​We know that the rubric is not all encompassing and there are many other areas that could be identified when considering areas to scale-up  in the designing an online learning space. We would love to hear your feedback about what we missed to make our rubric even better.

Gina Rogers & Mindy Cairney
​Digital Learning Consultants
GWAEA

Not only is #havefunmaking the last line that we say of our Think, Make, Innovate episodes, but we really hope that anyone that takes up one of our Think, Make, Innovate challenges has FUN while making!  It has been magic to be able to capture these moments as part of past episodes of Think, Make, Innovate.

Maker opportunities create these amazing moments worth celebrating.  Making discoveries in learning through making, it gives you this magical “wow” or “what just happened” moment.  You did not know this was going to happen, but It usually hooks you, and gives you a internal drive to want to know and do more.

When you make something, it gives you a lot to be proud about.  You get to see and hold your work in your hands. It’s this physical evidence that you did something and you want to say to everyone, “Did you see what I made?” During a maker experience, you learn SO much along the way.  It gives you this great opportunity to connect your in and out of school experiences to make and collaborate with others. In the Sphero Boats episode, one student was captured saying, drawing on past experience in science class to jog her classmates memory.

Plus, when you make something, you are eager to share it out with the world!  The world? Wait, how am I going to do that?
Well, we hope that we can offer that to you through our online student maker community.  If you have your students participate in one of our Think, Make, Innovate Maker Challenges, we’d love to help you share their work with the world by highlight them on our website and resharing through our social media accounts.
Choose the path that’s best for you to share with us:

1. Email us at makerspace@gwaea.org
   
2. Tweet or Instagram us @dlgwaea
   
3. Use the hashtag #havefunmaking
   

We have been working to revamp our #havefuncommunity to showcase student creations from our different maker challenges and love some feedback from you.

You can now see where our makers are from with our new Maker Map.

And you can search by maker topics and get inspired by our makers’ creations.  Check out the screen shot below that highlights new search features. You could even pull up one of the examples and to share with the class and ask the student to figure out how they did that or can you figure out a different way to do this?

What else would you like to see added to our maker community?  Leave us a comment on this blog to help us best share and inspire your students to get creating!
And of course....
#havefunmaking!

~Amber Bridge (@abridgesmith) 
Digital Learning Consultant, Grant Wood AEA

PDFs are incredibly useful for all kinds of things. For instance, they are a universal file format that works well on all devices and don't need any additional software for viewing their contents. However, they can also be a very frustrating file format. Have you ever tried to split a PDF, merge it with another PDF, or convert it to another format? Adobe will sell you a subscription that will let you do all this and more. Preview on the Mac has a number of useful options for this too. However, if you don't have access to either of these options, you can take a look at a tool I saw courtesy of Leslie Fisher. It's called PDF Candy.

With PDF Candy you can do all kinds of useful things with your PDF. You can rearrange pages, extract text, unlock password protected PDFs, and convert them to all kinds of useful formats. You can add watermarks, use page numbers, delete pages or add to the header or footer of a PDF. All you do to get started is head over to PDFcandy.com and choose the feature you need. Then, upload your PDF and get editing!

Of course, one of the reasons that people use PDFs is to try and make it harder to copy or alter their original work, so be mindful of copyright and respect the rights of the original author. There are a lot of powerful tools at PDF Candy, but as Uncle Ben (and others) would caution, with great power comes great responsibility!

• You can create PDFs in Word or Google Docs. Simply create the document as you normally would and save it as a PDF format instead of a Word or Google Doc format. You can do the same with PowerPoint and Google Slides!
• If you upload a PDF to Google Drive and open it with Docs, Google will extract the text of the PDF for you and paste it into a Google Doc
• You can save any webpage as a PDF in Chrome using the Print menu. Simply navigate to the website of your choice and then go to File > Print and change the default printer to Save as PDF. This works in other browsers to thanks to the PDF Print drivers on Mac and Windows.
• iPhone and iPad users can save websites as a PDF from Safari. Simply tap the Share arrow and looks for the Create PDF. Use the built-in annotation tools to markup the PDF or tap the Share arrow again to choose where you want to send your PDF.
• You can scan paper documents and turn them into PDFs with mobile scanning apps like Word Lens, Adobe Scan, Camscanner, Scanner Pro, and more.
• Sites like DocHub.com will let you sign a PDF for free using their website or Chrome extension. You can also do this with Preview on the Mac, or with the built-in annotation tools on an iPhone or iPad.
• Speaking of annotation, the Google Classroom app for iPad will also let students annotate a PDF if you assign them a map or a graphic organizer to work on in a PDF format.
  

Have you used PDF Candy before? What are your favorite PDF tips and hacks for teachers?

Jonathan Wylie (@jonathanwylie)
Digital Learning Consultant, Grant Wood AEA