Collaboratory Corner

New School Year, New Ideas

The Collaboratory is back open for business and buzzing with excitement! Our amazing Collaboratory Cubs have really enjoyed checking out all that our learning studio has to offer!

We also began our first official project: Makerspace Magic. We started our project by reading and discussing one of my favorite books: What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada. The students shared some of their experiences with their past ideas and discussed how they have shared them with the world. The last page in the book ("And then, I realized what you do with an idea...You change the world.") sparked some really interesting conversations about how so many of the technologies that we rely on today started as small ideas that were given time and attention until they transformed into the creations that they are today.

Students were inspired by the book's message and eager to start brainstorming some ideas so that they, too, could experience that magical feeling that comes with growing and developing ideas. So how did we get those ideas to grow into creations? Using the Engineering Design Process, of course!

Students reviewed the steps of the Engineering Design Process (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve) before beginning their challenge: How might you create an object that represents something that you love? Students started imagining all types of ideas, and then they created their blueprints for one idea that that they wanted to grow and develop into a creation.