libraries

Mini Maker Faire and “A Different Kind of Literacy”

/ gravescolleen / 1 Comment

Aaron and I were both super honored to be interviewed for our local paper on our new library transformations in our local high schools.  I think Rhiannon did a great job writing about our new library makerspaces in ” A Different Kind of Literacy.”

Screen Shot 2015-10-19 at 7.04.09 AM

We also spent the weekend promoting what we do in our libraries at our local mini- maker faire! It was a great day sharing simple brushbots, Sparkfun Redbots and Digital Sandboxes , littleBits prototyping, and Makey Makey piano fun! (Even though I of course forgot the bananas…)

Our fellow Dentonisd librarian Noel Hill joined the fray and showed kids how to build some awesome stuff too!

We packed everything up in this rolling toolbox that makes a great mobile makerspace!

I don’t know how many of you have tinkered with Arduino, but it’s a little difficult to teach students coding and Arduino right out of the gate.  I was happy to experiment more with this Sparkfun Digital Sandbox and show kids that you can program code in Ardublock and instantaneously watch your Sandbox light up!

I also loved how little people held their parent’s hands and played the Makey Makey banana piano.  Do these kids realize I waited over 30 years before I could play my first banana piano?

We had all manner of fun plugging a littleBits Makey Makey into our OG Makey Makey and watching the warring banana/ Playdoh piano wars ensue.

Lastly, this kid figured out how to do Super Mario on the bananas! So meta!

Even more pics from the Denton Mini-Maker Faire

Digital Sandbox on display
Completing the circuit
Measuring voltage with littleBits
Banana pianos are fun for everyone!
Love the Makey Makey smile
Making dollar store brushbots
Light sensor with littleBits
Teaching kids about brushbots and Redbots
#superlibrarianhubs
Sharing Redbot and Digital Sandbox

Makerspace Workshop for Region One Librarians

/ gravescolleen / 1 Comment

Last week I had the privilege of being invited down to Region One Education Service Center to lead Region One librarians in a half day makerspace workshop.

We started out with a simple chat about owning failures so we can learn from them. I also pointed out that it’s very important when beginning your makerspace journey to immerse yourself in maker education and not to get caught up in following directions. Don’t be afraid to fail and fail often in front of students. Try not to get flustered instead show them how you can learn from these experiences.

Then we got straight to work! I was hoping to give them 4 short tasks with each maker resource and move quickly so they could visit each maker station, but librarians like to move at their own pace, so we ended up moving more freely than this slideshow would suggest. (Since some of my task cards will appear in a one of my book projects with the #superlibrarianhubs, I can’t post task cards here yet.)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Librarians enjoyed rotating through stations and learning about Makey Makey, littleBits, paper circuits with Chibitronics tutorials, coding with Scratch, programming Sphero robots, and making simple robots with electric toothbrush motors.

Banana and Human Piano Keys!
Makey Makey
Off
On
littleBits Tasks
Can you make something that lights up and moves?
Art bots
Toothbrush motor robot
Pretty Scribbles

View more about our learning that day by clicking on the image below to go to my Tackk documenting the day.

https://tackk.com/makerworkshop

We ended our day discussing how to start a makerspace and get buy-in from administrators.

I got some great feedback on the day:

  • “I really enjoyed the coding game and the marker bots!”
  • “Loved the banana piano. Makey Makey”
  • “My favorite station was the makeymakey station.”
  • “Getting to try out and play with the different stations.”
  • “Trying out the littleBits kits:)”
  • “I loved that we got to play and experience things for ourselves before the actual presentation.”

Thanks again for having me, Dr. Sheneman!  It was a great day of learning for us all! Can’t wait to see where your librarians go with their makerspaces!