Making Makers: Moving towards a Makerspace Community

After a fun, tiring first week of school, I had the privilege to attend a conference on Makerspaces hosted by ICE Indiana. This conference was well worth the drive to see a makerspace being developed by Creativity Labs at Indiana University and to connect with other educators who wanted to bring this experience into their classrooms or learning spaces. I was inspired and want to make this a reality for our students, in our building!

What is a Makerspace?

"A makerspace is not solely a science lab, woodshop, computer lab or art room, but it may contain elements found in all of these familiar spaces. Therefore, it must be designed to accommodate a wide range of activities, tools and materials." Edutopia www.edutopia.org/.../designing-a-school-makerspace-jennifer-coo...

I Want That!!! How can I participate?

As a classroom teacher, your room is already a makerspace. You come together to learn and build a community with common resources.

To build on what we already do, we should enable our students to be creative by giving them materials, time, and space to tinker with their hands and create something great. To get started in your own classroom, check out Renovated Learning; I enjoy reading about her journey with a makerspace.

Ways to Foster a Maker Community in Your Classroom
Below are a few ideas that I walked away with that can easily be added to enrich the classroom curriculum. The materials needed are common and fairly easy to get your hands on for the students.

• Toy Remixing: Collect old toy figures and the students take them apart. The students will then use the toy pieces to mix and match to create a new figure. The students can then use this figure as inspiration for a creative writing piece.

• Lego Builds: Students use legos to retell a story. The students use Lego Movie Maker to take pictures of the figures to complete a movie of the story they just read. 

• Paper Roller Coasters: Students use only paper and tape (a lot of it!) to design and construct a roller coaster. This project and be used to teach the design process or simple machines.

After this conference I was inspired to build the idea of a maker community both in the Adventure Center with high tech and low tech tools but also in the classrooms. This is an opportunity that would be great for our students. They can use their ideas, passions, and interests to invent to learn during Genius Hour and take their learning and finished product with them when they leave to do great things.

Further Resources:
Renovated Learning
Designing a Makerspace
ISTE Create a School Makerspace

On Twitter: 
#makered
#makermovement
#makerspace
#inventtolearn


If you are intrigued by makerspace or are doing it in your classroom/school, I would LOVE to hear from you!

Co-Planning with Pinterest

Teachers LOVE Pinterest! I don't know how I taught before it. Pinterest is a great tool to find resources, lessons, or ideas to use in your classroom.

What is Pinterest?

It is a place that will hold all of the great things that you (or other people that you follow) find on the internet. The "pins" are stored all in one place and can be organized by category on different "boards". I am sure that many of you are like me and already have an account, so start a shared board!

Co-Planning with Pinterest: Group Boards

Outside of finding great ideas for you to pin and use later, Pinterest offers group boards where more than one person can pin. This is a fantastic tool to make planning with your grade level group or planning team much simpler. Our school days are hectic and busy, home life is precious, so finding a good time to share ideas for curriculum is a challenge. This is where Group Boards come in handy!

When you are surfing online for new, innovative curriculum resources, you can easily share them with your grade level team by pinning to your shared board. These boards can be private so that only invited members can see what is pinned, or public. Even if the board if public, only people who are invited to pin to the board are able to do so.

All About Boards on Pinterest

As your days begin to blur together, think about utilizing shared boards on Pinterest to gather and share ideas with your team from the comforts of your own home surrounded by whomever or whatever is important to you.

Happy pinning!

Twitter for Teachers

Image from http://cybraryman.com/twitter.html

It is that time of year again; Back to School! This season brings us many mixed emotions. All at once we feel nervous, anxious, stressed, excited, overwhelmed, and exhausted all at the same time. Before you continue reading, take a deep breath to clear your mind and remember--you've got this!

As you are spending all your waking and sometimes non waking hours preparing for the upcoming school year and your new group of students take a few minutes for yourself (well not entirely for yourself). Join Twitter--or refresh your feed.

Twitter is a powerful tool. It connects you to people all over the world, current happenings, and many opinions and ideas. So you might be thinking, if I have a few minutes everyday to myself, why spend it on Twitter.

What is Twitter?

Why Twitter?

Twitter is a great resource for teachers. Teachers are excellent about sharing with your colleagues across the hall. View Twitter as a group of teachers that are across a very large hall. Teachers are excellent at searching online for new activities, experiences, websites, and tools to bring into their classrooms. Many teachers already love Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers to connect with other educators and the great activities they are doing in their classrooms. Did you know that Twitter can help do the same thing but with a wider audience?

Twitter is also a great tool to share what you and your students are doing. Consider sharing your twitter name (handle) with the parents of your students. This is an easy way for them to follow what their kids are doing on a regular basis; most of them already utilize Twitter, so why not use it to remove the walls on your classroom. You can create a hashtag for your classroom as another means to share and follow what you and your students are doing. Remember #pvepd? Your Twitter feed can also be displayed on your Canvas page so that everything is in a central location for families and students alike.

How to Get Started

If you are willing to give Twitter a try, first you need to create an account. There are 2 ways to do this: 

1. Log on to www.twitter.com

or 

2. Download the app for your smartphone or tablet

I suggest doing both!

Next, you need to build your timeline so that it becomes a powerful, personalized tool for professional development. Here is a great way to get started. 

Building Your PLN (Professional Learning Network)

Building your PLN is very easy with Twitter. It is as simple as typing into the search bar. You can search for people to follow by topic, interest, or hashtag. When you created your Twitter account, Twitter most likely created a list of people you should follow. These are all excellent ways to create a list of people to follow. Don't forget to follow the other teachers in your building and district! 

Image from http://www.edudemic.com/guides/guide-to-twitter/

Connecting and Collaborating with Educators

Twitter is about making connections and collaborating with others. Once you have a list of people that you follow, the next step is to collaborate and interact with them. This is done by tweeting or replying to them by including their handle (ex. @mrsdrakepve), sending them a direct message via Twitter, or participating in a chat on Twitter. 

Images from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/twitter-teachers

Creating and Sharing

Are you doing something fun in your classroom? Did you find a great tool or resource online? Did someone have a great idea? Share it! 

Tweet: Share what you are doing in your classroom or what great things your students are doing with a tweet. A tweet is a 140 characters or less. Include a photo or video to make your message more exciting and interesting for your followers. *Remember Tweets are public, so if you include a photo or video be sure you have photo clearance for all those included.*

Retweet: Did someone on your timeline have an idea or resource that you liked or thought others should see? Then simply retweet it. When you do this, you will share this tweet with the people who follow you.

Sharing a Resource: When you are online many sites allow you to share directly. If you read an article that you really liked or found powerful, share it via Twitter! If the site doesn't have sharing buttons, you can simply copy and paste the link and share it that way too. 

Teachers are very humble people. We like to do what is best for our students and keep our celebrations in our classrooms. If you are doing something or have a resource that you find useful and engaging don't be afraid to tell others about it--it isn't bragging! If you are looking for something, are excited by a student achievement, or have an engaging lesson someone else is probably doing the same thing. Help a fellow teacher and spread the wealth! 

When you and your students are doing great things remember to share with @pveelem and use #mypve!

Until next time, continuing honing your craft!

More Resource for Twitter Usage:

http://www.schrockguide.net/twitter-for-teachers.html

http://rossieronline.usc.edu/twitter-for-teachers/

http://www.edudemic.com/guides/guide-to-twitter/
http://cybraryman.com/twitter.html