Blog 8

Those of you that attended the SCASL conference this year will recognize the author of the blog I examined this week.  Shannon McClintock Miller is the teacher librarian at Van Meter School in Iowa and blogs about her experiences and programs regularly at The Library Voice.  She often posts maker activities that she does to engage students in her library programming and collaborations. 

In one of her most recent collaborations, she used Bloxels with a second grade class.  They created their own video games after reading several St. Patrick’s Day books, including one of my personal favorites, The Gingerbread Man and the Leprechaun Loose at School by Laura Murray.  In this post, McClintock Miller also describes other ways that she incorporates Bloxels into collaborations with classroom teachers.  I love that McClintock Miller has found a way to incorporate research, literature, and making into one activity.  She is planning to read several animal themed books, have students use PebbleGo to conduct research on an animal they are interested in, complete a graphic organizer, and then use their new knowledge to create a video game based on what they’ve learned. 

As Canino-Fluit states in “School Library Makerspaces”, “Making is an inquiry-driven social activity that allows students to develop the very same skills, dispositions, responsibilities, and strategies touted in the AASL's 21st Century Standards” (2014).  The activities that McClintock Miller describes in this blog post meet several AASL and state content standards.  The use of Bloxels allow the librarian to incorporate making into literacy activities, which I think is a great way of simultaneously utilizing making in the library to empower student learning and promoting literacy.  Another benefit of Bloxels is that this product combines hands-on and digital learning.  Students build their characters using small blocks that look like pixels and then use the Bloxels app to incorporate their character into their video game. 

This video from Bloxels shows various ways that Bloxels can be used in the content areas.  This maker activity allows students to interact with content on a deeper level, think differently about a topic, and become producers rather than just consumers of information.  This product also allows promotes student engagement through gamification.  Our students have been playing video games since they could hold tablets.  Games are familiar to them and helping them create their own video games will keep them interested and engrossed in the activity and topic. 


For more information on Bloxels and how it can be used within a library makerspace, check out these links: 

• Bloxels - What Is It?
• Eugene Public Library - Bloxels (has a helpful guide)
• School Library Journal review of Bloxels

References

Canino - Fluit, A. A. (2014). School Library Makerspaces. Teacher Librarian, 41(5), 21-27.