There is a familiar sort of guilt in my life. That feeling of all the things that I should be doing. I should be reading and replying to more library Facebook threads. I should be going to Twitter chats. I should be spending more of my summer planning for a school year that is impossible … Read more
Checking in I actually had some new posts scheduled and ready to go out, but as things have changed dramatically over the past week, I realized that now might not be the time to write about finding inspiration from co-working spaces for school libraries, or how to organize your makerspace supplies. Like many of you, … Read more
Warning: Kinda personal post ahead. Because life isn’t all LEGOs and Cardboard all the time. 2019 was an up and down year for me. There were plenty of wonderful things going on – a large financial donation to our makerspace at work that allowed me to start up new programs, two keynote speaking opportunities at … Read more
Writing a post like this isn’t easy. I feel like I know in my heart what my philosophy on makerspaces is, but putting it into tangible statements seems harder. So I started thinking about this more as a manifesto – if I was to make a grand statement about what I feel the value of … Read more
Back when I first started out as a school librarian, it was mostly a job. I enjoyed it, it was helping me pay off my student loans, and it was fun. But it was something that I did within my own space. Sure, I would share ideas with other librarians in my district and I … Read more
Educational environments have been stuck for far too long. For decades, we have settled for beige concrete boxes. Little natural sunlight and fresh air. Desks arranged in rows because it makes for the most efficient cleaning, rather than asking what makes for the most productive learning environment. Our libraries are boxes with walls lined with … Read more
Cross-posted from my last e-mail newsletter. Post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using them, I get a small commission that helps support running this blog. Reflections on Passion About two years ago, I wrote the Renovated Learning Manifesto. At the time, I was getting caught up in a fervor of learning about blogging … Read more
I believe that everyone has a Maker Story. A tale of how they came to be a maker. Maybe it was drawing classes in elementary school. Or a blinky soldering kit in middle school. Maybe you don’t consider yourself a maker, but there are those memories from when you were a kid of making things … Read more
Today, a vendor tried to sell me a Makerspace in a Box. I’m not going to say who, because I am not about bashing companies and organizations. It’s my own personal policy to only mention names of companies or products that I actually support. And besides, there are a lot of companies out there right … Read more
I was a media specialist at my previous school for seven years. A TON of things changed there during that time. But they didn’t happen overnight. I built things up piece by piece. I experimented and tried new things. There were plenty of failures, to be sure. But there were also great successes that my … Read more