A fourth grade girl was at the library with her family. She selected a pretty big stack of picture books to take home. I overheard mom's reaction when she saw the books:
"Don't take those books. They're too quick to read, and you just won't have time to read them all."
The logic is lost to me.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Banana Keyboards
I found a half-finished version of this post saved as a draft in my blog's archives. Oops! I took a few minutes to finish writing and add a few pictures. It's a bit belated, but enjoy!
This month's Maker Monday program delved a bit more into the tech than past programs as we experimented with a Makey Makey.
What is a Makey Makey? Well, it's a nifty little device that can connect to a computer via USB. You then can connect other objects to the Makey Makey to create your own custom keyboard using alligator clips. Any object that conducts electricity would work fine: Fruits, vegetables, houseplants, play-dough, other people, or even water. Couple this with a few simple web programs that utilize the arrow keys and suddenly you can capture Pokemon with potatoes, play a tune on the piano with play-dough, win at Tetris with bananas, or drum a wicked beat on a houseplant. The possibilities are limitless.
Jay Silver, one of the creators of the Makey Makey also gave a really awesome Ted Talk about his inspiration for the device, which I really recommend watching. I did not show the video as part of my program due to time constraints, but it would be great to share if time allows because it helps get everyone into the proper mindset for thinking outside the box. Enjoy it here:
I purchased a Makey Makey starter kit for $50, which comes with everything you need to get started. You can find the kit for sale on Amazon, or you can buy directly from the Makey Makey website. I also definitely recommend exploring the Makey Makey website to get lots of ideas for way that the device can be used. They have links to a whole list of awesome recommended programs that work well with the Makey Makey, which is a great place to start.
Since only so many people can use the program at once, I decided to limit the size of the program to 5 people at a time with two time slots, one for teens and another for tweens. Neither group completely filled (I had 4 teens and 2 tweens), but I was actually thankful for the small numbers as we tested what the Makey Makey could do.
On the day of the program, I set up a laptop and connected the Makey Makey. I pre-loaded a couple of programs that I knew I wanted to try out (piano and bongos) so that they would be ready to go, and kept another tab open with the list of recommended programs to give us more options. I set up another table with some conductive object to connect to the Makey Makey.
When the teens/tweens arrived, I have them a quick 2-minute rundown of what the Makey Makey was and how it worked. Then I basically just let them go to town. I let them decide which programs they wanted to test and which objects they wanted to turn into their keyboards and only offered a bit of advice and encouragement when it looked like they needed it, and occasionally challenged them to try something a little bit different or reminded them to take turns. With such a small group, it was very easy to just let them experiment with the Makey Makey to discover what they could do with it. As the afternoon progressed, everyone started to get even more creative and innovative as they tested the Makey Makey's limits. It was awesome.
Check out these pictures to see some of the ways that the teens/tweens got creative with the Makey Makey.
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Monday, April 6, 2015
Two Book Displays
Our book displays have been especially lovely lately. I give full credit for this to my co-workers, who are very good at making these displays look extra-special.
The first display was done with lot of basketball books, both fiction and non-fiction, in honor of the NCAA basketball tournament. The popularity of this display was, no doubt, helped by the Wisconsin Badgers' incredible run. The big Badgers flag came from a staff member's house, and we posted an updated copy of the bracket every few days.
The second display was full of lovely Cinderella stories, in honor of the recent release of Disney's live-action movie. The staff memeber who set this display up brought in her own shoes to use as the "glass slippers," and the mice and pumpkin came from our stash of storytime supplies.
The first display was done with lot of basketball books, both fiction and non-fiction, in honor of the NCAA basketball tournament. The popularity of this display was, no doubt, helped by the Wisconsin Badgers' incredible run. The big Badgers flag came from a staff member's house, and we posted an updated copy of the bracket every few days.
The second display was full of lovely Cinderella stories, in honor of the recent release of Disney's live-action movie. The staff memeber who set this display up brought in her own shoes to use as the "glass slippers," and the mice and pumpkin came from our stash of storytime supplies.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Maze
We've started doing passive programming in the children's area of my library quite recently, and the month of March was my turn to create one of these programs. Here's what I came up with:
I found this maze* online just by Googling "mazes" and looking at the image results. I tried to pick a maze that had bold lines. It couldn't be too hard (I didn't want younger kids to be discouraged), but I didn't want it to be too hard but not too easy either (didn't want it too boring for older kids). The image size also had to be fairly large so that it would print crisply after enlarging it.
I used Microsoft Publisher to blow the image up to poster size and added the start and finish words/arrows. When it was ready, the maze was printed on nine sheets of tabloid-size paper. I assembled the maze, trimmed the margins as needed, and mounted it on several more sheets of red construction paper.
Once the maze was created and assembled I just hung it up on the wall. Kids who came by could just use their eyes or a finger to find their way through the maze. Easy!
To track participation, I also posted a sign asking them to come to us at the Children's Desk when they finished so that they could get a marble to add to the jar on the shelf nearby (not pictured). It's amazing how well this actually worked. Only a handful of known participants failed to come up for their marble (we'd add a marble ourselves if we noticed), and some of the younger kids were surprisingly excited about adding a marble to the jar. At the end of the month I just counted the number of marbles in the jar to get a number to include with our program statistics.
I would absolutely call this program a success. We had 92 marbles in the jar at the end of the month, which is a fantastic number. What I especially liked was that this maze was a quick thing to do - most kids only needed a minute or two to find their way to the end - but it was still lots of fun. To me, that's the perfect recipe for successful passive programming.
*I may or may not have violated some sort of copyright law by using the image of the maze in this way. Honestly, I am never quite sure what qualifies as "fair use" and what qualifies as infringement, so I decided to just go with the best image I could find. Judge all you like. And if you're the creator if this maze and you're mad that I used it, please know that I'm very sorry and intended no harm. And if anyone wants to better explain how "fair use" does/does not work, I'm all ears.
I found this maze* online just by Googling "mazes" and looking at the image results. I tried to pick a maze that had bold lines. It couldn't be too hard (I didn't want younger kids to be discouraged), but I didn't want it to be too hard but not too easy either (didn't want it too boring for older kids). The image size also had to be fairly large so that it would print crisply after enlarging it.
I used Microsoft Publisher to blow the image up to poster size and added the start and finish words/arrows. When it was ready, the maze was printed on nine sheets of tabloid-size paper. I assembled the maze, trimmed the margins as needed, and mounted it on several more sheets of red construction paper.
Once the maze was created and assembled I just hung it up on the wall. Kids who came by could just use their eyes or a finger to find their way through the maze. Easy!
To track participation, I also posted a sign asking them to come to us at the Children's Desk when they finished so that they could get a marble to add to the jar on the shelf nearby (not pictured). It's amazing how well this actually worked. Only a handful of known participants failed to come up for their marble (we'd add a marble ourselves if we noticed), and some of the younger kids were surprisingly excited about adding a marble to the jar. At the end of the month I just counted the number of marbles in the jar to get a number to include with our program statistics.
I would absolutely call this program a success. We had 92 marbles in the jar at the end of the month, which is a fantastic number. What I especially liked was that this maze was a quick thing to do - most kids only needed a minute or two to find their way to the end - but it was still lots of fun. To me, that's the perfect recipe for successful passive programming.
*I may or may not have violated some sort of copyright law by using the image of the maze in this way. Honestly, I am never quite sure what qualifies as "fair use" and what qualifies as infringement, so I decided to just go with the best image I could find. Judge all you like. And if you're the creator if this maze and you're mad that I used it, please know that I'm very sorry and intended no harm. And if anyone wants to better explain how "fair use" does/does not work, I'm all ears.
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