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

Librarians Graves et al. discuss challenge-based learning in school library makerspaces. They describe how to create a maker community in a school; expand learning with the local and global maker community through Maker Fests, digital media, local events, and other means; craft interactive spaces; use the workshop model to teach students a new skill; use design thinking, design challenges, and crowdsourced research methods to help students think like designers; create design challenges for elementary and secondary students; and use crowdsourced research and maker journals. --Publisher.

This open access book contains observations, outlines, and analyses of educational robotics methodologies and activities, and developments in the field of educational robotics emerging from the findings presented at FabLearn Italy 2019, the international conference that brought together researchers, teachers, educators and practitioners to discuss the principles of Making and educational robotics in formal, non-formal and informal education. The editors’ analysis of these extended versions of papers presented at FabLearn Italy 2019 highlight the latest findings on learning models based on Making and educational robotics. The authors investigate how innovative educational tools and methodologies can support a novel, more effective and more inclusive learner-centered approach to education. The following key topics are the focus of discussion: Makerspaces and Fab Labs in schools, a maker approach to teaching and learning; laboratory teaching and the maker approach, models, methods and instruments; curricular and non-curricular robotics in formal, non-formal and informal education; social and assistive robotics in education; the effect of innovative spaces and learning environments on the innovation of teaching, good practices and pilot projects.

An essential resource for intermediate, middle, and high school librarians that guides the planning, learning, and implementation of a school library makerspace. The roles of school library media specialists and school libraries themselves are ever changing in response to the needs of the community and the evolution of human thinking, interaction, and learning processes. A school library makerspace can provide patrons with a place for learning, doing, and creating. It offers a location for tackling inventions, fine arts, crafts, industrial technology, hobbies, e-textiles, foodcrafting, DIY couture, fabrication, upcycling, and STEM right in the middle of the information gateway—the library. This book completely explains the makerspace concept and supplies real-world implementation guidance and inexpensive programming ideas that can be used as-is or adapted to suit a specific library or community's needs. Readers will be able to hit the ground running to implement their own makerspace with practical project ideas they can put to use immediately.

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

A new and expanded edition of one of the decade's most influential education books. In this practical guide, Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager provide K-12 educators with the how, why, and cool stuff that supports making in the classroom, library, makerspace, or anywhere learners learn.

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