I normally tend to stay away from “stuff” lists when it comes to talking about makerspaces. I believe that the stuff that goes into a makerspace should be based around the needs of the students and the school, not on a checklist of items to get. But this list is different. The holiday season is … Read more
The Awesome Cardboard Maker Cave Last spring, I gave my after-school Makers Club a challenge – create a unique, interactive project that guests can interact with at our 2016 Maker Fair. We had held the Cardboard Challenge earlier in the school year, giving my students lots of ideas on how to use cardboard as a medium. … 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
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
*Build of the Week is a regularly occurring segment on Renovated Learning where I share some of the awesome stuff my students have been making over the past week.* This build isn’t actually from this week, but is instead something my students made last month. I finally got all the videos and photos together this week. … Read more
There’s something about teenage boys and an obsession with weapons and war-games. My students had been building all sorts of crazy machine guns lately, so I decided to try to harness that interest by challenging them to create laser-cannons. We combined several different littleBits with the guns made out of K’nex to create different … Read more
*Build of the Week is a regularly occurring segment on Renovated Learning where I’ll share some of the awesome stuff my students have been making over the past week.* My kids amaze me every week with the stuff they come up with in our Makerspace. I’ve converted our video storage room into the Maker Room, and … Read more
(Note: Post updated on 3-19-16.) Makerspaces are hot, and many educators are constantly looking for recommendations on what tools to get for their students. I’m so excited to see so many teachers and librarians working on grants and proposals to get Makerspaces in their schools. Instead of constantly writing 140 character posts on what tools … Read more