Creating powerful learning environments Anyone can create a makerspace. This is the guide to creating a GREAT makerspace. Written by makerspace pioneer Laura Fleming, The Kickstart Guide to Making GREAT Makerspaces is filled with step-by-step, practical ideas that demystify the process of planning and creating a makerspace. Its workbook style ensures that by the time educators are done reading, they have a ready-to-implement plan, personalized for their classroom, school, or district. Readers will find A wealth of examples of great makerspaces in action Activities and strategies for inspiring making across the curriculum Plenty of room and guidance for brainstorming and developing a personalized plan

Creating powerful learning environments Anyone can create a makerspace. This is the guide to creating a GREAT makerspace. Written by makerspace pioneer Laura Fleming, The Kickstart Guide to Making GREAT Makerspaces is filled with step-by-step, practical ideas that demystify the process of planning and creating a makerspace. Its workbook style ensures that by the time educators are done reading, they have a ready-to-implement plan, personalized for their classroom, school, or district. Readers will find A wealth of examples of great makerspaces in action Activities and strategies for inspiring making across the curriculum Plenty of room and guidance for brainstorming and developing a personalized plan

Start-to-finish, fun projects for makers of all types, ages, and skill levels! This easy-to-follow guide features dozens of DIY, low-cost projects that will arm you with the skills necessary to dream up and build your own creations. The Big Book of Makerspace Projects: Inspiring Makers to Experiment, Create, and Learn offers practical tips for beginners and open-ended challenges for advanced makers. Each project features non-technical, step-by-step instructions with photos and illustrations to ensure success and expand your imagination. You will learn recyclables hacks, smartphone tweaks, paper circuits, e-textiles, musical instruments, coding and programming, 3-D printing, and much, much more! Discover how to create: • Brushbot warriors, scribble machines, and balloon hovercrafts • Smartphone illusions, holograms, and projections • Paper circuits, origami, greeting cards, and pop-ups • Dodgeball, mazes, and other interesting Scratch games • Organs, guitars, and percussion instruments • Sewed LED bracelets, art cuffs, and Arduino stuffie • Makey Makey and littleBits gadgets • Programs for plug-and-play and Bluetooth-enabled robots • 3D design and printing projects and enhancements

Makerspaces: Your questions answered here! Get the nuts and bolts on imagining, planning, creating, and managing a cutting-edge Makerspace for your school community. Nationally recognized expert Laura Fleming provides all the answers in this breakthrough guide. From inception through implementation, you’ll find invaluable guidance for creating a vibrant Makerspace on any budget. Practical strategies and anecdotal examples help you: Create an action plan for your own personalized Makerspace Align activities to standards Showcase student creations Use this must-have guide to painlessly build a robust, unique learning environment that puts learning back in the hands of your students!

You've created a STEAM program in your library, but how do you work literacy into the curriculum? With this collection of resource recommendations, direction for program development, and activities, you'll have students reading proficiently in no time. Many schools and libraries are implementing STEAM programs in the school library makerspace to promote problem solving by allowing students to create their own solutions to a problem through trial and error. In order to enhance literacy development in the STEAM program, however, they need resources for integrating literature into the curriculum. In this collection of resources for doing just that, veteran education professionals and practiced coauthors Liz Knowles and Martha Smith bring readers over eight hundred recommended and annotated books and web resources, selected based on research on successfully integrating STEAM and literacy programs and organized by the five STEAM areas. Titles are complemented by discussion questions and problem-solving activities that will aid educators in both adding and using the best literature to their STEAM programs for encouraging learning. In addition to promoting literacy, these resources will help to develop creativity, lateral thinking skills, and confidence in students.

Schools around the country are designing maker spaces to spark creativity. Students learn best when they are able to create and tinker and make. But how do you even begin when there are so many terms floating around? This book provides a fun, practical, and approachable framework for any teacher curious about getting started with maker spaces. I've never had so much fun reading a professional book, ever. Somehow each chapter is equal parts hilarious, gleeful, inspiring and practical. I would recommend to this every educator I know and even parents and students. This is a book you can come back to again and again to laugh learn and make each time in a new way. - Jennie Magiera, Educator and Author of Courageous Edventures Your Starter Guide To Makerspaces makes any Hufflepuff feel like they can tackle the maker movement with the brains of a Ravenclaw, confidence of a Gryffindor, and cleverness of a Slytherin. Emily Gover - Edtech Nerd & Librarian

Maker learning spaces in schools and public libraries are made real through the narratives of professional librarians around the world, comprising the collaborative activities, experiences, and perspectives of librarians as they have implemented makerspaces for students of all ages. School Library Makerspaces in Action is for any librarian looking for inspiration for their own makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs, or DIY locations and how to use these spaces in libraries and educational settings. Contributions from authors around the world address the needs of most all readers, including how to provide the staff training necessary for a successful makerspace. Each chapter is written from an author's personal experience, and with only a little fine-tuning and imagination, many of these ideas can be used throughout all levels, disciplines, and subjects in K–12 education and carry over into higher education. The successes and optimism shared in this collection will inspire librarians and educators to think positively about how to implement maker learning locations, train staff, and use makerspaces in their libraries and classrooms to promote and share new ideas.

For School Leaders and K-12 Educators Get concrete strategies for designing and implementing cultural and instructional supports for maker learning, and equipping makerspaces to model universal design for learning (UDL) in action. School leaders and classroom teachers alike are looking for ways to integrate maker learning into their work in meaningful ways, but they simply don’t have the time, capacity or resources to review, synthesize or adapt existing models into their own school systems. The Maker Playbook offers a vision and the tools needed to streamline the process, including high-impact strategies you can put directly into action to foster an inclusive maker learning environment. In these pages, you’ll find ready-to-use strategies and resources to guide learners in the design thinking maker learning process. With the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines as a basis, you’ll get ideas for helping all students learn, and guidance for developing the scaffolding to help all learners reach levels of higher-order thinking and engagement. The book: • Offers strategies that can be implemented on a personalized and systemic level to build a maker learning culture and program from the ground up. • Highlights “Go Remote” tips with each strategy to assist you in implementing the ideas in a virtual environment. • Includes recommendations for prioritizing and choosing from the strategies provided to help with planning and implementation. • Offers resources for engagement, representation, action and expression to improve accessibility and boost students’ executive functioning skills. • Includes QR codes and links to digital versions and templates for scaffolding learning to help you jump into action. Whether your school system has begun this journey and is looking for ways to enhance established maker learning and makerspaces or is ready to start laying the foundation for providing maker learning experiences for all learners, this book is designed to help educators make maker learning more accessible for all.

Get practical resources and 18 ready-to-go lesson plans to inspire your practice, drive student inquiry and help your elementary students learn! In Teach Boldly: Using Edtech for Social Good, education leader Jennifer Williams invited educators to purposefully use technology and innovative teaching practices to connect students to causes of social good and social impact. In this follow-up to that groundbreaking book, Williams and co-author Billy Spicer take readers through an interactive reading journey, examining the evolving role of today’s teacher; the needs and interests of today’s students; and the critical importance of research-based instructional design principles in teaching and learning. In this book, you’ll find 18 high-quality lesson plans that prioritize access to action, student inquiry and innovation, meaningful use of technology and global collaboration. Each lesson is presented by a global educator who provides examples, along with sample learning products, classroom photos, and teacher and student testimonials and reflections. The book: • Prioritizes global sustainability in teaching and learning, and support of class-to-class collaborations and community/global partnerships. • Helps educators amplify student voice and inspire elementary student activism with students as knowledge constructors and global storytellers. • Unpacks the ISTE Standards (students section) and provides a framework to prepare readers to make connections as instructional designers. • Builds the capacity and knowledge base of educators as instructional designers, while offering multiple perspectives of teachers from diverse backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. This book will leave you feeling inspired and interested in seeking out new viewpoints – and with a clear plan for putting your ideas into practice. Audience: Elementary educators; Elementary school leaders and coaches; preservice teachers

In this innovative series Education Write Now, ten of education’s most inspiring thought-leaders meet for a three-day retreat to think and write collaboratively, and then bring you the top takeaways you need right now to improve your school or classroom. This second volume, edited by Jeff Zoul and Sanée Bell, focuses on relationships—the heart of everything we do in education. Building strong relationships and a positive school culture takes intentional, consistent effort, and the authors provide strategies and examples to help you along the way. Throughout the book, you’ll find insights and inspiration on these topics: Connecting the dots among students and staff (Jeffrey Zoul) Strengthening relationships in the learner-centered class (Randy Ziegenfuss) Building a culture of equity and access (Rosa Isiah) Cultivating student strengths and interests (Elisabeth Bostwick) Bridging the gap between schools and families (Laura Gilchrist) Deepening connections through productive conflict (Sanée Bell) Finding relationships beyond the four walls (Onica Mayers) Connecting through the power of generosity (Winston Sakurai) Bringing passion into the schoolhouse (Sean Gaillard) Tapping into dreams for a world-class culture (Danny Bauer) The royalties generated from this book will support the Will to Live Foundation, a nonprofit foundation working to prevent teen suicide.