School Library Management and Making (Online Modules)

This set of online modules is a two-week course designed for librarians who are looking to expand their library programs to include making activities with a special focus on Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). By including maker activities in your library’s program, it can provide students a place and the opportunity to experiment, tinker, make, and have fun with their peers while learning new STEM skills.

The course will introduce you to making in libraries and equip you with knowledge and resources that are needed to implement maker programs in a school library budget all the while collaborating with your school teachers. The Next Generation Science Standards by the American Association for School Library (AASL) and library media standards by many different states require libraries to adapt maker programming. This module was developed for the School Library Media endorsement certifications offered at Utah State University and now has been made publicly available along with all the other resources developed under the Situated Librarianship Learning Infrastructureproject at USU, which is a multi-year research-practice partnership that seeks to understand and engage with the challenges faced by public and school library professionals when they experience an organizational push to support new forms of Maker-oriented learning in their spaces.

Learning Outcomes:

  • After completing this course you will be able to
  • Describe STEM-rich Making
  • Compare & contrast Maker programming vs. a Makerspace
  • Discuss the constraints & affordances of Making in the library
  • Build a bank of resources for STEM-rich Making to use in the library
  • Identify Common Core State Standards and Utah Library Media Standards that can be used to collaborate with another teacher to bring STEM-rich Making into the library
  • Plan your own STEM-rich Making activity

You can access the modules on Canvas Commons. You can preview and download the modules for free. You can also import the modules to your teacher Canvas account if you want to teach it as part of a course.