RESOURCES

Makerspace Blogs to Follow

The Tinkering Studio Blog : This R&D lab on the floor of the Exploratorium is a maker’s dream! And they blog about all of the great work they are doing. Read and Re-read for great ideas!
Renovated Learning : Diana Rendina is an amazing maker librarian with frequent makerspace posts! Follow her blog and get an almost daily dose of awesome ideas for your library makerspace. Check out Diana’s Makerspace resource page, Tips on Writing Donors Choose Projects, The Value of Guided Projects in Makerspaces.
Makered.org : Every Child a Maker
Josh Burker : Josh is a maker extraordinaire, he’s always making cool stuff and sharing project ideas. PLUS, he wrote the awesome Invent to Learn’s Guide to Fun.
Expect the Miraculous : Andy Plemmons is a genius about connecting his young makers with mentors. Plus, he’s just an all around phenomenal librarian.
UNCG SELF Design Studio : Matt and Sarah always have amazing stuff going on, so go give them a like on Facebook to keep up with them!
Makerology : Krissy Venosdale is the founder of the #elemaker tag.
Design Saunders : David is another awesome elemaker. He’s a makerspace mash-up of fun!
Worlds of Learning : Eric Sheninger hired Laura Fleming to renovate his high school library and create an innovative learning space for students.
Design Make Teach : Another great maker educator with a flow of great ideas!
Daring Librarian : Gwyneth Jones is an avid sharer of great ideas! Follow this blog ASAP!
Library as an Incubator : Great blog with tons of information for school and public libraries alike!
Makerspaces.com : Andrew is pretty great at curating free resources for you!
Evolve Project : Brian Pichman is doing great work connecting libraries with makerspace resources. Plus, he’s pretty great at finding out about the best cutting edge maker tools.
Innovation Lab (at St. Petersburg College) : Chad Mairn is another rad maker librarian. He’s got all the great stuff at his academic library!
Maker Bridge : This is a great resource for the maker community that helps us all get connected via resources, reviews, and a weekly blog!
Active Learning : Kristin Fontichiaro’s blog about making and libraries!

online critical thinking Activities for ViewSonic/Chromebooks

Free Thinking Games - Thinking games for kids and adults. Play free mind games and puzzles online to take your critical thinking skills to the next level.
Logic Games - Rock Paper Scissors Game, Mastermind Logic, Flip Colors Logic Puzzle, Tic Tac Toe, 3D cube Puzzle,Towers of Hanoi, Minesweeper, Bridge Crossing Game, Frog Jump, Wolf Sheep, Soduku, Scales & weights, and more!
Minecraft Education Edition (this does not work on Chromebooks)
Semantris - Semantris is a set of word association games powered by machine-learned, natural language understanding technology. Each time you enter a clue, the AI looks at all the words in play and chooses the ones it thinks are most related.
Wordscapes - This text twist of a word game is tremendous brain challenging fun. Enjoy modern word puzzles with the best of word searching, anagrams, and crosswords!

Coding Websites

Code Academy - https://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0

Code Combat - https://codecombat.com/

Code Conquest - https://www.codeconquest.com/

Code Monkey - https://www.playcodemonkey.com/

Code Monster - http://www.crunchzilla.com/code-monster

Code.org - https://code.org

Google's CS First - https://csfirst.withgoogle.com/s/en/home

Scratch - https://scratch.mit.edu/

Tynker - https://www.tynker.com/

Instructables

Website - https://www.instructables.com/

Learn how to make anything with Instructables. Easy to follow step-by-step instructions, online classes, and a vibrant maker community.

NASA Kid's Club

Website - https://www.nasa.gov/kidsclub/index.html

NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. Get the latest updates on NASA missions, watch NASA TV live, and learn about our quest to reveal the unknown and benefit all humankind.

OK Go Sandbox

Website - https://okgosandbox.org/

"OK Go" is a rock band that makes endlessly creative videos for their songs including one with a Rube Goldberg machine, one with weightlessness, and even one where they play a song with a driving car.

A while back they teamed up with Google to create "OK Go Sandbox" which is a site with STEAM lessons based on their videos. The lessons come with educational videos, teacher guides, student worksheets, and more. Many of the activities also use Google's "Science Journal" mobile app to collect real-world data (which is from the earlier Hipster blog post.)

This resource is a great way to integrate technology and inquiry into math, science, and art lessons, while engaging students in creative activities.

Renovated Learning

Website - http://www.renovatedlearning.com/makerspace-resources/

Maybe you’re curious about this Makerspace thing. Or maybe you’re looking to redesign your learning space to work better for our modern students. Or maybe you’re an educator (or someone who cares about education) who’s tired of the status quo and wants to see schools transformed with creativity. Renovated Learning is here to help.