Group items tagged

"As part of my research for updating my Makerspace for The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, I went straight to a source that I knew had done a large amount of the work for me already: The Robot Test Kitchen. At RTK, a group of librarians have evaluated a wide variety of technology tools that are typically incorporated into library Makerspaces as part of an iLead project. I highly recommend looking through the side and reading each individual post. However, for my purposes I wanted to create a quick comparison chart to help guide conversation and my own decision making. I used in the information from RTK and put it into a quick reference spreadsheet."

"Amazon is currently having a massive sale on all Maker and DIY Electronics books! There is up to 40% off on digital and paperback books covering everything from 3D printing to electronics and Raspberry Pi. Regardless of what tools, languages, kits or operating systems you use to make, there is guaranteed to be some great learning material at a remarkable price. From a quick look through the items on sale, here are a few of the hot MakerEd books we have spotted:"

"3.1415926535…"

"The renaissance of self-reliance has brought about such things as a flood of creative ideas on Pinterest, Arduino projects, popular YouTube DIY Channels, and the Raspberry Pi movement. But why should grown-ups have all the fun? Kids are born into technology, so why not include them in the experience? Teach them to fix and create things and you teach them to take control of their world."

"'ve been reading a powerful new resource titled Beyond Pizzas & Pies, by Julie McNamara and Meghan M. Shaughnessy.  They describe fraction sense this way: Fraction sense implies a deep and flexible understanding of fractions that is not dependent on any one context or type of problem.  Fraction sense is tied to common sense: Students with fraction sense can reason about fractions and don't apply rules and procedures blindly; nor do they give nonsensical answers to problems involving fractions."

"You can connect your Scratch projects to the physical world using several different kinds of devices. MaKey MaKey LEGO WeDo Kit PicoBoard (also known as ScratchBoard) Kinect2Scratch, using Microsoft Kinect GoPiGo for Raspberry Pi Each of these work with Scratch 1.4. Currently MaKey MaKey works with Scratch 2.0, with support planned for the other devices."

"Coding for the most part exists in a virtual space. But there are some fascinating tools that allow learners to experiment with coding and real world objects. Here are a short list of some of those items. I will have tutorials on how some of these work as the year progresses..."

"Cardboard Creations Maker Education Camp utilized no technology (except for projecting images of example projects on the whiteboard) and low/no cost materials. Many of the discussions about and actions related to integrating maker education into educational environments center around the use of new technologies such computer components (Raspberry Pis, Arduinos), interactive robots for kids (Dash and Dot, Ozobots, Spheros), and 3D printers. These technologies are lots of fun and I facilitate Robotics and Computer Science with my gifted students and at one of my summer camps. The learners engaged in these high tech learning activities with high excitement and motivation. Such high excitement, engagement and motivation, though, were also seen at my low tech/low cost maker education camps: LED crafts, Toy Hacking and Making, and Cardboard Creations."