The 2016 Holiday Gift Guide for Awesome Young (and Old) Makers

The 2016 Holiday Gift Guide for Awesome Young (and Old) Makers | It's the time of year for gift giving, and what better gift to give to a child (or adult) than something that encourages creativity? Here's some of my top picks for gifts for young (and not so young) makers

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

Maker Projects: The Awesome Cardboard Maker Cave

Maker Projects- The Awesome Cardboard Maker Cave | Maker Projects posts feature projects my students have put together. This post details the cardboard Maker Cave that came together over the course of several weeks. The cave was an installation at our schoolwide Maker Fair.

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 Collection

How to Organize Your littleBits collection | In this post, I detail my strategies and best practices for organizing a collection of littleBits. My school has a ProLibrary and 800 students, so finding an effective organization solution was critical.

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

Build of the Week: K’nex and littleBits Laser Cannon

  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

Makerspace Wishlist Part 1: Electronics

Makerspace Wishlist - Electronics | RenovatedLearning.com

(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