Tales From CREATE

When an afterschool tinker time regular asked me if we had a caulking gun, I didn't now how to answer. Nothing we had done in CREATE cal...

Leprechaun Trap If the kinder and 1st graders are building leprechaun traps, it must be St. Patrick's Day. But in CREATE, it'...

As much as we concentrate on tape, glue and batteries, none of these are necessary for a makerspace. 3-D printers are what we might show-off...

The mini-car I could see that he wasn't participating with his group. They were gathered around the final assembly of their card...

One of the activities we offer in CREATE is deconstructing decommissioned technology such as old computers, printers or other items that mig...

I've been trying to push my advanced 4th-grade 3-D design student (See  3-D Prodigy: A good problem ) to up his game. His current chall...

A while back, I mentioned a need for storage in CREATE  ( You Can't Be Too Rich, Too Thin or Have Enough Storage)  and the plan for the ...

The Maker ethos is largely about taking control of your own environment. In a workshop, sometimes that means not accepting the "right...

Coding brings to mind, for many people, engineers poring over screens of incomprehensible commands and algorithms. What they might not real...

3-D printers are slow and expensive to operate. But you already know that. So our printing policy is limited to in-class projects. Plus, Mou...

There's an old story that Sir Isaac Newton invented the doggie door. Newton had a big dog and a little dog. So, he built a door for each...

One of the special ed teachers in the district heard that we had a 3-D printer and wondered if we could make some replacement pieces for a g...

It's easy to cut, it's light and you can form it into limitless shapes. But, man, does Styrofoam ever make a mess. Pro tip: S...

The idea was to reinforce the design cycle and include measuring, planning, collaboration and other skills. The job was to completely encase...

An unused pizza box, some bottle caps some scraps of wood and some imagination. (I also asked the student to create the rules for the game.)...

Supplying the answers accomplishes little. When students are motivated to make something work, they will actually learn. They love making th...

3-D printed funnel for the rice bottle to replace the old paper cone that kept falling off. Something missing? Oops. #learniningexperience #...

Every makerspace manager I've ever spoken to says that storage is one of their major challenges. This is a plan for twin cubbyhole unit...

Showing a friend how it's done. Students don't just learn, they also bring their own skills to teach their peers – skills ...

Even the youngest students can use saws. The key is a comprehensive safety briefing for all new students, a refresher each year, specific sa...