LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

As of April 2018, we did a kit circulation report.  We had 106 kits which have circulated 1,047 times since it's inception in 2015.  Here is the top 10 list of most circulated. These include hobby kits, puzzles, cake pans, instruments, science robots/STEM, and American Girl dolls. The ukulele kits (we have one soprano and one concert kit) have been around the longest and have circulated 106 times total.  Just remember someone should change the strings yearly and definitely include a tuner (we like the snark) as new strings on a uke take a while to break in. Surprisingly our meditation toolbox comes in second with 51 checkouts.  It is just some CDs and a DVD.  This one has also been around since the inception of our kits. Next up is our virtual reality headset toolbox.  It is a Homido Virtual Reality headset. If that is too pricey, I recommend Google Cardboard.  Our sewing machine comes in 5th.  Knitting is a great idea fo...

The DFL currently experiments with hobby, STEAM, and Technology kits that are housed both in the adult section and the kids room. These kits include musical instruments, video equipment, puzzles, cake plans, robots, looms, and more available for checkout.  The kits are bought using our Amazon prime account, under the supervision of the head of circulation using a special makerspace kit budget and backed up by a kit committee made up of various departments to streamline the process.  The kits with the most holds by far have been the Retro Nintendo  and Super Nintendo Classic which were small batch pre-Christmas releases for the last two years.  Rather than blowing the dirt out of your old cartridges, these consoles have games built in for your playing pleasure. According to Walmart, the Nintendo "classics" are on sale as of today.  Our kit contains a small palm sized console, 2 controllers (try to upgrade wireless ones if you can), an ac adapter, and, I rec...

Sorry readers! I have been newly promoted to Head of Children's Department at my current library and have not had too much time to experiment in Makerspace land...HOWEVER.... I did go to Gamestop to drool over buying a Nintendo Switch because I love Super Mario games and noticed this.... Even Nintendo has jumped on the makerspace train with LABO . I don't think it would hold up as a checkout-able kit but if you do have a Nintendo Switch as a gaming cart or program item at your library it would be a neat thing to display or build one of the kits with a small group. If you don't want to spend the money to purchase the official kit, maybe kids can be encouraged to create their own cardboard inventions for the Switch using Makedos  instead? I actually made it out of the store without buying the Switch....FOR NOW...

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

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.  

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. 

Suzanne and I talk about toy  robots . Here's a sneak peek at one worth discussing...

We have been expanding our science kits in the children's room in an effort to introduce non-traditional circulating items for over a year now . We have littleBits, Raspberry Pi 2, Sphero, Cubelets, KEVA planks and Makey Makeys. Our newest editions were the robots, Dash and BeeBot, which gained popularity after we had them out to test during the Hour of Code . I happen to be showing one of the kids the littleBits kit, since all the robotics kits were out, when I noticed some bits are just not holding up during circulation. Our littleBits kit included Lego adapters, mounting boards, and the small starter kit which doesn't seem to be available anymore with 10 bits included. If you are new to littleBits, they are small magnetic pieces, each with their own function, that can be put together to make an electronic invention. Bits include lights, sensors, motors and speakers. You can integrate them into recyclables, Lego projects, sewing projects ...you name it! For a while, we u...

I was infuriated that there weren't any soldering videos out there for this so called "beginner" project so I made my own with mistakes and all. Keep in mind I've only soldered twice in my life. Once I made a Larson Scanner for a pumpkin (Battlestar Galactica Cylon) and the second time I made a Maker Bot badge.   Keeping with the Christmas theme for the makerspace events this month, I used the Velleman MK100 kit Christmas Tree.   I will tell you out of the three projects the Maker Bot badge is where to start as a "beginner". When I hosted the class last Saturday, anyone who hadn't soldered before watched a brief intro video Soldering 101 from Adafruit  (I just skipped to where there are close ups of the soldering procedure) and then I supervised while they made a Maker Bot badge. I am happy to say that all the kids successfully finished the tree and badge in an hour and they all worked (SPOILER: unlike my first try). The middle schoolers were on t...

This holiday season, I was inspired by snowflake silhouette 3D prints and wanted to teach a class using the draw-print image method I have blogged about previously . This time I would skip the drawing step and use google images to find a pre-made silhouette.   I started by googling Mario star silhouette. I saved the file as a JPG then converted to SVG using online-convert , imported into Tinkercad , then hit CTRL + D  multiple times for smart duplicate (thank you Tinkertips ). I tried once with mario stars and twice with the Doctor Who Tardis. Here are my results..  My conclusion was trying to teach a class in this is much too complicated for beginners. It required much more precision (as shown in the Mario star snowflake that broke apart because the stars weren't connected enough) as well as finding silhouettes that lend themselves to 3D printing. The Tardis was having issues because of design alone. By making the Tardis 20% fill, it wasn't enough for ...

This tutorial is a combination of the  DIY unicorn hoodie  tutorial I found on Pinterest and Adafruit's light up unicorn 3D print tutorial. I used some supplies from Adafruit's candle bows  that we made a few years back instead of buying new materials. You can buy the sewing conductive kit separately on Adafruit without the bows.  I won't go through every excruciating detail but here are some tips that they don't mention and a few workarounds that worked for me based on my supplies.  Supplies needed from both tutorials:  Hoodie (dress in my case) Yarn 3D printed Unicorn Horn with LED base 3D printer with clear PLA filament (I didn't use flexible as the tutorial calls for and it was fine) 1 LED (11mm tall X 7.91 mm wide) Conductive Thread Needle (small enough the fit through the battery holder brass side holes. In the Adafruit kit, I used the smallest needle on the right) Battery Holder Regular Thread Felt (not necessary bu...