Melissa Handy’s Brilliant Maker Mindset: What School Could Be in Hawai’i

On this episode of What School Could Be in Hawai’i, host Josh Reppun sits down with Melissa Handy, Education Technology Director at Le Jardin Academy, a medium sized independent school in Hawaiʻi. She is the Past President of the Hawaiʻi Society for Technology in Education (HSTE), a champion robotics coach, a makerspace expert, an International Baccalaureate Examiner, a WASC Commissioner and one of the founders of the Hawaiʻi Education Leadership Summit, which is now the Hawaiʻi Association of Independent Schools’ Leading Schools of the Future (LSOTF) conference.

Melissa prefers not to refer to herself as a teacher. Rather, she is the ultimate guide, coach, facilitator and mentor for her students. Her kids “ride bikes” and she runs behind them (as she likes to say) as they learn to navigate thinking, doing and collaborating. She has a larger-than-life personality of an artist, a wonderful laugh and a mind sharp like a knife. She knows how to solve problems like no one else I know. She has written extensively on the differences between maker spaces and maker mindsets. She is also a regular presenter at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference.

For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Education Technology Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!
Twitter – @MarketScale
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

courage
Creative Confidence and Moral Courage: The Leadership Traits Business Schools Should Be Betting On
May 25, 2026

What students need from higher education is becoming harder to pin down than it once was. As higher education faces mounting pressure—from student disengagement to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence—institutions are being forced to rethink not just what students learn, but who they become. New research and industry signals suggest that technical knowledge…

Read More
healthcare
From the C-Suite to the Classroom: A Healthcare Leader’s Bet on the Next Generation
May 25, 2026

Healthcare isn’t short on strategy right now—it’s short on people, access, and experienced leadership where it matters most. In Texas alone, more rural hospitals have closed than in any other state over the past decade, leaving entire communities with limited access to care. At the same time, many health systems are realizing they haven’t…

Read More
AI
The AI Health Score: Turning Hallucinations, Agents, and AI Risk Into Board-Ready Insight
May 24, 2026

As artificial intelligence moves deeper into enterprise operations, many organizations are discovering that the real challenge is not adoption, but control. Traditional software has always been predictable: the same input produces the same output, making it possible to audit systems at a fixed point in time. AI changes that equation. Jeff Carson, founder of…

Read More
TheAIAudit
Introducing TheAIAudit: A Platform Built to Measure, Monitor, and Govern Enterprise AI
May 22, 2026

Enterprise AI is advancing faster than most companies can govern it. Behind the scenes, AI systems are already influencing decisions tied to revenue, operations, compliance, customer outcomes, and risk — yet many organizations still lack a clear way to measure, explain, or oversee what those systems are doing. That is the gap TheAIAudit was…

Read More