 presentation full steam ahead. This presentation is a part of the STEAM My name is Melanie Thompson. I am a library media specialist in Jefferson City, Missouri at a public K through 5 elementary school. I have taught for 20 years, mostly in 4th and 5th grade. This is my second year as a librarian. I am an E-min certified teacher. There are resources for this presentation which you can find at my blog techtinkeringteacher.weebly.com. In this presentation you will learn about the STEAM movement. Find out what a makerspace is and see how I created a steam club slash makerspace at my school. I will share resources and tips for starting your own such as what kinds of supplies you might need and how you can go about getting them. I will share my calendar of topics and all the forms I have created for my club so far. I hope you find my presentation informative and helpful and if you ever have any questions please feel free to contact me. STEAM education is important because there is a demand in the business world for individuals that can collaborate, think creatively, and innovate. Recent studies show that the US, once a world leader in economic innovation, has fallen behind in innovation and creativity. In order for the world to have a workforce skilled in 21st century skills of creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication, then STEAM education is vital. In our traditional classroom setting opportunities to use skills are often missing. Facts and knowledge often take credence over the ability to find, evaluate, and use information or the ability to find creative solutions to problems. Unfortunately, a reliance on industrial age standardized testing to measure success limits the opportunities for the kind of education necessary for students to become competitive global innovators. However, first STEAM and then later STEAM education have been recognized as vital to our continued growth and success. In the 1990s the National Science Foundation generated the acronym STEAM to stand for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. It took many years however before the STEM education and the idea of teaching them within the context of the others really took hold. In 2009 President Obama in his State of the Union address reignited the fire first lit by President Kennedy after Sputnik was launched. Obama stated commitment to science and math as part of an effort to keep the US globally competitive. Also in 2009 US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan highlighted the importance of arts education citing effects such as higher student achievement and reduced discipline issues. In fact, studies show that students with arts credits have better academic performance than those that don't. Somewhere along the line the A was added to STEM making STEAM. Much of the reviewed literature points out how connected and vital the arts are to STEM. Involvement in the arts shows us new ways of thinking introduces questions that frame the path to innovation and develop a set of problem solving skills often not touched by traditional education. STEM education is active and leads to participatory learning versus passive reception of knowledge. STEM education more closely mirrors the types of activities that occur in the workplace and students are more engaged than in worksheets or lecture type teaching. It is interesting to note that many of the greatest innovators of the world were scientists and artists. Galileo, Einstein, Samuel F. Morse, John James Audubon, Leonardo da Vinci, and Benjamin Franklin are just to name a few. Now that we have an understanding of the importance of STEAM and how the push for STEAM education came about let's take a look at one way many communities are filling the need for this type of learning. Makerspaces. Makerspaces are places for innovation and creativity, for tinkering and inventing, for learning new skills, and for sharing what you know with others. Think of them as cooperatives for creation. These workshops also share common tools and skills are taught to those willing to learn. Skills can range from gardening to sewing, woodworking to computer programming. Makerspaces often have tools too expensive for one person to own like embroidery machines, scroll saws, or 3d printers. And libraries are becoming a hub of maker activity. Which makes sense, libraries are common spaces for everyone in the community and usually have a focus on offering programs that are educational, crafty, and patron driven. Libraries have DIY resources like books, videos, and audio. As the world becomes more and more digital perhaps it is the makerspace that will keep libraries relevant in their communities. In school the library is also a natural space for a makerspace. As a learning commons students gather in the library to collaborate and communicate often on projects for class. The makerspace concept takes this a step further allowing students to gather to work on projects that follow their own passions. When researching makerspaces you will find that this concept and STEAM education go hand in hand. Both involve inquiry based experiences that are hands on. Both focus on creativity and innovation and both are about learning. After reading much about the idea of makerspaces and attending conferences such as ISTI and METC where STEM, STEAM, and makerspaces are all hot topics, I decided I wanted to try blending them and designing a way to implement them at my school. I had heard so much and read so much about how the next generation needs innovators and creative thinkers. I found myself wondering why not my kids? I first wrote out goals for the program. This way I would have an idea of where I wanted the program to go and would have a focus. I decided I would have an after school club for fourth and fifth grade students. We would meet weekly for an hour and a half. I created a format for club meetings. Each meeting begins with an instant challenge. This is an idea I got for my participation with the Destination Imagination Creative Problem Solving Competition for Students. I was a team manager for three years and this past year my team made it all the way to the global competition in Tennessee. A major component of Destination Imagination is the instant challenge. Here students are given a task, a performance, or a combination of the two to solve or plan in just a few minutes, usually with limited supplies. Teams are evaluated based on their problem solving, their creativity, and their teamwork. I thought this idea would work well for my club so for the first 10 to 15 minutes students complete an instant challenge. Examples of these are provided in my resources. Then I will give a mini lesson on a new skill or introduce a new topic and the remainder of the time is work time with the last 15 minutes for reviewing and discussing and sharing. Next I design a calendar of topics generally thematically organized. Here's my calendar. You can see we've spent some time on computer programming and coding. We started with scratch but then switched over to code.org and my kids seem to like that better. We're working right now with the construction and structures making marble roller coasters and seeing how we can build things out of everyday objects. We've already started doing some origami and some duct tape making and we'll switch to movie making and photography soon. Then we'll switch to electronics making things with squishy circuits, nap circuits, trying to make some basic robots out of brush bots and seeing what we can do with garage band and making instruments to study sound waves, gardening in the spring and making stomp rockets and water rockets and paper airplanes to study flight. Response to my club's been overwhelming. I sent out the permission slips and I had so many students sign up I had to enlist another teacher to help and still had to create a waiting list. I originally wanted 15 fourth graders and 15 fifth graders and I ended up with 17 fourth graders and 20 fifth graders and 10 more students on a waiting list. My middle school daughter agreed to be a helper for my club. I had the first meeting and the students were so excited. I later blogged about it and said tonight was my first steam club meeting 37 kids from five different classes and two different grade levels two adults and a middle school helper a full moon and a storm front blowing in any teacher can imagine what the hour and a half meeting was like chaos fabulous chaos but chaos nonetheless. So I decided to split fourth and fifth grade and alternate weeks which kind of stinks because it means students get to come fewer times but it's also good because I have a limited number of some of our cooler supplies like arduinos and making makies and snap circuits so this all means that we might do fewer activities from the calendar but we'll probably do them with greater depth. The students have also begged to come in the library to work on projects during recesses and before school in the mornings. I'm so thrilled to see them so excited about learning and and experimenting and innovating that of course I say yes. The calendar led to drafting a list of supplies that I would need. As a big believer in the power of social media and being a connected educator I posted a request on Facebook and Twitter basically begging for supplies. I received an overwhelming response to my request. The leftover crafty stuff poured in and beware of ever posting that you need paper towel and toilet paper tubes oh my goodness. Even with all the pack rat love there was still a lot on the list that I wanted so I next turned to my favorite source for all things I can't afford for my classroom donors choose. I requested connect sets, snap circuits, little bits, electronic sets, arduinos, makey makies, wooden blocks, craft sticks, glue guns, glue sticks, origami paper, card stock batteries and I received it all over $2,400 and donors choose grants. I also received a grant from the Missouri Retired Teachers Association for $500. Many grants are fairly simple to write and once you've done one you can often use the same information on other similar grants. Storing all of these supplies can be tricky. I did write into one of the grants plastic tubs with lids. For a while my closet looked as though I was preparing for a bonfire it was so packed with cardboard that I was collecting for marble roller coasters. I store most of the materials in my library closet but I hope to move it out into the library and have more of a traditional maker space where students can make as they want. This will of course require a bit of teaching about the supplies and instruction on the safety of tools like paper cutters and hot glue guns. I've also found that sometimes the students react to unlimited access to supplies like Moms on Black Friday with the release of cabbage patch stalls or furbies or whatever. I have to encourage the students to use restraint and use supplies conservatively which is also a valuable lesson. I've also started setting out the wooden blocks and the connects during library class times so that all students can enjoy them. I want to share the benefits of these products and learning with as many students as possible. Now here are some video clips from people around my school talking about what steam means to our school. Steam Club is really fun. I look forward to it every other week whenever it comes around. It's special to me because I get to be creative and I get to explore different topics and do cool activities that most kids wouldn't be able to do otherwise. Steam Club is a great opportunity for kids to really hone 21st century skills that will help them be successful adults in the future. For example, more and more jobs are opening up in technology and computers and in Steam Club after school we provided students an opportunity to design their own computer animation. They were able to move an avatar using code to move a certain way. Another example is students are able to utilize design. Students were able to design a marble roller coaster and look at it through trial and error and figure out what would be the best possible way to get the marble from point A to point B. So we're honing those skills that will help them be successful in 21st century. Thank you so much for watching my presentation. Full steam ahead. I hope you learned something and can take something away from it. If you ever have any questions or need any help please feel free to contact me. Check out my resources. There's lots of good stuff there. Articles, websites, things that you can use to implement right away. Have a good day!