makerspace

Near the end of March, I decided it was time to host an Obstacle Course challenge for Sphero. I was ready to see kids programming Sphero and not just playing with it. So I set up a Maker Monday to start an obstacle course in a specified section of the library.

The kids enjoyed building ramps out of cardboard, but participation was not as high as I expected. So in the afternoon when a student asked if he could build a track on top of the library shelves, I gave him (and the others that joined) a few guidelines.

Maker Monday Obstacle Course

Testing ramp

The unconventional track ON TOP OF LIBRARY SHELVES!

Cardboard ramp

Side railing with old slide projector wheel boxes and pipe coverings

Morning fun with Ollie jumping

and jumping people….

Chariots just started happening!

Thinking at the maker station

Unconventional obstacle course guidelines:

You must create bumpers to keep Sphero on top of the shelves!
You must enlist the help of others should Sphero escape the track or the bumpers
You must program Sphero with Macrolab, you cannot use the Drive app or you lose your Sphero obstacle course privileges!

Interact with my Thinglink below to see the progression of the obstacle course and the community that grew because of this unconventional makerspace activity!

Sphero Obstacle Course Challenge on Thinglink

Over the course of the week, students would come in and add to the obstacle course until one day during advisory when a student decided we just had to program Sphero to drive from one shelf to the next. It was madness, a little chaotic, and a ton of fun! So many kids got involved watching us and cheering us on. This top of the library shelves course connected us as a maker community.

What we learned:

It is easier to program Sphero to drive in a straight line than it is to drive it in a straight line.
Lining up Sphero’s tail light is difficult. Precision is key to navigating the obstacle course.
Putting Sphero on top of the shelf made it easier to program and easier to figure out the correct angles needed for programming.
Programming sphero takes an understanding of distance, rate, and time!
It’s more fun to drive on top of the shelf than on the floor when you are doing this as an unstructured activity.
Mr. Graves at MHS9 built an excellent floor obstacle course for Sphero by partnering with an AVID class.

Tech Camp Presentation

I was honored to present with my #superlibrarianhubs, Aaron Graves, at TLA’s Tech Camp! We had a fast and frenzied presentation on the library as a makerspace at this awesome preconference to the epic Texas Librarian Association conference. We were able to present our ideas on research and makerspaces to almost 600 librarians through four dynamic sessions! Click this thumbnail to visit our Tackk:

My biggest takeaways from Tech Camp:

(These are my thoughts from presenting all day and then hearing our ideas reiterated in Matthew Winner’s Keynote)

When we let our kids fail, we teach them perseverance.
We need to teach students how to use social media by modeling effective use.
Our research instruction methods need an update so we can reach all students (including the 50% of Texas HS graduates that do not go to college.)
A library makerspace allows us to teach our students authentic research skills.
Through challenge based learning we can teach students crowdsourcing research methods by:
1. Incorporating keyword searches
2. Advanced Google searching with operators
3. Authenticating sources (including on Youtube and social media)
4. Sharing learning through social media (See my lamar_library How to Vines)

“Teach Ss how to use social media- let Ss tweet from #library account! ” @MatthewWinner #txlatechcamp15

— Colleen Graves (@gravescolleen) April 14, 2015

Thanks to Sparkfun and the awesome Bev, we had a mobile makerspace set up outside of our day long session. Check out the pics below! Ardusat even came out to share info on their cubesats! Plus, Mod Robotics sent us a Cubelets set to demo and Chibitronics even donated a circuit notebook as a giveaway!

On top of all the learning, I met so many awesome authors and I can’t wait to see the collaboration that will unfold from this epic TLA!

TLA Sessions and Authors

TLA is an amazing place to chat with superstar librarians, book bloggers, and great authors. I was able to meet up with my National Writing Project buddies Kerri Harris and Donalyn Miller (Whom I realized I’ve known for almost a DECADE! We all ordered the same lunch and realized we are all reading the same book! Look for a collaborative post on The Nerdy Book Club blog in May.)

As we sat down to wait for a lunch table, we ran into Tom Angleberger of Origami Yoda fame, John Rocco Caldecott winner for Blackout and Percy Jackson Illustrator, and Chris Barton picture book author extraordinaire. Our casual conversation about the ease of connecting students with authors through social media got me thinking about how great TLA is for making connections and how inspiring the 21st century has become! I’m hoping to find out more about John Rocco’s research when creating mythology illustrations to tie in with my 8th grade student mythology research project. Plus, I’d love to learn more from Chris Barton about his research methods for his entertaining and informative picture books. I think my students could learn a lot from these great writers’ authentic research processes!

I even stumbled upon YA author Lindsay Cummings at TT4L ! We’ve been chatting about a dystopian author panel to meet with my 7th grade students in the next few weeks. Our History students are working on a PBL (Project Based Learning) about the next civil war and we are wanting to discuss Dystopian and political aspects that could change the future of America.

Lastly, I spent my final day of TLA running a makerspace for teens at TT4L. They loved learning simple circuits with the Makey Makeys, driving the Sparkfun Redbot with Arduino libraries, and of course racing Sphero and Ollie. (Note, if you haven’t bought Makey Makeys or Spheros yet, YOU NEED TO! Get a class set of both!)

Now it’s time to get back to reading graphic novels for the School Library Month #shelfchallenge! What are you reading?