by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 14, 2016 | Uncategorized
“I have money to start a makerspace at my school. What should I buy?”
It’s the most common question seen and heard about makerspaces in schools. It’s understandable. Making IS exciting. It’s easy to get caught up in the joy of creating with digital tools, 3d printers, coding and programming, and robotics. I’ve um, admittedly, even got caught up in the stuff myself.
But in stepping back to look at how this type of mindset empowers kids and teachers, I know more than ever that standardizing the concept of a makerspace is the LAST thing needed in education. It’s about organically developing a space, through the needs of teachers and students in your school. It’s about fostering a risk-taking mindset while evolving curriculum to enhance it in classrooms all around the school. It’s about valuing creativity, and that means putting your school’s art on display just as much as your school’s athletics are on display. It’s about furniture and space that works for your kids, regardless of what’s popular or traditional. It might be a Hokki stool, but it also might be a rug on the floor. It might be a standing desk, but it also might be a regular old wood desk painted red that kids and gather around and brainstorm.
The thing about innovation is that there is no cookie-cutter for it. Sometimes it’s about putting a new twist on old things, and sometimes it’s about putting some new things into old ways. It’s about refusing the cookie-cutter and instead looking within your classroom or school and asking a very simple question… What is it that makes your kids come alive? What makes your teachers come alive?
Because THAT is what your school needs.
Post and quote based on an all time favorite quote of mine by Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Yeah, that.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 12, 2016 | Uncategorized
Just about every day I get an email, a message, or a question on Instagram… “Where’d you get those panels on your classroom wall?” Well, I made ’em. I wanted Design Thinking to be emphasized in our new space, and there are several details on these large prints that are customized to our school and our students. 
Before I share how to make them, I’ll also share why I’m not just giving them away here or selling the prints. When you’re designing a school space, it’s not about making it cute. It’s about designing a space that will inspire the kids you work with to learn, dream, design, and do. Think about the purpose of YOUR space. Then design walls that will reflect that purpose, or have kids design walls to reflect it. These wall panels are 48 inch squares, printed on a foam core like board and hung with Command Poster Hangers. They show the steps to Design Thinking, They have a rocket that travels it’s way through the frames, in a spinning and struggling motion, just like learning. They contain the name of our space, “The Launch Pad” and our school logo is hidden among the Lego man. And they also contain patents of Apple Computer, a robot, a Lego minifig, and a camera… all tools that are part of the every day in the space. Every detail on these posters has meaning to the room around it. Consider what your space will be and go from there.
Photoshop CC.
1.) Step One
Create a new file in Photoshop CC. File –> New. You’ll be asked to set a few things – shown below. I chose 48 inches for my width and height, and you can set them to whatever size you will be printing. If you are printing smaller, 12 inches by 12 inches, or larger, you can set it here. As for the resolution, 300 will produce a nice quality at a high resolution.
2.) Step 2:
Pick a Color. This is my favorite part. Choose your background color. The best part? You can pick ANY color that you want to use. Celebrate your school colors, spruce up the wall with a bright color, or choose multiple colors to represent steps in the design cycle.
Layer –> New Layer –> Ok
Layers are super important here, especially if you want to add a variety of details to create depth and texture. I chose Orange, created a new layer, and added an Orange rectangle. The Photoshop panel can look like A LOT. Ignore 95% of it. You literally only need a few tools to make a poster. Layers are your friend. My layer panel is shown here in the bottom right. If you’ve never worked with layers, think of it like a hamburger. The bottom bun is the background. The burger is the colored rectangle. I’ll add details on a lettuce layer, more shapes on a cheese layer, and font on a tomato. You can easily move layers up and down to view, hide, or even adjust how transparent they are with the opacity in the layer tools.
You’ll find the rectangle tool on the left hand side of my screen, selected in darker grey. Drawing a rectangle in Photoshop CC is very similar to other programs where you draw text boxes, like Microsoft Word or Google Drawing.
Step 3: Add Details
This is where it gets fun! I love searching the Google Patent Gallery for items that are relevant to our students. We’re an Apple school, so the first Apple computer was perfect. For the sample here, I chose the Lego patent. Who doesn’t love Lego?
Download the highest level of patent size. Open it up in Photoshop. Now you will have your canvas open alongside your patent art. You’re going to use the selection tool (Dotted box on the far left of my screen) to select around your patent art, or whatever art you choose to use as a layer. Student drawings would work fabulous, too! Select the art, then on your Edit menu, choose “Define Brush Preset.” A brush is basically like a real life rubber stamp. But the great part in Photoshop is you have unlimited ink colors and layers. Once you have defined the brush, you are ready to stamp it onto your canvas. But, make a new layer first. This will give you flexibility in coloring, editing, and even removing later if you want to.
Layer –> New Layer
Take at look at the layer window and you can see there are now three layers. The “opacity” of the layer we have selected is 100%. Adjust that and you can fade your brush art in and out to your liking. As you add text to the panel, more layers will add to the box and you can adjust it, too.
Step 4: Get the Details Right
Once you use the brush tool (8th tool down on the far left of my screen below), you can then stamp your new brush onto your layer. Don’t worry if it’s not big enough, you can resize it anyway you’d like by dragging it from the corners. And that opacity tool on the layers comes in super handy here. Lighten your brush and it will fade into the back for a nice texture. This is how I made the grid on the blueprints on my wall prints. Just turn a grid into a brush and layer it on. You can make doodles on white paper, snap a pic with your cell phone, and even turn THAT into a brush. Pretty fun in Photoshop that ANYTHING can be turned into a brush. NOTE: Be careful that you have permission to use art and that it’s not copyrighted. Since I do not plan to sell these for commercial use, I’m okay with this here.
I decided to change the orange to magenta. All I had to do was head over to the layer window, double click on the “orange” square and select it, and I picked a new color.
Next, I added some text – the big “T” tool on the far left. You can create any size, use a variety of fonts, and even change your colors on your fonts. Check out dafont.com for some awesome fonts. Don’t say I didn’t warn you – downloading fonts is a bit of an, um, addiction.
I went on to add four more words and pops of color, then I was finished. Save the final product as a .jpeg file. There are numerous places to get the posters printed- so check with local copy shops, businesses that might donate printing for your school, or even Costco for large (cheap!) printing.
Happy Creating!
by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 10, 2016 | Uncategorized
We don’t need to know the definition of engagement to “get it.” A colleague recently called it, “In the zone.” That zone. Learning.
It’s partly an organized chaos, partly a buzz of questions balanced with spurts of ideas, and partly something that I can only equate to… a kind of magic like seeing a fireworks show or watching a balloon pop in slow motion. It’s a calm in the air that you can feel the storm of learning brewing right beneath.
It’s beautiful. It’s messy. It’s intricate. It’s fragile. It’s the most valuable thing we have in our schools because it’s something that grows organically from the hearts and souls of our kids. And when we teach? We are a part of that. Lucky enough to be involved, but wise enough to know the value.
You can’t reduce it to a script or fake it. And really, why would you want to try? It’s like growing a garden. You can’t pull a seed out of the ground to “hurry it along.” It would never bloom. But cultivate it, give it time, space, and love?
And you can’t stop it from shining in the sun.
And you can’t help by smile when you see it happen.
Learning is awesome like that.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 10, 2016 | Uncategorized
There are photos that float around the internet these days of new, shiny makerspaces that are starkly decorated rooms with bright colors and fresh paint.Um, I may have even taken some photos like this of our maker space when we opened it. The floors are spotless, the tables sparkly, and the materials are no where to be seen. Nobody is talking about managing a space filled with stuff. I know, I know. Making is NOT about the stuff. But at the end of the day, the details do matter. It’s like an art room combined with a science room, mixed with an engineering space.
But then reality sets in. There is STUFF. Cardboard. Fat markers. Thin markers. Permanent markers. Dry erase markers. Duct tape. Masking tape. Clear tape. Cardboard. More cardboard. More cardboard. And that? It’s the tip of the iceberg.
I didn’t have a system – because I didn’t really know what we’d be using. So the space has devices, cords, printers, laptops, desktops, robots for our youngest learners, robots for our older learners, vinyl cutters, a 3d printer. Stuff to create with. Stuff that needs to be visible, accessible, and easy to use.
My “starter” plan for organizing and trying new things built up like a giant cardboard volcano until the mess exploded into areas where we needed more organization. I spent a few days buried in thought, like the lost citizens of Pompeii under a mountain of stuff.
Reset.
Back to basics. Labels. A place for everything and everything in it’s place. Giant plastic boxes for “scraps” that are like treasures chests of creativity for kids to dig into. A storage closet for extra cardboard. Accessible tools for creativity.
But also? Clean spaces to brainstorm. Spots where materials aren’t everywhere. Kids are just like us. Some need a pile of cardboard to crawl in, and others need a small pile in a plastic box to thumb through while they sketch. I love the freedom with which kids are using devices, and taking care of them. Because they have a place. The other “stuff” needs a place, too.
If the space is going to be a space for all learners, and THAT is exactly what a makerspace needs to be… for students, teachers, learners… then it needs to have a skeleton. A frame. A frame that can only happen after you figure out what your school needs. There is no instruction book for that. And that? It can be a challenge. It’s going to evolve as making in your school evolves, and you have to let it, while you refine it. I’m sure it’s like icing a cake in a grocery cart moving through a crowded store while you try to make roses that look at least a little rose like. Learning can feel like that sometimes.
The ownership of a learner to get their own supplies? It matters. If we as teachers are truly going to step back and let kids explore, then we have to support them with an environment that not only offers this type of learning, but invites it to happen.
And when we notice that maybe we’re smothering some of the flames with a flow of a room that’s not working? We climb out from under cardboard mountain and we look at what the learners need to create… and then we make labels. Lots of labels. And scrap filled treasure boxes. And maybe a few more labels.
by Krissy.Venosdale | Feb 7, 2016 | Uncategorized
I have this memory of my early days in teaching. My student teaching supervisor said my lesson was “All wrong.” She felt there was far too much talking and movement in the room. I went home crushed. I had failed. The room wasn’t silent like my Harry Wong book suggested. She suggested I “stick to the textbook a bit more.”
There was no encouragement to follow my intuition, to be myself, or to find my own “flow” as a teacher. Instead, I was presented with an array of tools, like the Madeline Hunter lesson plan and forms that reminded me to tell kids what to learn then test them to see if they remembered it. Ironically, the same “game” of school I had to learned to play as a kid was presenting itself to me as a teacher, and I was the one being encouraged to run it.
There was no room for creativity.
I wish someone, somewhere along the way had stopped me and said, “What do you think?” I wish someone in my student teaching had tossed a textbook in the trash can and gone all Dead Poet’s Society on me. I wish someone had said that doing things differently would cause waves, even cause people to dislike you for a variety of reasons. And most of all, I wish someone had said, “Be yourself anyway, because THAT is what kids and your colleagues need.”
Education doesn’t need billions of identical teachers doing identical things in identical ways. Education needs YOU. It needs ME. It needs the crazy mismatched unique patchwork of people that make up a school. It needs people who speak quietly and people who shout. It needs people who love to learn in a hands on way and people who love to take notes. It needs them all. Because it’s only in that fiber of differences that we are able to reach each and every single kid who passes through our doors.
Most of all? It needs people who have the courage to follow their hearts, dreams, goals, and desires to be exactly who they are, no matter what. And that would have been a great tip in my early days of teaching. But nevertheless, a great tip that’s never too late to learn.
It’s the most common question seen and heard about makerspaces in schools. It’s understandable. Making IS exciting. It’s easy to get caught up in the joy of creating with digital tools, 3d printers, coding and programming, and robotics. I’ve um, admittedly, even got caught up in the stuff myself.
