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We recently held a Maker Educator Boot Camp (our version of an exhaustive professional development for teachers and educators) at West Liberty University’s Center for Arts and Education. The teachers got the chance to learn some teaching techniques centered around making and exploring.  I was only able to attend one day of the four day Boot Camp but just one day was special enough. I taught the digital applicat

Usually it is the teacher who provides the problems for the students to solve. At the Museum and especially in MAKESHOP we like to give teachers an opportunity create some problems for themselves. Teacher trainings might be my favorite thing to do in MAKESHOP. Being a teacher myself I see the benefits to these kinds of professional development opportunities. Having a group of teachers learn how to do something with l

We don’t just serve children at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, we are also a resource for teachers.  We offer many professional development workshops for teachers.  Recently, we held a workshop to discuss the different options for early childhood educators to use the Museum.  We offered teachers an opportunity to reflect on certain areas of the Museum and how these exhibits could be utilized as a co

Are you 18-22 years old and interested in maker culture? Do you know a young adult who loves to tinker and enjoys working with children? We’re excited to announce a great new opportunity for this summer! MAKESHOP at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is partnering with the Maker Education Initiative, a program linked to MAKE Magazine, to launch the Maker Corps program this spring. This program will address the nee

I have noticed over the past year that MAKESHOP has become such a great resource for home school families. Every visitor can benefit from something in the Museum, but MAKESHOP allows for an extremely hands on experience. A couple of days ago a group of sisters ranging from age eight to twenty spent a couple of stupendous hours in MAKESHOP. We worked on some simple wooden picture frames. All three of these projects sl

This was an extremely ambitious project that resulted in a couple great teaching moments. A mom and daughter were so fascinated with our circuit blocks that they wanted to make their own. We decided to make a battery block, a motor block and speaker block. As with any electronic project, we first had to test all of our components. Mom was very excited to make more blocks at home using old holiday lights and pieces fr