Monday, September 26, 2016

The Imaginasium

 
The Imaginasium is Fort Sam Houston Elementary's Maker Space.  What is a maker space?  Check out this quick interview with Peggy Reimers, one of the directors of professional development for TCEA.
         




Dr. Roland Rios, Director of Technology and myself have been hearing all about these awesome Maker Spaces in other schools.  We really wanted to see this at FSH Elementary because we knew the great opportunities to create that it would bring our students.  It didn't take any persuading for the Principal, Dr. Joseph Cerna, to agree to giving us an entire classroom for the Maker Space.


Now that we had a room, it was time to get started.  Thankfully, we had a lot of maker equipment that was purchased for the summer maker camp that Michelle Schiebel, the computer teacher, and Veronica Hellamns, 4th grade teacher, taught over the summer.  We started with that and took off running.  Now we have flexible seating, colorful bulletin boards, building equipment, arts and crafts, brain games, circuitry, programming, 3D printing, video and recording equipment and so much more!

I am so proud to announce that on Thursday, September 15th we had the grand opening for our Imaginasium Maker Space!  The grand opening was set up so that teachers could come in and play with everything in there to get an idea of how they can use it with their students.  We had student helpers that showed the teachers and special guests around and helped them get started creating.  The day was a huge success!  

Since then, we have had many teachers reserve the space for student learning and the kids and teachers are talking!  We have had kindergartners programming Bee-Bots, 5th graders doing stop motion animation with legos, 4th graders exploring what's available and 1st graders building and programming.  Our 5th grade student helpers also presented the Imaginasium to the school board.  The board was in awe of everything there was in the space and how excited the students were about using it!


We are already seeing an impact on student learning.  Students are problem solving, working together, creating, and having conversations like you wouldn't believe.  We can't wait to see all of the amazing things that will come out of this space!  Below is a video that we put together from the grand opening.  Enjoy!



      

To view more about what's in our Imaginasium, you can go to our website at https://sites.google.com/a/fshisd.org/fshtechnology/imaginasium.  


1 comment :

  1. A million thanks to you and Dr. Rios for "making" this space a reality for our campus. I can't wait to make memories with my students in this awesome space.

    ReplyDelete