LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

Yesterday I attended the Massachusetts Library Association's Annual Conference in Hyannis, MA. It had an amazing selection of presenters. They talked about the many facets of librarianship from programming to reader's advisory with some STEM highlights: Mattapoisett, Rochester, and Marion public libraries came together for a MOBY (My Own Backyard) LSTA grant. Librarians from all three librarians as well as a science curriculum educator collaborated to provide backpacks with science related activities for patrons to check out as well as programming to highlight each bag. This goes back to that theory that if no one knows about it, the greatest stuff could just sit on the shelves.  A great tip I learned from another presentation is even if many people don't show up to a program, just highlighting the database or product that you want to promote as an event, say one on one with lynda.com tutorials, could increase use. Some people might not be able to make the event, life ...

After a fun month of building, painting, attaching, coding, 3D printing, our Arduino Interactive Wall has all the components in place! Still some painting and touch up to do. I plan to document all the circuitry and code so we can make sure it is safe to move to a new location. It was a BIG commitment of resources, time and treasure, but I felt it was worth it. One of the things I love about it is how we were able to collaborate with artist, Sally Dean, AND engineer, Kevin Osborn. They led us all in the concept and creation of it - adults and teens alike. It felt like we were taken on a creative journey together, following the lead of two seasoned experts. Is this tinkering? Not on the grander scale, but it was certainly problem-solving and skill-building. Some of the teens learned C++ coding, we all perfected our skills with Tinkercad 3D design work, and the movable parts were somewhat dictated by the teens' interests. All in all, about 12 library patrons participated in t...

Thanks to the Duxbury High School Lego Robotics Team for allowing me to observe their Lego Mindstorm Class for Alden students in Grades 3-5 as part of Engineering Week.  They taught me a valuable lesson, you don't have to use the instructions! I was so caught up with building the official robots that I forgot that the whole point to Legos is the individualized creativity with the pieces. Now this type of learning isn't for everyone but I've always hated instructions and doing step by step Lego instructions was a huge set back for me.  I'd rather trial and error free build and problem solve throughout the process. That's closer to tinkering anyway. In a 3 day consecutive after school class, each team built their own robots for battle.  The first day was a lot of experimenting with the parts. The students immediately delved into the kits asking questions about sensors or just building something with gears that physically moved without electricity.  The second ...

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...

It was hard at first to wrap my brain around doing a science based session of story times as a stay alone program for 10 4-5 yr olds for 30 minutes. In my 9 years of experience, I've never hosted a stay alone story time (crazy right?). How do I even begin? How messy should I get? What happens since I'm by myself trying to conduct experiments without parental help? What about food allergies? What kinds of questions do I ask? I decided that the whole session would be us pretending to be scientists, using their tools, and experimenting/observing a new theme each week. One of my main concerns was organizing the flow. I like stations but it's hard to do that without more supervision so we tried to do as much as possible as a group first and then had a few choices to play with afterwards. This was a great jumping off point for me from the Boston Children's Museum STEM Family Activity Guide & the Boston Children's Museum Sprouts. Then I went to Pinterest for t...

Sidney codes the blinking light array with her dad while Bill Johnson shows them his Arduino sensors. We finally invited adults to come discover the wonders and power of Arduino microprocessing kits. With his real life application story of using Arduinos in an industrial diagnostic setting, Bill Johnson added an urgency and interest level for the adults to consider. Getting familiar with Arduino and code is a ticket to an innovative job, he says. Jess showed us her clever Halloween applications and then the teens went to work showing their parents just how the bread boards, code, and micro-processors work together. They ran through the blinking lights exercises pretty fast and moved directly into coding messages in their LCD panels. Whew! Lily shows her dad how to change the message on the LCD screen through re-coding. Jacob shows his dad how the Arduino works. Julia works next to Sandra and digs out the potentiometer for her project. ...

We are very excited to announce that we were the next featured case study on the littleBits education blog .  High fives all around for the hard work of our staff and students who were eager to learn circuitry with us over the past year.

Just in time for the release of the new movie The Boxtrolls , done entirely in claymation stop motion, we finished up a month long after school Lego stop motion program on Tuesdays for students in Gr. 6-8. Ellen thought it would be a good idea to talk about the structure of the program and some tips we have learned along the way. Material Must Haves: iStopMotion ($5.99), iMovie ($9.99), and DropBox (free) app iPads Bins of Legos and figures *Note: This can also be done though the camera in a phone or tablet (regular camera phone app that comes free) and downloaded into iMove for a Mac or Windows Movie Maker for a PC (bearing in mind you have laptops or free computers handy) if you are on a shoestring budget. It's just less streamlined that way.  The key to stopmotion is FRAMES PER SECOND which can be changed in any of these editing programs as long as the students have taken enough photos. Preparation Tip : Make sure to separate out weapons, costumes, and Lego f...

Our Mad Scientist Monday for this week was dedicated to cartoonist and "inventor", Rube Goldberg. I just learned that he did not actually create these machines but rather drew these silly contraptions only on paper. What an influence he has had! There's a challenge devoted to him every year hosted by high schools and colleges all over the county. You can sponsor your own teen team at your library or encourage them to apply to the international online contest. Each year has a goal such as apply toothpaste to a toothbrush and the kids are invited to make their own contraptions to accomplish the goal. Having an open experimental day like ours would be a great introduction to forming your team.   Set up:  Thanks to our iPads we featured a video with 75 Rube Goldberg Ideas to explain our vision. We also downloaded the official game, Rubeworks app ($2.99 for the iPad).  Each level features an animated cartoon Rube Goldberg challenge like squeeze an orange for orang...

In honor of our science theme this summer, we hold Mad Science Mondays here in the children's room on Mondays from 2-5pm.  This is very similar to our Makerspace Mondays held last summer with an additional preschool "science" lab, where our program room is transformed into a separate science lab for the younger set to explore with their parents. This is a drop in program that we provide with the emphasis that we will provide the materials but the parents/family members must work together to complete the weekly science projects with little supervision from the librarians on the desk. Our first week's focus was on building. In the main room for Gr. K and up we hosted building challenges. Challenge #1: Building the tallest structure you could out of paper and solo cups.  We bought this great tape that sticks to the wall with inch measurements on it so kids could record how high their structure was but we had no idea one would almost touch the ceiling. What a cheap ...

We had the privilege of attending a Makerspace in Public Libraries session recently sponsored by the ITS sub-committee of NELA in the beautiful Portsmouth, New Hampshire Public Library. The highlight of it was hearing Bill Derry, the Assistant Director of Innovation and User Experience, talk about how Westport, CT Public Library "does" Makerspace. Here is Bill's  resource page . Download his PPT from this page for use in your library. It's really comprehensive. Major take-aways were: The library is THE place in the community to get people started making.  You don't have to do everything: be the conduit into the Maker World by connecting folks with other Makers and grassroots Makerspaces in your area. Make your programs as intergenerational as possible. Don't assume that just because the schools are getting new equipment (e.g. 3D printers) that the public will have any access to them. Schools have to be very cautious and buttoned down. Libraries are ...

 Bringing a group of antsy middle school boys to the Cape Cod Mini Maker Faire on Saturday, really brought home the principles of Do It Yourself in a big way. We set up a table for folks to solder a little Maker badge: 2 LEDs, a cell battery holder and a tie tack to hold it on. At the last minute, I threw in a MaKey MaKey kit and the 3 Doodler. Turns out, our table was busier than we could handle and we ran out of material around 1 p.m.! I wish I had brought three times as many badge kits and 3Doodler plastic as I did. Granted, it was another rainy Saturday in a never-ending cold and clammy Spring that hasn't really happened and I think folks are tired of the same old winter routines. The Maker Faire was free, open to everyone and in a great space on the campus of Cape Cod Community College. There was a wide range of exhibitors: 3-D printers, Martha's Vineyard High School's dump-diving go carts, Barnstable High School's great mapping application, Truro...

With the DFL Children's Room recent purchase of ten Sparkfun Inventor's Kits , a number of us boldly went where no DFL librarian had gone before: into the fascinating but brain-cramping world of Arduino: Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. Arduino can be used to develop interactive objects , taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a variety of lights, motors, and other physical outputs. Arduino projects can be stand-alone, or they can communicate with software running on your computer . Luckily, we had as our guide, Kevin Osborn , engineer and Arduino enthusiast. He led our merry band of librarians, trustees, patrons, and teachers, through the jungle of code, into the swamp of breadboards, out ont...

Great things are happening in Duxbury regarding tinkering and engineering. On Saturday, Jess and I trooped over to the Duxbury High School to see the final result of the robotics teams efforts.  Duxbury senior, Evan Nudd explains it all. Competitions on March 21 and 28th. Go Dragons! Duxbury High School robot explanation from Duxbury Free Library on Vimeo . Here's a link to the team's blog: http://duxburyrobotics.wordpress.com/

If ever there was a mecca of STEAM activities it would be the Exploratorium in SanFrancisco. For decades it has been a leading institution for people of all ages to explore the mysteries and discover the answers to "how" "why" "what" questions in the natural world. They have come out with a new book that the Duxbury Free Library now owns, The Art of Tinkering , by Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich. Here are their tenets: Merge science, art & technology : "...when you mix them together, you get a veritable tinkering trifecta in which technological tools and scientific principles let you express your own artistic vision...."  Create rather than consume : this says it all. Revisit & Iterate on Your Ideas. Use familiar materials in unfamiliar ways Express ideas via construction Prototype rapidly: "When you have a new idea, it's incredibly helpful get it out of your brain as soon as possible - to sketch a design or build a ...