
Make & Takes Build Excitement & Engagement A few weeks ago, I was meeting with a group of girls to plan activities we want to do with our STEMgirls club that we’re starting. They had tons of great ideas and suggestions: “We want to learn how to sew and make beds for an animal shelter” … Read more
Stewart Middle Magnet is a STEM magnet school. Part of the curriculum comes from Project Lead the Way, including classes in engineering, robotics and aerospace. The Design Process is an important part of that curriculum. It also ties in beautifully with what we do in our makerspace. So it made sense for me to partner … Read more
The Exploratorium & The Tinkering MOOC The Exploratorium is an amazing hands-on science museum in San Francisco. They created a makerspace for their patrons called The Tinkering Studio. I participated in their Tinkering MOOC this past summer and it was a fantastic experience. They published their book, The Art of Tinkering, back in early 2014. … Read more
Learning How to Knit I’ve been a knitter since my best friend in college first gave me a set of needles and taught me the basic stitches. This was back in 2002. When I first started out, I needed a lot of help and guidance. I would check out books on knitting from the public library. … Read more