The maker movement at Piner-Olivet is designed to give students a chance to create, learn by using their hands as well as their minds and cooperate as a group to complete a project task as well as  individual assignments

Students learn more when they are intrigued and challenged. 
It is important to ask why things work and how they work. Maker projects give students a better opportunity to hone their critical thinking ability.
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Collaboration
Teachers, click below for a list of Maker Projects and Resources for you to use in the classroom. 

Community Outreach

Dear Community,
We are working on improving and expanding our maker program. The maker program is designed to get students to create and explore and introduce engineering and problem solving. With the overwhelming success of our maker summer camp, and the Cardboard Challenge,  Genius Hour and maker projects in various classes, we are now in the midst a creating a permanent maker spaces across the district.
The new maker space will be in our Room 10.
Our plans are for all the students to have a chance to participate in this hands-on learning.
To make this program a success we are looking for:
 
1. Old phone chargers
2. Any hand tools
3. Corks
4. Marbles
5. Pill containers
6. Cork board
7. Duct tape
8. Legos (partial kits ok)
9. Adult scissors
10. Surgical tubing
11. Toy wheels
12. Gears
13. Electrical wire
14. Soldering irons
15. Old CDs
16. Dominoes
17. Tinker Toys
18. Batteries
19. Pipe cleaners
20. Aluminum foil

Critical Thinking

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Picture
Simple circuits and flashlight
We have undertaken a project to  get every student to build a flashlight.
Kindergarten through 6th grade students learned how a simple circuit works and using a craft stick, copper tape, a LED light and a coin battery created their own flashlight.
The idea behind the massive flashlight project was to teach a simple circuit, how to persevere and trouble shoot. Every student was successful.
This lays a foundation for teaching parallel circuits, paper circuits and how electricity flows.
It also teaches that not everything works the first time and they have to figure out  how to FIX IT.