The Elementary Media Maker

We love using Minecraft for different lessons in our school. We have  Minecraft EDU in our flex lab but we also have Minecraft on our flex cart of iPads. For this collaborative lesson with my 3rd grade teachers, we used the iPad cart because they were just going to build in their own worlds and not collaboratively as a group. They also needed some supplies so it was easier to spread out on the tables in the media center. Students used a dice multiplication sheet to come up with the multiplication problems and then built the array in Minecraft to solve the problem. After a few problems, we gave each group 4 dice all together. Students were told to add two dice to get the first number and then to add the other two dice for the second number. This way they had more complex arrays. One of my students started singing, "It's the best day ever!" when he found out we were using Minecraft in class. 

My students in 3rd-5th grade have enjoyed getting on Destiny Quest this week.  They love having a place where they can recommend books to their friends. I love it because it allows them to digitally shelve books in lists of have read, currently reading and want to read. This way they can look for books at home and then when they come to the media center they have a list of books to look for that they are interested in. I think it is a great way to get kids excited about books and our media center.

VR in the Media Center We are so excited about our new Oculus Rift that our media center was able to purchase with funds from two different grants.  So far this year we have had 5th grade students going to the circulatory system to learn about our red and white blood cells. It is a free experience in the Oculus Rift store.  It is a long experience but to get all of our students through in an hour we had one class come into the media center at a time. The teachers had students working in groups on projects about body systems while I pulled a few kids at a time to go through about the first 5 minutes of the experience.  They are in a pod floating through the blood stream and they are listening to the heart beating and an explanation of the different cells floating all around them. It was just the perfect amount of time because when you get deeper in the experience the information presented is much more complex.  We also have taken a virtual field trip to Wa

My media center has changed so much through the years. In fact there isn't a year that former students don't come in with their siblings to see the "new" thing that we have added that they don't say, "You get all the cool stuff when we leave!" So what has changed in the past few year.... 1. Our Loft - Several years back we were fortunate to have an awesome student from the local high school who built us a loft for his senior exit project. I saved the money to purchase the supplies and then he built us a loft with the help from a project mentor. I would say that the addition of our loft was definitely one of my students favorites. It turned out cheaper than the lofts that I could have purchased online. It is extremely sturdy and can hold 3 students in the loft and a few under for quiet some reading. 2. Our Makerspace - Four years ago I started hearing the word "makerspace" in conferences and education blogs. At the same time I wa