Thursday, April 23, 2015

Our First Makerspace Day In The Library

I was greatly inspired by a TL Virtual Cafe session I attended online a few weeks ago (thanks to the Twitter PD community at #tlchat). After hearing so many great ideas from library media specialists/ teacher librarians from all over the country, I decided to give it a try in our own school library. We have been slowly assembling all the needed pieces to start a Makerspace this year! We had planned to have this program during our two lunch sessions (1st lunch- grades 10-12 and 2nd lunch grades 8 and 9). A last minute schedule change kept us from having the program for grades 10-12 this time.

We decided to have 5 Makerspace stations in the library. They were all very successful, and the students that participated were very engaged.


We had a 3D printer station led by two of our students from EAST. They had designed a replica of the Willis Tower (formally the Sears Tower) using Google Sketch Up Make and Netfabb. We decided to print several of these, and we gave them away at the end of the session in a drawing. The student leaders explained how the printer worked to those that visited them.


Willis Tower Replica
We had a student that brought his Lego collection to share. Several students visited the Lego station and had fun building quick projects.







We set up a table with Jenga for another fun Makerspace station. Several students enjoyed playing this building game.


We also have a Sphero in the library. We had that available for students experimentation. It was a very popular station.


The most popular station was the "deconstruction" station. Our technology department donated some non-functional computer and networking components for our students to take apart. The kids loved taking the computer apart most of all.






It was a great first Makerspace program for our students! We cannot wait to try this during our grade 10-12 lunch period! I encourage you to try a Makerspace in your school library. It's a great place for students to connect, hack, and create in the library!

Before you go, check out our student led 3D printing lunch library program here.


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2 comments:

  1. UnknownAugust 22, 2015 at 10:40 PM

    Love all the photos of students' engagement Stony. Particularly like the deconstruction zone, will add that to my list of ideas.
    We had our first makerspace last week too, New Zealand high school of 1,500 students from 10-18 years old, building structures from straws and polystyrene squishy packaging. Happy with how it went, students asking for more!
    Thanks for sharing

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  2. Stony EvansAugust 22, 2015 at 11:36 PM

    Julia, thank you so much for the feedback and encouragement. I learned about the deconstruction zone on a TL Virtual Cafe and had to try it out! The students loved it! I'm very glad to connect with you on Google+. It is so good to make new friends in other countries. I hope we have an opportunity to connect our students this year. It might be fun to exchange videos and have our students share their creations? Take care, friend!

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