Makerspace

Back in 2016, flood waters destroyed much of their school’s Louisiana campus and they were forced to start over in a number of ways. After feeling tons of support from their community, however, the students of LPPS came together under the leadership of Nikki Lavergne to redesign their learning experiences and redesign their futures.

It can be hard to convince teachers (let alone students) to use some of their summer vacation to improve their academic skills. This is, of course, understandable since they spend the rest of the year doing just that. Making summer learning fun, however, is a fairly reasonable compromise so that both educators and their students aren’t wasting time.

You know us. No project is too big for our team. We’re in the process of discovering just how true this is and how far this kind of attitude can take us. Recently, we teamed up with a midwestern chapter of the Boys & Girls Club to help them secure STEM tools for launching a brand-new makerspace this coming fall.

This Fourth of July, we decided to experiment with Bare Conductive’s Touch Board to help spark an interest in circuitry among our readers. The Touch Board is a limitless interface at the heart of some of Bare Conductive’s most innovative STEAM tools. Using it, students can turn touch into sound with the help of conductive materials.

We’ve been pretty big fans of XYZ 3D printers since they first launched a few years back. The list included (and still does feature) da Vinci printers, the tall and skinny Nobel, and even a MiniMaker for younger students to take a crack at 3D printing. Their latest addition, however, might just be the best yet. Click to learn more

It pays to have a friend with a makerspace and, using this connection, we put on a day of PD for 30 teachers at Pinky Inc. in Marlborough, MA. At the day-long workshop, the teachers worked together and designed some creative classroom activities centered on STEM tools, like Sphero, E-Blox, Cubetto, and more!

As the summer ends, you probably don’t need us to tell you all this but it’s buying time for classroom teachers, STEM professionals, and many school technology directors. To help move this process along and make it as easy and affordable as possible for you, we’ve created a bit of our own EdTech glossary to help you find what you

Eduporium, a one-stop STEM and Educational Technology solutions provider for teachers has been added to the PEPPM 2018 General Hardware and Software Catalog Contract. PEPPM is a national cooperative purchasing program that is dedicated to streamlining the process of EdTech procurement for educators. Learn more indside.

The Makey Makey, created by JoyLabz, is one of the most well-known STEAM tools in K-12 education. What exactly is it, though?? Technically, the Makey Makey works like any keyboard or mouse, sending signals to a computer to execute the functions of clicking the mouse or hitting the space bar, right arrow, left arrow, up arrow, or down arrow.

In the 21st century, students belong in the driver’s seats of their learning experiences. Makerspaces are such a great option for educators. They provide a safe space for kids to fail, get creative, and use their interests to help them develop 21st century skills. Perhaps the best part of these environments is that there’s no wrong way to learn within