Making Our Media Center

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 was struggling to figure out a new direction to take our media program so I jumped right in. Makerspaces are all about giving kids a place to explore, create and build for learning. We started by buying a bunch of plastic tubs, then more tubs and then some more. (You can never have enough tubs!) I then went in and cleaned out my cabinets and started putting things in the tubs that my students might want to use sometime. Students never went in my cabinets but I can now send them in the makerspace and they can choose from a variety of supplies what they want to use for different projects. I then researched items other people had in their makerspaces. From there I made a handout to post on our school FB page and a flyer to send home asking for donations. This helped us originally get our makerspace started.

From there it has just grown. Our actual space is a small room off the media center that can't hold an entire class so we decided to remake our media space to allow for some overflow of the makerspace into the media center.


3. Remaking Our Space- About a year ago I decided we needed to look at separating some space for classes and small groups. By moving my shelves around I was able to separate a space out for classes, our flex lab and then also have a space for maker activities since our makerspace is too small to fit a full class. It does mean that it is a little louder in the media center that years ago because of all the activity, but the amount of learning that is taking place makes it worth it.

Here is the small group/ makerspace area. It is inside a U of bookshelves and a book shelf at the top of the U that holds excess makerspace tools that are used most often. 

 Here is our media classroom area. It is located at the side of the U bookshelf. 

 This is our flex lab located behind the U bookshelf. 

4. Alternative Seating- Our students have wobble stools, peddlers, and stability ball chairs to use for choice seating in the media center. These were all found on Amazon and were purchased with by funds from Donors Choose projects. We go over the rules of alternative seating when they first come back and that includes putting things back where they go. They know I get a little strange about having the same color stools at the same table.

We also just got an egg chair for a special reading spot that is close to our loft. I found it at IKEA (here) and my kids love it. It is a good size for elementary students.

5. Student Project Station- This was created this past school year with the funds from two different local grants. We have a 3-D printer, Silhouette Cameo and a large format printer for projects. Students can use this area when working on projects in their classrooms as well as bigger projects like Science Fair project boards.

6. VR/Green Screen Section- I got tired of taking down and putting up the green screen so I decided to move some shelves and paint a wall. I found a website that gave me the exact numbers to use at our local Lowe's Hardware and two gallons later we have our own permanent green screen wall.

(We are waiting on one more coat of paint. Our TV is getting mounted soon and we soon we should have this section up and running. Come back for a new VR post soon) 

 Some of our new seating for our VR section. 

Because we don't use this section all the time it was the perfect spot to use for our new VR section in the media center. Our local school system has an amazing Educational Foundation that offers staff members the chance to write grants at the end of each school year. We were fortunate to get a grant with them this year along with a grant from Walmart to purchase a new computer and an Oculus Rift package. We already had a TV in this section we used for basic gaming with a Wii and PlayStation so it worked out great to be able to connect them all in one area.

I used the View Master VR googles this past year with collaboration on in class lessons at our school. The kids had an amazing time traveling inside active volcanoes and walking with dinosaurs. We are very excited to get our new equipment up and going to really be able to immerse our students in the VR experience. I hope to have a blog post in the future to talk about our VR journey.