Travis Lape is the Harrisburg School District’s Innovative Programs Director and was the recipient of the TIE Technology Leader Award for the State of South Dakota. He co-hosts the Movers & Makers Podcast and helped host over 8 Edcamps in South Dakota in the past three years.

I’ve followed Travis on Twitter for several years about his work with Makerspaces and personalized learning. Then I met him at the TIES conference in Minnesota last year. We had loads of fun then so I had to make sure he joined me on a podcast. We added some excerpts from the podcast below:
 
Your background and family
When I graduated in 2010 from the University of SiouxFalls (USF), I went into teaching right away.  I taught 4th grade at a low socio-economic school teaching at an elementary school in Sioux Falls,  Lowell Elementary at that time was the Science, Math, and Technology school. It was a lot of fun and a great year. Prior to teaching, I was a travel softball coach for several years. Then, after a year of teaching, I got a unique opportunity to be the head coach at USF to help transition them from the NAIA ranks to the Division 2 NCAA ranks. My passion was with coaching and teaching. I was not married at the time and couldn’t pass this up. I was the head coach for two years and transitioned them to Division 2 with pieces in place to be successful to hand it over to the next coach.

In that process, I got married and didn’t want to live on the road as much as I was doing. My wife is a teacher who shared with me that Harrisburg School District had an opening for a technology integrationist role. A family is super important to me and I wanted to be at home more. I applied and got the job as Technology Integrationist at one of the elementary schools for a year. My wife and I have a 2 ½-year-old son, DJ, who we adopted two years ago. 

 
Technology Integrationist
My background was elementary education. My first school we used iPods so I spent a lot of time searching to catch up on technology. The place I found support was on Twitter and several Edchats. I was on fire because I got connected to some powerful educators in the field doing that type of work for years. I was able to take ideas and piece them together to make them work for our building. My principal and I had planned for over a year to remake the library into a Makerspace due to Laura Fleming @LFlemingEDU and Shannon Miller @shannonmmiller until he left to take another job in Iowa. That was when Darren Ellwein @dellwein came into the picture and said that his middle school could use my services as a technology integrationist working with teachers in the classroom and to make a Makerspace in the library.  
That was when Darren Ellwein @dellwein came into the picture and said that his middle school could use my services as a technology integrationist working with teachers in the classroom and to make a Makerspace in the library. That was the best professional move I made and stayed there two years while working on my masters in administration as well. Darren and his staff are incredible and helped shape the tech piece for me. We were able to bring tech into the classroom to make it meaningful rather than just a device kids use. Then I became an Assistant Principal at an elementary school where we focused on personalized learning. That was a unique situation where the district needed to APs at that school just for one year. I loved it and, at some point, I’ll end up being a building principal.  
About a Makerspace 
 
Innovative Programs Director
This was the first year for an Innovations Programs in our district. As director, it has been really good for me to have a district view and vision. I don’t feel like I’ve worked a single day yet. I love it but change is super hard and not easy for the faint of ...