User Generated Education

I am beyond elated – our PreK-6 elementary school received monies, through our district’s Computer Science Resolution 2025, to create a STEAM (science, technology, arts, math) makerspace. I never thought our Title 1 school would get the opportunity to create such a space. I never thought I would get the opportunity to help create a fully equipped makerspace. A few of use spent the past few weeks rearranging our library so that one side contains our books and the other our STEAM materials.

We received the following items. Some were put out in the STEAM makerspace and some items the teachers will check out for use in their classrooms:

• Dremel Laser Cutter (in makerspace)
• Makedo Kits (in makerspace)
• Strawbees (in makerspace)
• Dash and Dot (in makerspace and can be checked out)
• OSMO Coding (in makerspace)
• Makerspace Kit (in makerspace)
• BeeBot Robots (in makerspace)
• Squishy Circuits (in makerspace)
• Makey-Makeys (can be checked out)
• littleBits Base Invent Kit (in makerspace)
• micro:bits (3rd-6th grade teachers received their own sets)
• Circuit Playground (can be checked out)
• SAM Lab (can be checked out)
• Green Screen (in makerspace)

Integrating Maker Education Activities Into the Curriculum

As we (the steering committee) envisioned adding a STEAM – Makerspace at our school, we realized that its success will be dependent on the teachers integrating these activities into their curriculum rather than an extra “recreational” activity.

Maker education needs to be intentional. It follows, then, for maker education to be brought into more formal and traditional classrooms as well as more informal ones such as with afterschool and community programs, it needs to be integrated into the curriculum using lesson plans to assist with this integration (Learning in the Making).

To assist our teachers with integrating maker education activities into the curriculum, I created the following Pearltrees aggregate of possible classroom lessons and activities for each of the materials – products we purchased for our school:

In this post, I am also including the following lesson plan template from my book, Learning in the Making that can help with integrating maker education activities into the curriculum :