LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

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...

littleBits has a code kit!

I saw a very interesting ad on Hulu last week which introduced me to Cozmo , the latest edition of mass market toy robots. Cozmo is Wall-E come to life literally AND I NEED HIM. He has his own personality that is directly affected by your actions with facial recognition software so he can actually recognize you and learn your name. He can request if you'd like to play through a phone or iPad and if you say no, he gets SAD! The more you play with Cozmo, the more features you unlock. Here is an awesome unboxing and demo of his skill set from Dad Does. He might be this year's hottest Christmas toy since he's "out of stock" at the moment everywhere and is going on e-bay for $500. Needless to say, this is on my library wishlist. Imagine kids coming to visit Cozmo and he would recognize them and want to play ? He's the new allergy friendly library pet! TAKE MY MONEY!

Don't forget that next week is the  Hour of Code , a global initiative to entice people of all ages to learn one hour of coding through games.  You don't need to do anything more than download some promotional materials and lead patrons to the website for them to sign in.  To extend the hour of code beyond the website, we'll be putting out some of our robots to try. This year's newest addition to our circulating collection is the adorable Dash robot. Who is by far my favorite robot that I have played with because Dash actually has a personality! I immediately wanted to hug him and yell "Johnny 5 Alive!"  Dash talks, blinks, lights up and runs around on 3 wheels. He has a companion robot, Dot, many fun accessories, and even Lego brick adapters. The apps that I downloaded for him on our iPad gen. 2 (gen 1 won't work) are: Blockly Path Blockly Jr. Wonder Wonder is the hardest and least intuitive app, aimed for experienced robotics users or at ...

This year was our most successful Hour of Code yet (IMHO). We had lots going on and it was pretty noisy in the kids room. Hour of Code on the website was assigned for homework so I don't have accurate stats on that but I did try to keep track of the extension activities with pictures and video . So here is the reflection on the week after the previous blog post about setup: As I have previously mentioned, every library has great services and events but how do we market them effectively? The most successful marketing strategy for us has been leaving demo projects out on the children's help desk. We had many conversations over the past week about Lego WeDo Robotics because the Ferris Wheel, which was built by a student during Tinkering Tuesdays, was on display for kids to ask about. As soon as we reeled them in, we could say, "If you have 30 minutes you can build one yourself today!"  Consequently, this also helped all the staff to learn how to do a quick progra...

Hour of Code week starts today! In addition to the free one hour tutorials on the website. We have a few passive unplugged activities such as binary code jewelry and " my robot friend ":   Along with iPads loaded with a whole folder of coding apps to try. My favorites are: Kodeable Scratch Jr. Daisy the Dinosaur We also left Lego WeDo kits at the front desk for kids to try and we'll have a special demo from the high school robotics club with Lego Mindstorms on Thursday.   Our new Sphero robot will be debuting this week. I'll bring him out during our regular Tinkering Tuesday session and after school for kids to try. He is connected to one of our iPads. My favorite app so far is Tickle .   It has a Scratch like block interface which requires a bit more thought to get him around than just driving him back and forth with a controller.  For quick fun demonstration try, Draw & Drive. You literally draw something on the iPad screen a...

Hour of Code, an international collaboration to promote computer science to kids and families of all ages begins on Monday December 8th and continues throughout the week. Using hourofcode.com , companies around the world offer tutorials for students to experiment with many coding programs and languages such as Scratch, Python, and more. Learn how to code JAVA, make an app video game, or an interactive Christmas card quickly and easily. Students who complete one hour of coding that week will receive a certificate (and in our library get a chance to enter a raffle for a free Game Stop gift card).  Kids can sign up for a free hour of code account to keep track of their time from year to year but it's not mandatory.  This week is a great opportunity for libraries to provide a drop-in exploratory program without the stress of learning or prepping all these platforms. There are multiple video tutorials on the site.  It is also a great collaboration between local schools and...

What will the public library look like in the near future? As more and more people access information resources online, the role of the public library is growing and morphing into something beyond a collection of resources to be checked out, used and returned by the community. It is becoming a place where people learn new skills, access hard-to-find and/or expensive hardware and software, and meet up with fellow lifelong learners to stay fit, healthy, mentally alert and have fun! The vision of the 21st century library is a place that is open all week long, all year around, and full of exciting activities and resources that the average citizen may be interested in but may not be comfortable investing in right away. Because the library is open 6-7 days a week, it is the perfect place for the community to come together to learn and then practice newly acquired skills or find others with whom to share a passion or interest. How is this different from a school or community cente...

For a full year, we have held a weekly tech session for young teens - mostly eighth grade boys. We played with Little Bits, Legos, MaKey MaKey, soldering, construction projects, programming challenges, and more. Though we regret girls haven't participated, we have some plans to grow in a more inclusive direction. More about that in another post. What we DID accomplish by holding weekly sessions,  was an experiment in content and form. We tried a variety of skill-building sessions, physical and intellectual challenges and learned a lot about what we can and cannot do in an after school setting at the public library. Today, we did a "dress rehearsal" for the Open House we are planning for next Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. - to which we hope many kids and adults come! Learning how things work is, ultimately more important to us then magically assembling things that fly, move, interact, etc. It's super seductive to merely assemble cool stuff, but we feel it is a...

One of the challenges of using a multi-purpose room is that we have to clean up after 1 1/2 hours. Either we disassemble things to store away or we try to choose projects that are quickly finished. But we still want to challenge folks in new ways and not give them busy work. Smaller projects like the following ones are opportunities to learn a new skill that might lead a youth or adult to explore further on their own. Bristle Bots   Solo cup w/ DC motor Solder a Maker Badge Franken-Elmo Take Apart Programming with Scratch or Hopscotch Skyping with an expert Soldering a Drawdio Take Apart Table Wearable electronics - sparkle bow Knitting squares to make a blanket Building with Keva planks Stop motion with iPad and iStopMotion Resources include: Make Magazine littleBits Keva planks Adafruit kits Duxbury Transfer Station MaKey MaKey Instructables DIY.org ...

Here at the Duxbury Free Library we have geared up to help people of all ages participate in the Hour of Code. Of course, folks can do their hour anywhere they have access to wifi, but we're making it easy to do it at the library!   HOUR OF CODE We have designated computers for this project, volunteers (our PHILS group and others ) coming after school to help anyone who might be a bit hesitant to dip their toes in, and bookmarks with a list of sites people can follow up with to learn and practice more! It's important for both boys and girls to see coding as a part of life - no matter what their career goals. Every modern job will require some knowledge of computer coding to be fully mastered. It's really logical, fun and satisfying to practice the computational skills on the Hour of Code web site !

Introducing the PHILS to the coding tutorial for the December "Hour of Code" was fun and, just when we thought we'd have to string them along for a while, the organizers came up with the whole series of tutorials on their web site!                  http://csedweek.org/learn2 We needed the practice run to figure out how much we can rely on using the library wireless connection with our new iPads or do we need to stick to the wired desktops in the Reference and Children's areas. Lucky for us, Denise had arrange for a new wireless router to be installed today in the lower level so now the whole building should have a strong signal all day long. Yay, Denise! We're hoping that will give us adequate connectivity to handle all the old and young Coders we hope will participate in the week long, "HOUR OF CODE" from Dec. 9 - Dec. 14th. Then, later in the week, we had our first "Wearable Electronics" workshop as a way to gain the interest of gi...