If you are looking for a short, low cost project to do with your Makey Makeys, this one is sure to be a big hit. It's a great small group project as well as an eye catching interactive display in some noisy area of the library (as long as you can keep library staff sane). This was made as part of our Tinkering Tuesdays lab. We had low tech cardboard construction, 3D printing, and the Makey floor piano going on simultaneously. It took us about 1.5 hours with 3 teens helping. Materials List: Aluminum Tape $12 Duct Tape (any color) $2 Makey Makey $50 CAT cable (there's one lying around your library trust me) or just use regular wire Wire strippers 12 x 12 x 1.5 in puzzle piece exercise mat $12 white 6 x 8 tarp (but could be smaller) $12 Computer with internet running Scratch This video shows a demonstration with step by step picture instructions and a more detailed video explanation. I got the idea from two sites that I used for consult: Ed Tech Junkies & Mak
In 2013 I attended a demonstration of using an RPi as an OPAC. At the time the presenter used kiosk software which was not completely viable as an OPAC. I did buy an RPi for my own use however. Five Pi's later, I have found that the RPi 3 can be used as a viable OPAC. I am currently in the process of replacing our 8 thin client OPACs with RPi's. I went with Raspbian Jessie using the Pixel desktop and the Chromium browser. I edited autostart to stop the screen saver and load Chromium. I am refining the Chromium setup to limit browsing, Our OPACs are filtered using a CIPA filter, but I have found that patrons do browse away from the catalog, checking mail and in one case shopping on Amazon (and not closing their account when they finished, this by the way was on a thin client not an RPi). I know some additional refinement will be necessary. but I'm pretty confident the RPi's will work as OPAC's.
ReplyDeleteThanks, great blog.
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