"I'm now a little over a month into my new role as the coordinator of our brand-new makerspace in my PS-8th grade school here in Seattle, and I'm honestly loving it every bit as much as I expected!
Over the course of this month, 450 students made prototype boats for their stuffies (PK), built "doodle bots" (K and 1), "hacked" their notebooks with surface-mount LEDs (2), made dioramas powered by Hummingbird Robotics kits (3 and 4), designed and laser cut labels for their new classroom spaces (5), made postcards using the greenscreen of themselves visiting exotic locales (5 French), built casino games for math class (6), and built symbolic representations of their personal core values (8). 7th grade will be building turbine-driven generators next week! And, that's not even a comprehensive list…
In the process of collaborating with my colleagues to develop and implement these projects with our students, I've figured out a few tips to pass along to educators at other schools initiating similar programs."