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"You've no doubt read countless blogs and articles about the incredible impact makerspaces can have in schools. You may even have started rearranging your space, or perhaps you've created an Amazon wish list. But after being a maker-librarian for nearly two years, I can assure you that you should really stop thinking about starting a makerspace ... and just do it.  I spent a solid year planning my makerspace. I developed a vision statement and set goals. I made an infographic for my administration, listing standards that would be addressed. I weeded my library like crazy and made mock-ups using Google Drawings to help them envision the new space. At conferences I went to everything with the word "maker" in the title. I set up a filter on TweetDeck to see everything posted on #makered and #makerspace. And while I learned a ton and met a lot of amazing people, I really regret not having my own space already established before going into all these learning experiences. Which is why I strongly recommend you stop thinking about starting your makerspace and just get started."

"Creating innovative inquiry-based learning spaces for our students today and tomorrow. Explore spaces that work with MakerEd, STEM, and coding and robotic programs for kids K-12. Share in this hands-on session's new tools enhancing spaces for teaching and learning!"

"When we made the decision to equip our students with iPads, either for class use for our younger users or 1:1 for students in the senior school and sixth form, we knew we were unlocking a host of opportunities. Some were easily identified, others have gradually revealed themselves through an iterative process. An illustrative list in no order of priority includes the benefits of instant access to the Internet without the hassle of booking IT rooms; enriched digital communication; a range of handy apps; a virtual multimedia studio; and the creation of our own iBooks and iTunesU resources tailored to the learning needs of our students. What we did not perhaps appreciate was the impact digital devices could have on the physical learning environment. "

"A major shift in the force of education has emerged as teachers have become self-directed, independent designers of their own learning. Embracing social media, blogging, and learning from one another in digital spaces, they have forged a new era of professional development that is changing classrooms from the ground up. Simultaneously, and perhaps because of their online interactions, teachers also have begun to re-energize the professional learning in their brick-and-mortar professional spaces."

"If there was ONE thing that I'd want every practicing educator to know about learning in social spaces it would be that no matter what field you are working in, there are TONS of folks who are sharing resources that you can use in your work immediately. The trick is tracking down those resources quickly and easily. Just because people are SHARING resources doesn't automatically mean that you are going to FIND those resources. Thankfully, practitioners using social spaces for learning are also adding hashtags -short identifiers that start with the # symbol - to the end of their messagges."

"Dougherty hopes that if students raise their voices, parents demonstrate support and passionate teachers are willing to champion the cause at individual school sites, maker spaces could become a fixture of school. They don't have to include the fanciest 3D printer, they just have to be spaces for exploration, hands-on learning and a playful attitude towards discovery."

"Around the world, there is a new movement to use the new tools and technology of the Maker Movement to give children authentic learning experiences beyond textbooks and tests. The Stanford FabLearn Fellows are a group of 18 educators who are working at the forefront of this new movement in all corners of the globe. They teach in FabLabs, makerspaces, classrooms, libraries, community centers, and museums - all with the goal of making learning more meaningful in the modern world. In this book, the FabLearn Fellows share projects, assessment strategies, lesson planning guides, and ideas from their learning spaces. In over 200 pages illustrated with color photos of real student work, the Fellows take you on a tour of the future of learning, where children make sense of the world by making things that matter to them and their communities. To read this book is to rediscover learning as it could be and should be - a joyous, mindful exploration of the world, where the ultimate discovery is the potential of every child."

"The maker movement and maker education, in my perspective, are such great initiatives - really in line with what student-centric education should be in this era of formal and informal learning. Maker education (often referred to as "Maker Ed") is a new school of educational thought [at least in terms of having an "official" educational label - JG] that focuses on delivering constructivist, project-based learning curriculum and instructional units to students. Maker education spaces can be as large as full high school workshops with high-tech tools, or as small and low-tech as one corner of an elementary classroom. A makerspace isn't just about the tools and equipment, but the sort of learning experience the space provides to students who are making projects. (9 Maker Projects for Beginner Maker Ed Teachers) Social media has helped me gain a more global perspective and become aware of some of the problems associated with the maker movement. The two I discuss in this post are: Maker movement initiatives are often driven by more affluent white males. The maker movement is too often being associated with the tech stuff - Arduinos, Littlebits, Makey-Makeys - stuff that less affluent schools and community programs can afford."

"Excitement about school makerspaces has been in the air, but many educators eager to create hands-on learning spaces in their schools still aren't sure how to get started or why it's worth the effort. New Canaan High School librarian Michelle Luhtala recently jumped headfirst into creating a makerspace in her library and documented what she learned, how her space changed and how it affected students along the way. Her experience was very different from elementary school librarian Andy Plemmons, whose makerspace started with a 3-D printer obtained through a grant and blossomed into a core teaching resource at his school."

"In this post I've selected some examples of work that the pupils have produced in the World War 2 topic using their iPods and iPads to demonstrate and enhance their learning. It also includes the apps the pupils used and a brief description of the lesson. Any digital work the pupils created on their iPods was saved to their individual blog space http://6aclasswall.posterous.com. This meant any content the children had created on their iPods could be deleted once it had been posted to the blog, saving limited space on 8GB iPods. The pupils used a QR code in their World War 2 scrap books to link to their digital work on their blog space if this was appropriate."

"Makerspace is a relatively new method of teaching students in a space where they can get hands-on experience working with concepts they recently learned. The point of the space is to make, create, and invent new things. There are many advantages to giving students a place to apply concepts, and those benefits are true for all areas and fields of study. If you have been thinking about creating a maker space in your classroom, here are a few things to consider to help you understand why you should go ahead and do it."

"Makers-in the broadest sense, those who make things-and the maker movement have gone mainstream. Featured in articles from the Smithsonian to The Atlantic to The New York Times, today's makers are just as likely to be armed with traditional tools like hammers, anvils, and yarn, as they are with conductive paint, 3-D printers, and computers. They are participating in a movement marked by community norms of sharing, collaboration, and experimentation. They are gathering in libraries, garages, summer camps, and makerspaces. Cities and towns across the United States are paying attention, responding to the buzz with maker-related growth and development: Downtowns are outfitting digital workshop spaces, also knowns as "fablabs"; municipal libraries and church spaces are designating space for making; and now schools are getting on board. It is no wonder that school ears are perked. As businesses, libraries, and organizations lobby for ways to bring making into their domains, schools across the country are building innovation labs. Makerspaces are being carved out, 3-D printers are being brought into classrooms, and hacker/tinkering/maker/tech-ed teachers are being hired-and sometimes trained. There is clear enthusiasm around the tools and the sociocultural impact of maker-related values. Attend a school board meeting where a makerspace is on the agenda and the familiar selling point rings out: Maker education boosts STEM-science, technology, engineering, and math-learning, which will ultimately generate a cohort of innovative, inventive, entrepreneurial-minded young people. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves. The limited research around the cognitive benefits of maker-centered education is only recently emerging. Maker classes, maker curriculum, and maker teachers are being incorporated into educational settings in what appears to be a response to popular media and based, in part, on the hype."

"Art is hard. Creative insights are hard to predict, and just when it gets difficult, your mind immediately jumps to a distraction: something easier to do, an excuse, a scapegoat. To get the most out of your creative energy, carve out space for creative work. To make that space, you need to make space for the other types of work, too. The key to this is understanding how creative insights happen. "

"With the prospect of returning to face-to-face instruction or hybrid constructions, what can we learn that works in our digital spaces that can readily transfer to our in-person classrooms? How do teachers motivate students to share ideas and risk "being wrong" in the digital space or the public space of the in-person classroom? How can we catch that lightning in a bottle? Well, there is the chat function built into many of the digital tools we use. There is power in the chat that can be intentionally put to use now and in the future."

"n a rainy Saturday at Hackbright Academy classroom in San Francisco, a group of 35 adults sat at tables, desks, and on couches learning how to code. Marcy, a former artist and now programmer for Uber, taught the class. During a break, Marcy shared that she'd never taken a programming class prior to starting a job in art media. After completing courses at places like Hackbright and General Assembly, she realized how much she enjoyed coding and switched careers. Today she volunteers to teach coding on the weekends. Real world. Compare Marcy's story to Daria's, a high school junior. Daria applied to take her school's AP Computer Science class and was rejected. The reason? She lacked the math prerequisites. Even if she had the prerequisites, she lamented, the counselor told her that her grades probably wouldn't have been high enough to compete for one of the precious 30 seats in the single section that was offered. School world. Learning In The New Economy Of Information | MindShift Teaching in the New (Abundant) Economy of Information How We Can Connect School Life to Real Life Daria's and Marcy's stories speak to the differences between school world and real world. In Marcy's world learning is abundant and artists become coders. In Daria's world, learning is scarce and limited by classroom space and teacher availability."

"The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning started as a series of blog posts written by Jordan Shapiro with support from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the Games and Learning Publishing Council. We've brought together what we felt would be the most relevant highlights of Jordan's reporting to create a dynamic, in-depth guide that answers many of the most pressing questions that educators, parents, and life-long learners have raised around using digital games for learning. While we had educators in mind when developing this guide, any lifelong learner can use it to develop a sense of how to navigate the games space in an informed and meaningful way."

"Forming and supporting professional learning groups can be particularly important in maker-centered contexts, as maker-based activities often occupy a precarious space in the structure and curriculum of traditional schools. That maker education is not yet a formal discipline and does not have the backing of a professional and organized network makes it especially important to develop learning communities that scaffold and connect educators who often work in isolated siloes."

"Our PYP evaluation went really well and it was gratifying to hear the evaluators' positive observations of our school. They talked about our dynamic learning spaces, the energy of our teachers and learners and the respect that is evident between staff and students. They were impressed by how articulate our students are and the openness of our teachers. It was clear to them that the entire school community has a deep understanding of the PYP philosophy and that we have a strong culture of learning. Almost all their recommendations are things on which we are either working already or have identified for action through the self study. There's only one thing I found jarring in their feedback and it relates to my beliefs about inquiry learning. They noted that neither students nor teachers seem able to identify what particular inquiry cycles we follow. They said the children to whom they spoke didn't seem to be aware of the specific 'stages' of inquiry and that most teachers couldn't articulate how an inquiry cycle directs our planning. To be honest, I'm glad."

"On October 1st, 2015 the very first class entered our STEM lab/Makerspace and it was truly magical. The kids were engaged, they were learning, exploring and discovering the entire time they were in there. It was the moment we had worked so hard when we created this innovative learning space. It was a long journey that our little Makerspace/STEM lab team took to get there and we learned a lot along the way! The lab was originally Wendy Townlin's (@wtownlin) idea. She wanted to create a dedicated science lab for our school. It evolved into a STEM lab, then (with a little help from twitter) we decided to add in the element of a makerspace. With the support of our awesome principal Kris Martin-Meyer, four of us, Wendy, Amanda Young (@ajyoung53), Claire Simon (@MissSimon246) and I put our heads together, researched, reflected then began building. Here are some things we learned about along the way."