I was invited to a Twitter chat on personalized learning one day. As a newbie to Twitter I wasn't sure what that exactly meant, but I gave it a try. Wow, was that an eye opening experience. I got wind of this thing people were starting in classrooms and have been evolving called "Makerspace" and had to learn more. After completing some research I knew this was something our team needed. I started thinking of where in our room it would fit, how I could find affordable materials and created a pinterest board full of STEM type ideas. I used eBay to buy a Tinker Toys and Lego blocks For a reasonable price. Items like cardboard, yarn, craft stuff, etc. was saved up to have n the space. Then classroom materials were reorganized to open up a shelving unit. Over spring break I rearranged the room to allow for a corner of the room to be our Makerspace.
Once the students came back to school they are very intrigued by these changes. We watched a Kid President video on being an inventor and they watched a little Haiku Deck slideshow on expectations. We let them choose a partner and then put two pairs together, to make groups of four students.
Now that they were introduced to the Makerspace and had a group, they were presented with their first challenge. From other blog inspirations we got the idea to first have them make a name tag to be utilized in the Makerspace. Plastic name holders, blank paper, coloring utensils and various strings were in the area and they were told the requirements. They had to make a name tag with a plastic holder, and it had to be a necklace. This was quite a challenge for them. Tying knots, figuring out the right size and other road blocks came up. However perseverance and problem solving had been such a big part of our team's culture from our weekly computer coding that most of them managed this challenge well.
After they had name tags we went to our schedule. To get them inspired we made a big Their first time was free exploration. They could choose one material they wanted to work with and build.
Scheduling was a bit of a step and I will discuss that in my next post.
Below are pictures of the environment we have created.
This is the area.
This is our inspiration cloud.
Supplies are organized in these containers.
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