In the 2021-2022 school year, I collaborated with our 6th grade science teacher to incorporate makerspace activities into her curriculum. We decided on a hybrid approach where for some projects, students would come up to the library makerspace and for others, I would come down to the classroom. So we decided to purchase supplies (using … Read more
Back in early 2019, I reorganized the fiction section of my library, categorizing books into genres and labeling them with colored stickers to help students find them. You can read more about the exact process I used back here, and I’ll include more genrefication resources at the end of the post. Since that time, … Read more
Cardboard challenges have been a core part of my makerspace programming for the past eight years. I continue to be amazed year after year at the amazing ideas students come up with when given a design challenge and simple, everyday materials. In Part 1 of this post series, I looked at some of my favorite … Read more
In Open Exploration in a Makerspace: What it is and Why We Need it, I explored why having open exploration time in your makerspace in an important part of the learning ecosystem. In this post, I dig more into the practical stuff – how to actually make this work in your space. Open Exploration in … Read more
How I Organized My Fiction Collection by Genre At the end of the 2017-2018 school year, I genrefied my school’s fiction collection. This section of the collection is relatively small at the moment (about 2,000 books). I intend to grow it a lot, so it made sense to me to get started in my first … Read more
When I first started the Stewart Makerspace back in 2014, one of the earliest tools that I purchased was a MaKeyMaKey. My students loved it, and because they are so affordable (only $50 each) I was able to get a set of 10 of them through a DonorsChoose project, allowing students to work on longer … Read more
Figuring out how to get (and keep) your makerspace organized can be a daunting task. I don’t claim to have a magical organization system that works perfectly 100% of the time. But I have learned a few things about keeping our space organized over the last three years. Here’s my advice: How to Create Makerspace … Read more
Why I love Copernicus Carts In setting up a makerspace in my media center, I’m constantly on the lookout for effective, flexible storage solutions for the myriad of supplies we have. I think I’ve found one of the best ones out there in Copernicus. I started with one Book Browser Cart (similar to this one) … 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