LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

roving wool We've been getting into needle felting lately at the library. It is really amazing what someone can make just by stabbing wool over and over again...talk about stress relief from crafting!! One beginners tip is using cookie cutters when you are first starting out to make easy shapes.  So why not 3D print our own cookie cutters?  Here's one of a cat face I found from Yeggi:   It took about an hour to print actual size on our Ultimaker 2. Before we get started, here are the needle felting tools you will need:  Needle Felting Kit (this one comes with roving wool too) and YES, wear those leather caps for your fingers even if they look goofy. The needle is not like a normal needle. It is barbed AND IT HURTS. For more color options you can buy bulk roving wool and if you like going with a cute animal kit Hamanka has a ton! Instructions: Grab some wool and place it in the cookie cutter shape. Hold down with your hand (just not ...

I have only recently jumped into the podcast craze last summer (I know where have I been right? Thanks to Serial ) so I thought I'd take a break from makerspaces and share my favorites so far.. 99 % Invisible - Did you know that the CIA can come visit a studio set and shut down the operation if prop money used is too "realistic"?  Why aren't we on the metric system yet? These are just a few of the small things that make HUGE impacts. This is the podcast for unsung heroes and things you would never hear about otherwise. Reply All - How easy is it to hack Trumps phone? Is Facebook really listening to us through our phones? a fascinating technology podcast for all people, minus the crazy jargon, that shapes our lives whether we know it or not. Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favorite non-fiction authors, talks about the little things that make a big difference throughout history.  Who knew he hated golf courses so much? Worst Best Sellers- thes...

Hour of Code  is coming December 4th-11 so be sure to take part in their online activities and let your local schools know how easy it is to join up. In addition this year I will be hosting a littleBits & Lego WeDo workshops after school for drop in activities.  One of my favorite robots, Dash will probably make an appearance as well (shhhh don't tell Cozmo). littleBits has been doing a great job putting educators and technology business reps together for webinars so be sure to become a part of their email list. I recently attended: How to Host An Epic Hour of Code They are also adding lots of content to their library community blog like this post from one of their Global Chapters  including Educators Guide with lesson plans to help kick start your littleBits programming.  One in particular is a curriculum using their coding kit. One thing I took away from the webinar that I didn't know was Scratch  is also making lesson plans to guide educator...

Lately I see things on the internet and before I automatically hit the buy on Amazon button I say to myself, "Wait a minute...can I 3D print that?" Today's venture was a one-handed page holder that I saw on this post of tiny but life changing inventions . I immediately got out my digital caliper and measured my thumb length and width. In less than 20 minutes, I made myself something similar using the cylinder shape, roof, and a user generated "mustache" shape.   See the tinkercad design . It took about 1.5 hours to print on the normal CURA settings with the Ultimaker 2. I left the raft and supports everywhere just in case.  It measures 89 mm x 30 mm x 25mm once grouped. Now I can hold my tea in one hand, and safely prop the book steadily in the other.

So littleBits just announced on their website that they are releasing a build your own C3PO robot  for $100.  I would be a little nervous about circulating it because it has many of the delicate wires that could easily be ripped out but it would be a perfect edition for Hour of Code activities in December or other in house robot programs.  Note: A tablet or phone is required to program the droid to complete missions. On the note of delicate wires, I am so sick and tired of the regular littleBits makerspace kits we have coming back with broken battery chords.  I have pretty much replaced them every 2 checkouts. I just broke down and bought the USB bit and the AC adapter .  All batteries, power bits and chords will be removed! Here's an old post about what to include in those littlebits checkout kits because be warned some of those bits do not survive the wear and tear of children's take home use.

Library Stories : A Librarian's Journey of Going From Zero to Maker

I have been avoiding doing fidget spinners since I figured they would be old hat by now but over the past month I have been doing Intro to Tinkercad classes and it is all the kids want to talk about and print. Of course since I don't have the ball bearings , I tried to explain it to them that it is better to have the bearing first then measure around it but they happily 3D printed ones that they could just spin using their fingers. They kinda reminded me of brass knuckles.... Coincidentally, I saw a post on Facbook highlighting how to build custom spinners.  This blog has everything you will need and I am very appreciative. It took me a few tries to get the exact measurements so that the bearing would fit in snugly but not too loose as it would fall right out. My measurements for the 22mm bearing was using 2 cylinders in Tinkercad, one cylinder measures 27mm all around, 7mm high with an inner "hole" cylinder of 22.5mm all around, 7mm high. I highly recommend using Tin...

It has been a year since Pokemon Go first took the world by storm. The question...who is still playing? Well at level 34 and counting, I'm still all in.  I need over 1 million XP to get to level 35. It will take me MONTHS. I was pretty excited to see what the anniversary had in store. I was hoping for trading as I have promised many kids to come in. I was going to do raffles to unload some my Gyaradoses onto them. It takes 400 Magikarp candies to make one Gyarados so they are highly coveted. They are taking up my inventory but I worked so hard on them I don't want to just grind them up for candies! Niantic focused on revamping the gym system, which are now Pokestops to spin as well. Gone are the days where I would find a few out of the way gyms, stay in it for WEEKS, and just collect poke coins. It actually isn't worth being in multiple gyms anymore. As long as your Pokemon stays in a gym for one hour per day, you earn a max of 50 Pokecoins (10 coins per minute) and ev...

Last weekend, I went to the annual Tee-Off mini golf event at the Brookline Public Library.  As a first time visitor, I was mini-golfing with my phone at the ready. Special thanks to the AMAZING librarian rockstar Robin Brenner for so many great ideas. It truly is worth a visit just to see her teen room. Here are a few 3D printing/marketing ideas to takeaway: Having a  3D printer filtration cart would be wonderful in our library.  Look at the price if you dare.  Right now I have to go downstairs to retrieve prints because we are concerned about the fumes and little hands touching anything while the printer is on.  I have a video camera set up downstairs using an iPad 2 and the free app called Presence  for monitoring but sometimes I do forget to keep checking the presence website while I'm on the desk especially since it makes this annoying beeping sound to say, "Are you still watching?!"..As the sign reveals on the cart, the propensity to want to lean or...

We are doing a series of Crafternoon programs this summer. In order to get some buzz going, we left this out on the children's desk and it has been a huge conversation starter. Randomly, one kid asked, "Do you think you can make a fidget spinner with Perler beads?" Answer, "YES"

littleBits has a code kit!

The latest craze seems to be these Fidget spinners for idle hands. They can easily be 3D printed in an hour from the thousands of already made files out there in tinkercad and other sites. If you have a 3D printing class coming up at the library hosting a fidget spinner design course in tinkercad will be a sure sell out. People are already started to create their own tutorials based on the size of their ball bearings.  

Pokemon Go has been getting steadily quieter in New England, as the craze of this summer hit critical mass then slowly as the weather got worse brought out only the die hard fans with unlimited data plans on their phone ::ahem:: Level 31 thank you very much. I still get beaten out of our library gym every few days and I still see some kids playing but it has not been on the tip of anyone's tongues since the holidays hit.  The holidays tried to keep the fervor up by offering special incentives during Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the lastly on Valentine's Day. Special Pokemon increased spawn rates, candies were doubled, lures lasted for 6 hours, etc. as long as you logged in during the week of the holiday and kept up with the app updates. For those who need a refresher, look at this earlier blog post .  You may or may not know that Niantic released a huge update last Thursday, adding 80 new Pokemon called "Generation 2" that are available to catch. Most ...

I was so excited to get the robot, Cozmo from Anki which I have been drooling over since before Christmas. He is finally available for purchase on Amazon  for $180.  He lives up to the hype and then some.  My one hiccup so far has been syncing him to one of our iPads through Apple Configurator.  I had to unsupervise the device completely because the free app needs an iTunes account attached to the iPad to run. Once I installed it from the iPad directly rather than through Configurator it worked fine. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you probably use gift cards to purchase apps rather than the Volume Purchasing program.  If you wanted him available for patron checkout, he can be synced to multiple devices (just not more than one running at the same time). He will remember all his learning so once you unlock games for the first time he will remember from one device to another. He also remembers everyone "he meets" so if you run the meet Cozmo fea...

Since we have to worry about limiting hours of printing to when we are open learning to split items in Tinkercad is a very handy skill. I split this Disney castle that I found on Tinkercad for a student's Florida project. It was going to be over 10 hours so I split it in half so we didn't have to "print overnight". I tried to split this object in CURA first but no luck.  A little bit of superglue and this one will be ready to go. Just be sure that you don't adjust the size while in Cura because the halves won't sync up.