Makerspace for Your Classroom: Bookmark Edition 

Transcript

Bookmarks make excellent reference materials for students as they are small, portable, and easily created.

To design and produce bookmarks that relate to your classroom topics, students will use a variety of Makerspace technologies.

First, have them open canva.com.

Canva provides numerous templates, but today we are going to focus on the bookmark template. The template is 2 inches by 6 inches. 

Have students create their title and add their own text. This text should be in their own words and relate to the class topic. They can add graphics or images that they feel will help them remember the content. The idea is this bookmark will be a quick reference guide when they are completing class work. This could be vocabulary words in English or Science, laws or acts in History, Math concepts, and so much more. Anything you want them to reference at their fingertips can be made into a bookmark. Once designs are finished, have students download their bookmark as either JPEG or PNG files.

These files can be printed using the Library’s color printer. Once printed, use the Makerspace trimmer to cut the bookmarks to size.

If you find a bookmark on the floor, how will you know who’s bookmark it is?

Students can add a fun personalization starting with Canva. Students can add their name and a graphic to match the subject that will be cut out and added to the back of the bookmark. This will make the bookmark sturdier and help students differentiate between different bookmarks for different topics. Make sure this is done in black and white and any graphics should be simple and white as well, as whatever is white will eventually be removed before cutting. Save this file as a JPEG or PNG.

Krita is free to download and available on all library computers.

In Krita, have students open the JPEG or PNG file they saved. For this project, we are only going to use the Similar Color Selection Tool to remove all the white in the file. With one click over white, all will be selected. Just hit delete to create a cutout and make sure students save as a PNG to preserve the cutout.

Students will need to create a free Cricut account in order to cut their prints, unless they share a design space with friends.

Here they will start a new project and find and upload their PNG file. Students will then progress through the Cricut file prompts and continue with the Single Layer option. Once they save their file, they will be in the design space. Their PNG will be huge and it will need to be resized. The bottom will show the size and using the sizing handles, they can make it smaller to 2 inches by 6 inches. Their finished size should be placed in the top left corner for production. If there are more than one bookmark in a design space, add a little bit of room between them; not to exceed paper size.

I will personally demo how to connect student computers to the Cricut machine, set up the mat, and load the machine to avoid any confusion or mishaps. We have adaptors for computer USB connections so everyone will be able to cut.

Once the Cricut is finished cutting, students will progress to weeding their cut and adding a smidge of glue to the back of their bookmark in order to send it through the laminator.

The library Makerspace has all the laminating equipment and supplies.

[dramatic music]

Once laminated, students can quickly use the trimmer to cut their bookmark out of the sheet.

Et voila! Students now have a personalized, classroom specific bookmark that they can take anywhere. Come visit me in the library to discuss how other Makerspace items can be incorporated into your classroom!