With the start of the new year, Lighthouse is putting together a list of official internship and volunteer sites. As they have done for the past 11 years, this spring at Lighthouse, all of the 11th grade students will complete a volunteer internship at a local business, organization or youth development program in the community.…
With Lodestar just starting out at its current site, building up functional and quality maker spaces can prove challenging. We want to create spaces where maker-centered learning shines, in which students can lead activities and teachers can facilitate collaboration, co-inspiration, and co-critique. Additionally, we want to model other facets of maker-centered classrooms, which are outlined…
Aaron Vanderwerff, director of the Creativity Lab, was recently featured on “Teaching Channel” website, where he explained how teachers can adopt several subtle shifts that will empower students and promote agency. To find out more, click the link below. Read more!
As part of the Creativity Lab’s mission to empower thoughtful, capable people through making, we disseminate best practices by offering professional development to educators from around country. This past year we offered several opportunities, from a new Making Math workshop — designed to focus on integrating making and abstract mathematical concepts — to Designing Making Experiences.
These are a relatively new addition to our Creativity Lab, but they’ve been incredibly helpful. We installed these cord reels into our ceilings for easy access to power outlets, without the fuss of tangled extension cords that our students (and teachers!) are likely to trip over. These reels work something like window blinds: when not in…
Our wall of materials gets photographed pretty frequently by visitors who want to know what we keep on-hand for our making, so I thought I’d share it with all of you. We store most of our materials in clear, plastic bins. These are color-coded by general making activity, and age range. Materials like white glue get stored…
The 2nd graders at Lighthouse are spending the next few weeks learning about habitats of the Bay area and how animals adapt to live in them. Since we have a weekly making time, we decided to do an integrated curriculum making project. The kids (in groups of two) will build one of the four habitats…
During the holiday break the Creativity Lab decided to take advantage of the student-free time by transforming the already awesome makerspace we’ve built, to an even more student-friendly place. The golden rule in organization is this: in the end everything has a place, within the place it functions. To break this down a little, here…