iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

These unconventional pumpkin carving designs will ensure you have the spookiest Halloween ever.

One of the easiest circuits to make is a simple circuit. In this tutorial, we will show you how to make a VERY simple circuit using copper tape, an LED and a coin cell battery.

This project can be completed in less than 5 minutes and the template includes two projects per page.

he Cardboard Challenge remains one of my all-time favorite makerspace activities.  I love how accessible it is to students.  How enthusiastic and creative they can be with such simple materials.  I’ll never forget one of my favorite makerspace moments – my students at Stewart were Skyping with another school that was looking to start a makerspace.  They asked my students what their favorite thing in our makerspace was.  The answer could have been robots, or circuits, or a 3D printer.  But their answer was: “Cardboard!  We have so much cardboard!  It’s awesome!”.

Turning abstract concepts like symbolism and imagery into 3D representations develops deeper understanding and engagement. 

We learn valuable lessons when we experience failure and setbacks. Most of us wait for those failures to happen to us, however, instead of seeking them out. But deliberately making mistakes can give us the knowledge we need to more easily overcome obstacles in the future.

Can you create a constellation? Our STEAM Challenge is a great way to invite students to practice researching and use their imagination, in a way that will get them excited to create a constellation. For this challenge, students will use simple items to create a constellation. What you need: Toothpicks Marshmallows Con

With extra time at home, we’re seeing an incredible amount of gardens and yard projects popping up all over social media. The weather is right, and surely we can all use something give us even a momentary distraction from Covid-19. Why not get out in the sun, feel the dirt on your hands, and make or grow something?

Do you have little builders in your house? I’ve got a post for you! Or maybe you have a reluctant builder like I do. I’ve got a post for you too! It’s 100 Invitations to Build, a must download list of fun, unusual even downright silly things that you can build with. Because building helps kids develop in so many ways – fine motor skills, problem solving skills, spatial awareness, creative imagination, the list keeps going.

Turns out, it’s less about “teaching” creativity to children — and more about creating a fertile environment in which their creativity will take root, grow and flourish. Researcher Mitch Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT, explains how we can do this.

Mark it in your diaries love birds, February 14th is the day of love and romance across the globe. Celebrate Valentine's Day and romantic love, friendship and admiration with videos of decorated sweet treats or couples who pull at the heartstrings. All videos are free and ready to be used for any creative purpose under the Mixkit License.

Get into the holiday season by making these Christmas light-up cards using paper circuits.

Learn how to create a simple circuit using copper tape, a coin cell battery and an LED light.

"Build a Raspberry Pi 4K Digital Media Hub in the latest edition of The MagPi magazine.

Inside The MagPi 87…

* Make a cluster computer. Strap four Raspberry Pi 4 computers together and learn to code a supercomputer.

*Hack your kitchen. Make a Raspberry Pi heat-sensor cooking aid, and discover the best projects for cooking precision-perfect food.

*The Top 10 AI Projects. Self-driving cars, vision-detecting devices, super-smart game chess robots, and autonomous quadcopters.

*Discover the smartest Raspberry Pi projects in existence.

*Learn to code with kids’ toys. The best board games and children's toys to learn coding and computing skills.

*Build a robot with sensors. Make a line-following and obstacle-avoiding bot with sensor modules.

*Hack a GraviTrax. Use servo motors to control a marble run game.

*Make retro game maps and levels. Use PICO-8 to create video games.

*Flirc Raspberry Pi 4 review. Keep your Raspberry Pi 4 cool with this heat sink case.

*Win! SmartPi Touch 2 touchscreen cases."

Free Digital Download HERE!!

Over the summer of 2021, I collaborated with our 6th grade science teacher as part of a grant to find ways to incorporate makerspace activities into the curriculum. (Look for posts coming soon about some of the projects we did).  Part of our work was reading the book, Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond.  I found it to be a fantastic, practical resource for bringing hands-on maker learning into the classroom.  Reading this book as a maker librarian gave me a ton of ideas for new ways to collaborate with our STEM classes.   And it’s an excellent resource for classroom teachers as well.

Cardboard challenges have been a core part of my makerspace programming for the past eight years.  I continue to be amazed year after year at the amazing ideas students come up with when given a design challenge and simple, everyday materials.  In Part 1 of this post series, I looked at some of my favorite tools to help facilitate cardboard challenges.  In this post, I focus on other tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years.  Here, I’ll talk about:

    *Storage ideas for wrangling all that cardboard and managing those in-progress projects
   * Adding in recyclable materials
   *Using Design Challenge and constraints to help spur creativity

Get into the Halloween “spirit” by making these paper circuit light-up cards. This tutorial includes a free ebook which contains (19) Halloween themed project templates. Each one comes in black and white outline which allows you to color them and get creative while learning about circuits.

To say it’s been an interesting school year so far would be an understatement.  This has definitely been the most challenging year of my career.  I consider myself lucky to be working at a school that has the resources and leadership to keep us safe.  I know that many, many schools have been left behind.  But even with that, this year has been exhausting.  I’ve had to almost completely rethink and reimagine how I run my library program.  This while also living with the constant low-grade anxiety of living in a global pandemic.

This is a multiple post series.  In this first part, I want to give you an overview of what my school has been doing during COVID and how my library’s physical space has adapted.  For the second post, I’ll talk about programs I’ve done to encourage reading, plus collaborations with teachers.  In the last post, I’ll share how we’ve adapted our makerspace activities to make them work in our current environmen

Making a simple paper airplane is fun and easy for all ages, but we don’t usually learn why some paper airplanes work better than others. In this Wired video, origami enthusiast and paper airplane designer John Collins explains the physics that keeps five types of paper airplanes flying and why “paper airplanes can take as much from science as the newest car design.”

Design and build your own cardboard boat for a summer activity or for testing in the bathtub. Don’t forget to find the failure points.

Schools don’t need a lot of money or a dedicated space to try maker education—a cart with some basic materials will suffice.

A heads up: Dyson has "created 44 engineering and science activities for children to try out while at home during the coronavirus pandemic, from making a balloon-powered car to building a bridge from spaghetti," writes the Dezeen website. They go on to add: "Comprised of 22 science tasks and 22 engineering activities, the Challenge Cards can be completed by children using common household items such as eggs, string and balloons." You can also find a related playlist of videos on YouTube, one of which appears above.

In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to make a paper circuit paper clip switch. This switch is super easy to make and is great for controlling projects with multiple LEDS.

In order to help you get started, we’ve included (4) FREE paper circuit templates that use this type of paper clip switch.

Once you learn the basics, you can create your own custom circuit very easily. Get creative and have fun !

Even if you’re far from having the skills of an electrical engineer, you shouldn’t feel intimidated by soldering. Once you learn how to solder and start practicing, you’ll realize that it’s actually quite simple.

Soldering is the perfect nerdy hobby. It requires precision, patience, and almost always creates a satisfying result. These are just some of the reasons why you should pick up soldering as your next hobby.

A Bristlebot is a small robot made by combining a toothbrush head and a vibrating pager motor. The vibrations from the pager motor travel down the bristles and cause the brush to scoot and spin on flat surfaces. This activity is great for kids as young as 10 years old.

This guide provides step-by-step instructions with pictures and video on how to make your own Bristlebot.

I am beyond elated – our PreK-6 elementary school received monies, through our district’s Computer Science Resolution 2025, to create a STEAM (science, technology, arts, math) makerspace. I never thought our Title 1 school would get the opportunity to create such a space. I never thought I would get the opportunity to help create a fully equipped makerspace. A few of use spent the past few weeks rearranging our library so that one side contains our books and the other our STEAM materials.