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
I’ve been working lately on finding more ways to collaborate with my teachers on lessons. While starting up a conversation with our marine science teacher, I learned that she was working on a unit about coral reefs with her students. Working together, we came up with a plan to focus on coral reef restoration. Inspired … Read more
For the month of October, our after-school STEAM Maker Club has been focusing on the Cardboard Challenge. We started off by watching the short film on Caine’s Arcade together. If you haven’t seen it, watch it right now: My students were inspired by all the amazing games made by Caine, and immediately started working on … 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
Last weekend, I went to my first ever official MakerFaire in Orlando. This was Orlando’s first year of having a fully-fledged MakerFaire and not just a MiniMakerFaire, and it was receiving a lot of attention. I was particularly excited about the Educator’s Forum on Saturday, so I got up early on the weekend, made the … Read more
If you’re the type of person who loves to print instructions out, I’ve created a printable pdf just for you 🙂 Click here for a free download! Building an EPIC LEGO WALL This post is a tutorial on how to build your own Epic LEGO Wall. I’ve had many, many people ask me … Read more
I’ve been dreaming up the idea of a LEGO wall for a long time. I don’t know exactly when I first got the idea, but I do know that it came from seeing a LEGO wall on Pinterest sometime last spring. The image stuck with me in my head, and I kept thinking about it. … Read more
We’ve been back at school for a few weeks now in my district, and the library’s been busy. All the sixth graders received orientation over the last week, and we’ve had almost every student come through the library at least once for book checkout. Our Maker Corner has been quite active. Our afterschool program … Read more
In all the craziness of last year, I forgot to blog about one of the grants we received. Almost every year that I’ve been a media specialist, I’ve applied for a grant from the Hillsborough Education Foundation. In previous years, I’ve applied for more graphic novels, books geared towards reluctant readers, and audiobooks. This year, … Read more
A little slow on getting this one together – after ISTE wrapped up, I needed a little decompression time. This is my last of the daily recaps of ISTE – soon I’ll be posting my takeaways/action plans, etc. The last day of ISTE started out with the SIGLIB keynote and breakfast. Jennifer LaGarde delivered … Read more