This post is to highlight the projects students completed in our Installation and Community Projects week. Students were told to design and build a project for the school or their community using the skills and techniques they had learned this summer. Here are some of the projects from that week.
I led a group of students in building storage for the makerspace. Together, we built a large rack for storing lumber and a rolling toolbox/whiteboard combo. Obviously this was very helpful for Lighthouse School. The high school makerspace is currently a multi-function room -a common scenario for makerspaces in schools. It is shared by the…
Throughout the summer making program, we used several techniques to help students develop their ideas at different stages of making. The processes of drawing, prototyping, and documentation are just as important as the actual ‘making’ of a project. 1. Journals: Initial ideas, sketches of designs, lists, a working book that keeps everything organized. Every student…
What is the problem? 3D printing looks and sounds really cool. It instantly gets people’s attention no matter what age group. It also takes a long time, is prone to error, is not an intuitive process, and the learning curve for 3-d modeling is very steep. What one can actually make on a 3D printer…
We spent a week using the MaKey MaKey and Scratch to create interactive instruments and controllers. The MaKey MaKey is a kit that let’s you interact directly with your computer to control the keyboard and mouse. The week was popular with students, and in 5 days they learned the concept of circuits, programming, and made…
Kids of pretty much any age can use tools. Determining which age groups can use what tools (with what kind of supervision) is the trick. When do you trust someone to use power tools? When do you trust a student to cut without supervision? In this post I will talk about cutting tools used in…
Summer making in the Creativity Lab was wildly successful. It lasted 5 weeks and taught more lessons than can be contained in one digestible blog post so here are a few bites-sized morsels: The impact of concentrated making over time on students is visible. The results include increased confidence, creativity, and resourcefulness. Talking about what…
Over the last three weeks I have watched one of our regular drop-in makers, Yarely (a 4th going on 5th grader), go from making very simple, crafty, step-by-step projects for kids to making projects that blow away her 7th and 8th grade summer making peers. I bring this up for two reasons. First, when a…
Projects to make and share, worksheets to use, and probably spelling still to be fixed. None the less, many of our tried and true K-12 making project guides are up for you to use. Keep an eye out for new project additions on the Lighthouse Creativity Lab projects page. Project guide PDF Files can be…
Mr. V was interviewed on Tuesday, June 24th by EDUCATION TALK RADIO about Making and Designing in a Creative Classroom and School. Listen to the interview here: SMARTBLOG AWARD WINNING BLOGGER ON SCHOOL CREATIVITY, AARON VANDERWERFF 06/25 by EduTalk | Education Podcasts.