 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly online event, as we call ourselves, where a webinar, a webcast, an online show. There's lots of discussion, if you're into this kind of thing, about what we call these. Some people like certain terms, some people hate certain terminology. But whatever you want to call us, as long as it's something good, we are here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time for you to watch the show. We do record the show every week, so if you are unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You can go to our website and see all of our recordings there, and I'll show you where that is at the end of today's show. We have the recording there, if there's any presentations or handouts or documents related to a session, we'll post the links to those. And any websites that are mentioned throughout our show, we do collect and put into our delicious account for the commission, or link out to where presenters sometimes have set these things up. So if there is anything during the show that's along URL or some website, don't worry about trying to scribble it all down yourself while you're watching the show. Just pay attention to where we're, you know, the talk, and you'll have all that information given to you afterwards when the recording is available. Both the show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with any of your friends, colleagues, relatives, anyone you know that might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show, send them to our website and have them join us on Wednesdays or watch recordings. We do a mixture of things here in the show, book reviews, mini-training sessions, interviews, demos, basically our only criteria is that it's somehow library related. So something libraries are actually doing, projects, programs are doing, anything that libraries, resources that libraries could use, new different things that could be done at libraries. So you might see some topics that you wouldn't know why they're on there, but you know, trust us when you get into these shows, you'll see everything links back to having something to do with libraries. It might be a little bit more broad outside the box thinking, but that's really our only criteria. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations on programs and things that we're doing here, but we also bring in guest speakers, and that's what we have this morning with us. To my left, we have Megan Boggs, who's from Seward Memorial Library here in Nebraska, and Joseph Chapman, who's from Geneva Public Library, also from Nebraska, just West-ish of us here in Lincoln, and they came in this morning to talk about making the most of Maker Camp at your library. You've heard of Maker Spaces, Maker Fairs, and now Maker Camp is like another way of doing that same similar kind of thing, but I'm just going to hand over to them to let you guys tell us all about what you've been doing at your libraries with this. That's great. Thank you, Christa. Okay. As she said, I am Joseph Chapman. I plan and supervise Maker Camp at the Geneva Public Library. We have been running Maker Camp sessions since summer of 2015. We became affiliated with Maker Camp then, and we're lucky enough to get a supply box. We ran sessions throughout July and August last year. We also did some in the fall. In 2016, we have done some in March, and now we are currently doing some in August. On average, we have about five to 10 campers, and they are between grades fifth and eighth, although we do tend to extend on both sides of that range. All right. Like Christa said, I'm Megan Boggs from the Seward Memorial Library, and we started offering Maker Camp programs in the summer of 2014. We applied as an affiliate for the official Maker Camp that at that time was co-sponsored by Make Magazine and Google, and you can get more information about that official Maker Camp at their website, which is makercamp.com, but that's six-week summer program that we started in 2014 really got us going, and we've been offering Maker programs throughout the year since then. We typically offer programs for elementary and middle school age students, and average 10 to 15 kids per session. The first thing that we're going to talk a little bit about is the importance of planning for a Maker Camp. One of the first things we like to do is determine our target audience. Most of our Maker programs in Seward have been geared towards elementary, middle school, and sometimes high school age children. However, we have offered a few Maker programs for adults that have been very well-received, so it's important to first decide which group or groups you'd like to reach through the Maker Camps at your library, and then once you've figured that out, you can proceed from there. Yeah. Once you've figured out your target audience, you can sort of proceed with finding a time and date that works for your group. We do it on a regular, weekly basis. We schedule hours for Thursdays at four. We find that this time works whether kids are in school or out of school, as if they're in school, it's right after they get out, so they're already coming to the library, and in the summer it is late enough that they've already finished some of the other programs they might have going on during the summer. Similarly, you might want to consider just how much time you want to go with your sessions. We go for an hour, so we end at five. This lets us get in either one big project or a few minor projects. One important thing to consider, though, is to make sure you have a lot enough time for children to be doing these projects. I know when I test a project, I tend to a lot double that time, because working with a small group of children is going to take more as you help them and work them through the process. One of our examples, we did a thing where we were dyeing eggs. We were showing different ways to dye eggs and how that worked. Dyeing eggs with a kit, it seems like it won't take a lot of time. You've done it all your life, but when you have a lot of children working through and dyeing all those eggs, it really took up a lot of our time, and we ended up not getting to spend as much time on the unconventional methods we had planned. We've experimented with a variety of durations for our programs, anywhere from 45-minute sessions to two hours, and it does depend kind of on the project that you want to tackle, but I agree that generally about an hour is a good time period for most projects, and sometimes you can carry over a project from one session to another if you need to. Definitely. Next, you want to know your budget and plan appropriately. I know there have been so many ideas through Maker Camp and just elsewhere that they are so cool, but it would be so costly for a library to implement. They had this really cool Pachinko machine I remember last year, and it was just all the bells and whistles, but that was very expensive for a bunch of children to do. If you have a good understanding of what basic supplies are on hand at your location, you can work from there to estimate how much more you're going to need per project per camper. We try to aim for projects less than $4 per camper. We usually do go under that, but if you find that you're able to plan a project that goes way under that, you may want to have a more extravagant project the next week. Right. Even $4 per camper can be a lot for some libraries, and so even if you have a completely non-existent budget, it's still possible to have a Maker Program at your library, so don't get discouraged. A lot of the programs can be made with materials that are often just thrown away or recycled, so ask your patrons to gather them for you. And also, if you do apply and get accepted as an affiliate with the official summer maker camp at makercamp.com, they often send a free box of useful materials to those libraries who are affiliates, and it's got great things in it, everything from LEDs and batteries to little bits and arduinos and makey makies, t-shirts for all the campers, pencils, stickers, postcards, lots of different materials that are really helpful. So in that case, are you able to tell them how many kids you think you're going to have so that they know how much to send to each library? It is part of the application process to tell them about how many you expect to get, but I think they have just kind of a standard amount that they get, because we said, you know, we might get 20 to 30 kids for a big summer event, and we got 10 t-shirts, but they also send a nice little plastic stencil that we could use to make our own shirts for multiple kids. So, yeah, exactly. It's one of the projects, t-shirts, exactly. And if I remember correctly, those supplies sort of went with their programming for that session, so it really helped to find some of the more obscure, expensive items that you may need. Exactly. Along those lines, there are lots of things I know I am not a professional in, I couldn't or I wouldn't be willing to teach children how to do this, so please retouch your community and use those members as instructors. We made these little pins using soldering with LEDs and stuff, and we at the library didn't know how to solder, so we brought in leaders from our local Boy Scout group to help get those soldered and work together in a safe environment. And we've also partnered with professors from our local university to help bring in some new skills and offer programs that go beyond the expertise of just our staff members in the library, so it is good to look outside of the box. Yeah, I know we are looking at doing some sort of like sewing, knitting, crocheting stuff, and we have guilds and groups in the community that will definitely help with that. So the next part of the planning is to think about what types of projects you'll do. At our library, we work from a pretty broad definition of what constitutes a maker, and so that means that we also have a variety, a wide variety of types of projects that we can choose from. We don't limit ourselves to doing projects that only incorporate technology or engineering, although many of them do. But in my opinion, a craft based project is great, especially when it's maybe just one part of several weeks of making. Really, it's just all hands on opportunities are important to build that skill set for makers. One of the things that I like to refer to is this handout that I found from the Michigan makers. And we're going to take a look at a screenshot of what this handout is, but you can get it from that link. And like Krista said, all this presentation and the links will be available afterwards. Yeah. If you can't read it now, don't worry. That's right. But this handout was great for me. Like I said, it came from the Michigan makers. And it was just what's what do you think you would want in your school? You could substitute library, but your school or libraries dream makerspace and just seeing all the different things that they listed made me kind of think outside the box. Like it doesn't all have to be programming or circuitry or robotics, but like they have all kinds of textile based things stitching. They even have cooking, paper crafts, gardening, video production. So really incorporating all of that into making and thinking of what types of programs could we do from each of those categories? So as you can see, the maker camp doesn't have to involve just robotics or an Arduino or complex circuitry. You can do something with knitting or origami or cooking or gardening. So once you have an idea of what the types of projects you might want to do, then it's a matter of finding the ideas. That's what I like about people who are getting more outside of the whole just making makerspaces of technology and getting into all those other non techy things. And it really makes you think, you know, somebody goes and oh, got to something new at the library and maker spaces and making cams are all the new big thing. I figure out something brand new to learn. No, you've been doing this. You've done craft events. You've done you've had someone come in and teach everyone how to knit or whatever. It's the same thing. They've just calling it something different now. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Rebrand do the same stuff I've been doing. Rebrand it as a maker space and you'll double your Exactly. As for ways to structure your maker camp sessions, one of the ways I've done is I planned a theme session. So I pick a central theme and then maybe do one big project or several small projects around that theme. For example, when we did our sessions in March, one of them fell on St. Patrick's Day. So what we had done was we did projects that centered around green or gold ideas. So for the green side of things, we had them make clover crystals with pipe cleaners and borax solution, which is very interesting. And then as we transferred over to gold, we had gold foiled chocolate coins, and we weighed one and we saw we asked them how much do you think this would cost if it were a real gold chocolate coin or gold coin. And once we have them guess, we sort of explain why gold is so expensive, why it's such a commodity to us. And we also made the structures of both real gold real gold and fool's gold, using marshmallows and toothpicks. They have very different structures. Fool's gold is much more complex. So it was very interesting to see them try to work it all together. Additionally, what you can do is sort of present a challenge to your campers and then have them work from there. I define a challenge as you sort of give them a goal and some materials and then have them work from there to reach that goal. One of the examples I have is the egg drop challenge where we gave them each an egg and then they had a variety of materials from which they could pick only a few. And then they had to create a structure around that egg that would secure it from breaking after being dropped from a large height. Another example is marshmallow and toothpick structures, building the tallest tower. We had a session recently where we give them all sorts of goals as well as restrictions that they had to work around. That reminds me. When I was younger, we had a thing in school called Odyssey of the Mind. And they would do these spontaneous challenges. And it was really similar to that, you know, you'd get like 20 pieces of spaghetti and a few rubber bands and this tape and then be like, you've got five minutes to make this cantilever structure. But that's a great way to kind of get their creative juices flowing. Slide just has lots and lots of resources that you can turn to for project ideas. Just in addition to MakerCamp's resources, right now MakerCamp has released their sort of summer session, which I believe is five weeks of four projects each of varying difficulties and material requirements. But there's a lot of great ideas in there. In addition, they also have all their previous sessions, the instruction for those, they do have those available as well. But if you find yourself running out of ideas there or just want to look elsewhere, you can look anywhere on the internet, essentially. YouTube has lots of great DIY videos, Instructables, WikiHow, eHow. If you see a project on Facebook, like someone shares one of those videos, or you just happen to see something, it's become sort of a habit of thought to sort of think, how can I incorporate that into our MakerCamp sessions? So in addition to all those great resources that Joe just mentioned, I've also had luck at MakeZine.com. They've got a great selection of projects. The Make It at Your Library website is excellent. And I like that one because it's it's got places where you can narrow it down by how much time do you have? What age are you working with? You know, what's your budget? And so then you can narrow down your project search by those criteria. And then there's some place where other other people have already figured out like how long it should take. So right, if you're talking about, you're trying to figure out how long these little kids going to take, do something that you can do in, you know, half the time. Exactly. That's good that someone's already figured out it's going to take if you've got, you know, 10 little kids, it's really going to be this long, not what you think it's going to be. Yeah. That's nice, isn't it? Just figure that out for you and have a guess and hopefully get it right. Right. So lots of the websites that are listed there as well as some great books that I've been able to get project ideas from. So this list will be available in the archive presentation. Once you know what you're doing, it's time to gather some materials. Yep. And as we said, there are libraries have different budgets or constraints. So to help with that, my first tip is to seek donations from local businesses whenever possible. In our experience, we found that businesses are happy to donate supplies, especially if it's specific to their business. For example. Yeah. Two of the examples I have was we were going to make pizza box ovens as part of maker camp sessions last summer. So we asked our local pizza hut if they would donate pizza boxes. And they gave us these personal pan pizza boxes, which were smaller than the boxes that the initial instructions required. But we found that they made for much more smaller projects that really worked well. If we have time, I'll show mine later. I did bring one along. In addition to that, we had a local dentistry donate the toothbrushes we need for brush bots or bristle bots. So that was really great. Yeah. And don't forget about asking your patrons to collect things as well. When our library made stomp rockets, we reached out to them to bring us all their old milk jugs that we could use for those. And we also got a local bicycle shop to donate old bicycle inner tubes for that project. So all of these kinds of things can make for great small partnerships between the library and the community. Oh, but don't forget to send them to you. And it's great if you have like that project going on and you have the thank you card right there so they can all sign it and you can see what they're doing. Yeah. As for the more obscure or stuff you can't find in town or from donations, you can always check online. I know the impetus is always to shop local, but there are some things you just may not be able to find in Geneva, especially. We did edible water bottles and that uses some gastronomic chemicals that probably we weren't going to be able to find locally. But Amazon, you just searched them and they were right there for a very reasonable price. So they were easily available. So yeah, let's check there. And makershed.com is a great place as well for some of the more technical things you might need for projects. Yeah, I just looked on their site right now. They're actually having a back to school sale. Oh, hey, good tip. Yeah, for all books are 50% off. Oh yeah. If you're going to book, it ends August 31st. Okay, there you go. And then we have a list of just some of the most often used materials that we've experienced in our maker camps. So you can see that there. No, things that aren't really that expensive. Hype cleaners, straws, masking tape, cardboard. But there are a few things we use at least our library. We use LEDs, those light-emitting diodes a lot. And we were able to get some for free as being an affiliate with maker camp, but you can buy big packs of them on Amazon and they've lasted us a long time. Same with the coin cell batteries. Things like little bits and those don't they, because I know we've had people on the show in the past years, but do sometimes do free free supplies to libraries or schools? Sometimes, yeah, if you can catch it. Okay, yeah, you just have to keep an eye on them when they're offering it. Yeah, okay. So lots of free or cheap materials that you can get a hold of. All right. Okay, moving on to sort of promoting your maker camp. It's a lot of the same things you would do for other library events. We post signs for every session. I try to make a sign colorful that will attract people's attention. I post one by the front door as well as put one in the teen section so they can see it where they're hanging out in the library. You also want to get these in local businesses if you can on their bulletin boards. Another venue is social media. We try to put events and posts on our Facebook and Google plus page and then one thing we've noticed recently actually is that if you make an event it tends to like hide behind all the other stuff if you make it well in advance. So you may want to bring that event up again as you get closer to the actual session so that people can see it again. A simple one is just word of mouth. I find that when campers come into the library I'll just ask them, hey, are you coming to make your camp this week? And then I might maybe I'll give them the whole project but sometimes I'll just give them clues like hey we're going to be working with balloons like the stuff that's really going to grab their attention like if you say you're working with some sort of food stuff they're always going to perk up or just anything that really gets their minds thinking as to what it could be. And then the final one is going into local groups and getting your make your camp sessions out there. Going into the fall semester now is a great time for you to get your word into the schools. You can hang up one of your sides on their bulletin boards or even just incorporate it into their daily announcements. I know having that set over the intercoms every day is certainly going to get it ingrained into their mind. It's also good to just reach out to local groups like 4-H clubs, boys, scouts, girls, scouts because the children who are already involved in programs like those are often interested in maker programs and so letting the leaders of those local clubs know what's being offered at the library can bring in those additional participants and it's also a good connection to make because those leaders could be potential guest instructors for maker organizations who are already doing craft type things or creative type things for their students. And then once the day comes upon you it's time to run and supervise maker camp. My first tip is that the more supervision the better. We found that instructing like a dozen or so campers through a project with one or even two staff can be quite a difficult job as you try to get to each camper and help them with their specific problems. So if you can get adult or teen volunteers to help lighten the load they can either help campers through some of the steps or just prepare for steps in the future of that project. So that'll help keep things running smoothly and moving along. Another thing you want to do is let the campers work at their own pace with some boundaries. We often work with a wide range of ages so some people are going to be able to pick up concepts easier while others are going to get stuck so I always try to just help them with that one step and then let them continue. If they're really having some trouble you can sort of do it for them but I really want to leave that as a last resort. You really want them to do it so they're having the fun and you're having the fun watching them. On the other hand you can have some children who once they see all the pieces in front of them and their minds get to working and they just think oh I can do this all so they just rush and do it which sometimes it works but then they're left ahead and they're waiting for whatever stuff they're now stuck on when we're not there yet or it can just be that they just don't follow the instructions correctly and then they use some materials improperly and sometimes it works out but not always. What I try to do is I give the campers materials as they're needed so that they're not presented with all these options and they can work on the one step that everyone is working on before they get the materials for the next step. One step at a time. And you can even as you're handing it out be like how are we going to use this next piece in the project. For those kids who really rush through and get done and then they're left bored or you know causing trouble then afterwards I find that if I suggest maybe some customizations that they could do now or some modifications like what if you change this part and try it what would it do now that that can help direct their energy in a positive way or they might even be willing to help someone in class who needs a little bit more assistance. That's what I was wondering are they good at you know becoming teachers themselves. So trying those things is good to give them a good outlet for that. Yeah if your project has a take-home element you can always have some like art supplies out so they can sort of decorate it and customize it to their liking. Finally I always try to put a little bit of science or methodology into the project at hand. Like Megan said not every project has to be super technological but if you can still just throw a little facts in here there we are working with aluminum foil and I tried to tell them what the melting point of aluminum foil was or why we switched from tin foil to aluminum foil. It's not going to stick for every child of course but some campers will hold on to those packs and not have some sort of interesting tidbit to share. We'll go home until their parents and that's going to feel conflicted you know. So the next thing that we'd like to do is just go through some of our favorite projects so that'll give you an idea of the types of things that you can do in MakerCamp and just some helpful hints and tips. That's just on a reminder for one if you do have any questions type them in we can grab the questions any time you want we don't have to wait till the end or anything so if you have any questions about how to set up your MakerCamp or anything they've mentioned already go ahead and type it in I'm monitoring that here on my laptop and we can get your questions answered or if you've done something like this yourself I'm not sure if you know if any other places in Nebraska have done I know I love maker spaces yeah I think a lot probably are doing it yeah I don't know and and I should just mention to you now that you had said setting up your your MakerCamp I think both Geneva and I don't have a dedicated maker space in our library. That's the difference between the main term here is maker space maker space and a lot of people on the show about that how you if you've got this room set off in an area you can put all this stuff in some places do have that some don't so right um maker camp would be an option then for places that do not there's nowhere we can have this because you're talking about you it's a certain time of each week at a certain time rather than just an open room where that's always available right yeah so this is more you know you can have your materials you can haul them into a meeting room and set it up for just that particular time yeah okay so the first project I brought up is geodesic domes we made them with straws and pipe cleaners I think the final result of this project was very neat we made just domes you can make the full sphere but we did find that this project was one of our most lengthy ones it did take two weeks um we did have the children cut the straws they have to be cut to very specific dimensions which ends up taking a lot of time and of course if you can see on the screen making all those little shapes and then hooking them all together can take a bit of time looks like there's is that a completed one back oh yeah there's a completed one back there um but yeah I really like this project um in the future I'd like to almost do one where it's just sort of a free build with these straws and pipe cleaners see what they can create because can you come up with yeah um one of our favorite projects um were drawbots and bristlebots so the drawbots uh they just uh they're pretty simple really it takes a vibrating motor just a small little vibrating source um we were able to get um these little vibrating motors from a local electronics store that was able to salvage them out of old cell phones for us um we've also been able to get them out of like vibrating razors or toothbrushes um and so those are a couple different sources for you to find those but you can also you're also teaching recycling yes I know yeah although you can just buy the vibrating motors you know from radio shack or amazon as well but all you need is a vibrating motor and then a power source which we just use the little coin cell batteries um and then you attach that to the top of plastic or paper cup and you tape three markers on the inside or outside of that cup and then let that thing just vibrate away and I've got a little video here that hopefully you can see it in action and put down some paper and let it go and um we were able to experiment with moving the motor to different parts of the cup and see if it would make it kind of um turn in circles we've also I see some of them look like they're circles were done yeah yeah and then not only changing the location of the motor but then adjusting how far the each marker um sticks out so if you make one marker leg stick out a little bit longer than the others that can make it go in different directions and so that was a lot of fun I'm really enjoying it it's like a homemade home made spiral graph yeah yeah you know in the current programming for maker camp they have a variation of this using straw views which are like little connectors you can use with straws to put them together and make this shape so yeah so you don't have to use a cup either you can think of other ways and then this bottom one here these are bristle bots and those are made with you cut off the bristle end of a toothbrush and then you tape the vibrating motor and the battery onto the top of that toothbrush now the one trick is the bristles on the toothbrush have to be the kind that are going at a diagonal they can't be just the straight up and down bristles otherwise it won't really move very well and then we also taped like some wings and different things onto some of these this one the volume might be a little loud but the kids were really into this oh that one it flipped over but we're going to write it and then let it go crazy again so yeah those things they really go we were able to put it into you can see it's going over the top of where we let our our draw bot go but we had to either put it in a box or tape up some edges otherwise it would just fall off the table yeah we first thought that we could race them but they don't go in straight lines so yeah when we did when we did ours we also made an arena and it's just fun to have all the children sort of hovering over and watching theirs and also watching others and seeing how they the anomalies and the others i like the idea of calling it an arena it's like battle bots okay i've mentioned this one earlier when we were talking about challenges this was from our egg drop challenge we they were allowed to purchase like purchase with air quotes um six materials from a list we gave them it was just basically we sort of raided our supply closet and saw whatever sort of materials we could use for this project cardboard tubes balloons you see pipe cleaners sand wrap aluminum foil all those things and then they had time to build we had some restrictions that they had to show a quarter's worth of the egg in their final project the egg had to be able to be recovered so that we could check if it was still intact i know and other groups that have done this have banned parachutes and we didn't know how that would work so we didn't ban them here but a lot of children did use parachutes and they did seem to work so it's something to consider i think they still had to come up with the idea of a parachute so that was fine to make it work yeah yeah um so yeah once everyone built their project we stepped out there's a tile area very important when you're working with eggs to have an easily cleanable surface um we still laid down a drop cloth and we i just got up on a step ladder and i dropped them from the high surface and we saw what survived and what didn't i was just gonna ask what height so you were on a ladder i would say about 10 feet you didn't like climb up to the roof of the building i mean that would be great but and i will say that um next or actually tomorrow we are doing sort of the inverse of this for our maker camp where they will just drop an egg from the tall height and they sort of have to make the cradle at the bottom that will support that and absorb all that way and not very big so we'll see how that goes okay we did stomp rockets which is pretty great um it just takes a large milk jug um a piece of bicycle inner tube some duct tape to duct tape that on there um a little small chunk of pvc pipe which was really the only semi expensive part of this that we weren't able to um just get from donations and also a little bit of um well we did two different types of rockets one we made out of foam and it was just like the foam insulation that you put around pipes you can also probably use pool noodles although they'd be a little bit thick um the thinner ones were better and we also made paper rockets as well um these were really fun for the kids um because rockets first of all you know you hear the word rocket i want to go to that um and also it just it worked it was so successful um and they worked really well um i would recommend that if you have the ability to go someplace outside of the library after they're constructed to test them out that would be great some that are very very successfully yes yeah um what we did for our test run though is you can kind of see a whiteboard in the back of the photo there we were able to draw a target on the whiteboard and stand across the room and aim them that way instead of straight up um and that worked pretty well um yeah they these were so successful um the paper ones actually fly farther than the foam ones um i tested this out um afterwards at my house with one and it flew and got stuck on the neighbor's two story roof but they do fly and they're pretty neat so um that was a very successful program and with mostly donated materials okay the next one i sort of build as technological dissection so the whole week before i was telling them oh we're going to be doing a dissection so be prepared so they were excited to defect like animals or something so but this was also very successful what we had done was we had gathered all sorts of donated um all their obsolete keyboards or um cell phones i think we had a phone just any sort of old electronic that just wasn't working or just wasn't able to be used anymore and we just sort of had them take screwdrivers and players safety glasses of course and even with that we still i think had a first aid kit on hand just in case they had any sharp edges but what we have them do is just have that and see how far they could crack into these devices um see what sort of things they could find inside as to how those items worked um the one thing you do want to make sure you're not getting any electronics with um we didn't have any microwaves we tried to stay away from batteries we did have some cell phones we did take the batteries out so those weren't in there um just make sure all your electronics are somewhat safe for them to crack into this one i would think you'd have to know because they're going to ask once they get those things open what do all the different parts do so you would have to either know yourself or have done some research on what's inside of these yourself because i personally i don't have to tell my head i wouldn't know what's inside keyboard once they're open yeah and i'm also looking at that thinking okay once they've taken all the keys off the keyboard and got into the innards can we save all those pieces and use them for another oh yeah make jewelry out of them or do some other kind of project another program that was kind of neat and it didn't have a take home element so they weren't able to bring home a final project with them but it was still probably the biggest hit of last summer um with our middle school aged kids was building a ruby goldberg machine um most of the kids had not heard of ruby goldberg but after i showed them a few videos of like these elaborate chain reactions there was one that mythbusters did that was pretty great there's lots of videos that you can find of these amazing ruby goldberg machines that where basically you're going through a very complicated set of chain reactions to get to something simple at the end like opening a bottle or you know just something like that but once they got the idea of it they just loved it and they went for it and it was really easy to do because we just gathered a lot of materials toy cars dominoes jenga blocks balls of different sizes cardboard tubes yarn craft sticks books to make things on different levels and it was pretty neat they kind of divided themselves into two or three groups and worked together to build different sections of the ruby goldberg machine and then after they built their section then they had to try to figure out how to join it to the other groups to continue the chain reaction um and then at the end we videotaped how it went there were a couple of flaws and we had to start over and try it on somewhere yes it doesn't always work the first time but that was a really neat program that got them thinking creatively i think that's a really good idea we haven't done that but you need the library so i may have to steal that one there you go my last one that i'll be showing is edible water bottles and this one is one of the notable ones to me because i sort of looked at this idea of like these edible water bottles and i was just like is this something i could ever do at the library and it turned out it was fairly simple and it was a great project um what it is is you make two baths of water and then a chemical one is sodium alginate and then the other is calcium lactate so you take the first and put it into the second and it sort of gels up and creates this membrane around a pocket of water and you fish them out and if you eat them there's still some liquid water inside so it's very interesting um i think we have two groups working on this and once they got them we each had them try one and uh their opinions on the final project were a little mixed because there is sort of a weird taste to do sort of chemicals flavor it's sort of like just a very chemically taste totally safe but we asked them is this the future of water bottles and they were like probably not but if you could add flavor yeah well what we what we did do we did have a little bit of time for this one was we had brought down some food coloring and we dyed the actual bath so that made it a little more of a contrast in calcium lactate bath so that was interesting yeah cool um and the last one that i'm going to talk about in detail are um 3d printed zipper pulls um so if you have access to a 3d printer um either at your library or maybe a local school or a local university has one that they'll let you use it's wonderful to be able to offer some programs that introduce kids to 3d printing software um the one that we like to use at our library is tinker CAD it's great because it's free it's online it doesn't require anything to be downloaded to your computers um and it's pretty intuitive and easy for the kids to catch and there are some beginner tutorials that you can lead them through yes yes design their own that yes not taken so you've been created by someone else yes yeah they're not just going out to out of thing a person grabbing something and say print this for me they're making their own thing they say oh i want this you can sort of be like okay how can you use that using the resources of tinker CAD like how can you combine these shapes to make this new shape that you want right um so we like to start out with just small kind of relatively simple things for them to design and print like key chains or zipper pulls it's a good way to get their feet wet and it's not so much um in 3d that they you know get overwhelmed with working in that 3d environment um it's kind of a nice middle ground because they're just taking more or less something flat and then adding a 3d element to it i think also something like that because it's not fast 3d printing right take less time to create time to print exactly yes and so what i like to do in our 3d printing programs is just kind of start out by explaining a little bit about how a 3d printer works many of them have never seen one before i don't really understand the process so i explain about it let it let them see it in action um and then show them tinker CAD and the different tools and then give them time at the end to design and work on their um their project and then at the end of the session we put all the um designs usually download onto a flash drive and then they don't get a leave with anything that day because like christa said it's a lengthy process to print um and so we just print them as we have time then throughout the week and then call them when it's done for them to come in and pick it up all right um the last thing we want to show you is that um joseph and i have taken um all of our project ideas that we've used in the last few years in our different maker camps and put them together in our little collaborative um google sheet here which i'm hoping will open up and if i just make this full screen you can kind of see that um and there are over 50 project ideas on here and we've got it arranged so that you can see what grades we offered that program for how long our session was what the project was um links to the different resources where you might find instructions for the project or a tutorial um a listing of the different supplies it takes comments which i think are probably the most important to just kind of say this worked well this didn't and then which one of us um did that program so that if you do have any questions about it you can contact us and so like i said there's over 50 projects on here everything from some of the 3d things soldering balloon powered cars um brush spots which we've talked about um i had to pull basketball game that sounds interesting um let's see here um let's see here um like i said it can be more craft based yeah the finger knitting and arm knitting um uh we also did kind of the variation of those brush bots where we called them glider bots and we put them in those um they're called like acorn capsules they're like those things that in vending machines for kids that like a little toy might come in um where you mount the vibrating motor and stuff in one of those and they just slide all over the place and dance around the table um uh we did one where we worked with a green screen um and let the kids kind of make their own uh movie video and then go on the computer and put in a different background so some of them are flying on magic carpets and different things like that um so lots of different um program ideas in here to get you started because um you know you don't have to start from page one all the time you can look at something like this where there's lots of ideas gathered in one spot and not have to reinvent the wheel yeah and we hope as more maker camps and maker spaces emerge and we can get more people contributing to this with their ideas so that we can continue to collaborate right so yeah i think there's there's 57 ideas on there right now um so i don't know how we're doing on time if we can show a couple of things that we brought with us or if that's about it sure yeah so we can um yeah i was just thinking as you're going through this showing this list here that gave me an idea that a lot of these things could potentially um be used because these maker camps i mean you guys usually do them in the summer as kind of like summer camp or do you also do them during we also do them during the year yeah anytime yeah like after school type programs okay because i think they could also be connected to summer reading program in libraries depending on what the topic is and you gotta get creative sometime but and this year's is just wrapping up is over but next year's topic is um great it's build a better word world is the slogan it's one slogan for all levels this time build a better world and the general topic is building construction architecture but then in that's right making things but then also community building volunteering so building a better world that way but all of those kind of physical creative things any of this would totally go with that i think the library should say summer reading program maker camp i agree i think that would be great matches up the next year 2018 it's music in the um and then we'll year after that is space which definitely yeah there's a lot of cool things for both of those i know maker camp has done yeah um i know we did like a um makey makey piano with bananas yeah um and different types of musical instruments making rain sticks and oh sure right um yeah if you want to show some of the stuff we can definitely do that um let's we'll adjust the camera here so people can see a little better we're going to do a little adjusting here so we can uh i'm going to move this up see here and maybe even we're improvising here and then i hold over here the whole bunch of stuff here in the team we can run along for us um one of the things that we did last summer and like you said to kind of go along with the summer theme and that was the superheroes and things last summer um we did these power cuffs like you know superhero might wear this one's too small so i can't actually wear it but um it's a light up led bracelets made with duct tape and and such so and that one's and that kind of right now there's all those different colors of duct tape you can get of course before they can get really creative right right um and like i said we use leds a lot another one that was kind of fun um that i just did this summer were these light up led bow ties they could also be hair ties and you can kind of see it's a flashing led event which like oh it's flashing it's changing color that's pretty great i'm going to show one of you um this one is sort of the cardboard pachinko machine that they um sort of maker camp came with this they sort of used as a precursor to that bigger electronic pachinko machine i was talking about earlier but this one's really simple it's just cardboard we hog lead it together to create this frame um if you can see here there's little slots for the different point totals and then we did two layers so that the thumbtacks here would not puncture it through on the back but we just drew out a grid and put thumbtacks all along in the proper places so you can slide a marble down through there create your own point system worked out as a pretty great project what we actually did was we put behind the thumbtacks we had them take a piece of card stock and create their own design to give it a little more color and personality um last year in December we did these sock snowmen um they are like Megan was saying they are more of a craft project but that's okay they had a ton of fun doing these lots of little opportunities to personalize um the little scrap of cloth here that's being used as a scarf we actually had one of our cool groups donate all their little bits and scraps of fabric that they didn't have a use for but they worked really well for scarves and then inside of these i should say is rice so we just ended up getting a bulk bag of rice and just filling it up and one of the things that i've got planned for this year is after school programs we haven't actually done these yet with the group but they're slingshot rockets and really simple and cheap a straw a little bit of card stocks and masking tape and a paper clip and then a craft stick with a rubber band and it's just a matter of hooking that little um okay i get it the right way let's see here it's getting hooking that on there and just slingshotting the rocket i'm not coordinated enough to get it together right now but um and then one that we did this summer was a wire loop game like you would see at um at the carnival um now it'd be nice if i could have afforded some um buzzers to really make this stand out but we just hooked up led lights and i think as i transported here today it kind of came apart but it's one of those where if you touch the wire loop as you're going um the led will light up or i don't like the game of operation to use um and if you use like we also have some really big leds that are nice and bright that what i had the kids use and that really brought their attention to uh-oh i touched the wire loop and we had them if they wanted to decorate or make their cardboard base more elaborate and some of them really did crazy things with their wire too making it extra challenging that's kind of a fun little project another sort of game one i have here is this basketball catapult game we created this was ended up being one of our more expensive ones we did try to get the wood donated but we couldn't did any so the wood was one of our most expensive components so definitely if you do want to do this one do reach out to your locally lumber yards or hardware stores to see if you can get that wood but um it's just wood blocks and then we've duct tape a spoon to this wood block and you can adjust these different blocks to get different arcs and stuff um this post here is just made from a dowel and some cardboard and this cardstock box here and so you can use any small thing i think we have pom poms marshmallows spice drops on hand and you just sort of put it in there and flick and hope it gets in the bucket it's a very fun project and nice to take home um oh yeah i did bring a bristle but i like the wings yeah and for this one the wires are on the wings so that makes it very nice to manage hopefully i can get the stick oh a little finicky with the wires but oh there we go all around there cool looks like that's where we don't place the battery and then last one i have is the pizza boxes this was one of our first projects that we did um it was one of maker camps in that first session that we did um it's just a personal pan pizza box we cut out a square here and covered it with saran wrap you try to get as flat as possible but i think over time it has wrinkled up a bit and then on the bottom you line that with tin foil to help reflect and you put down a black surface to soak up that heat um this flap here is also lined with tin foil and we've just attached a straw to help prop it up and so when we made these on the day we were fortunate enough that it was sunny and warm but i think a really easy thing you could use with this to ensure a success is chocolate bars for s'mores because they're always going to melt in the heat so you've got a success right there and that was a great project um and then i just have a couple little things to finish up with um we have also done more than one program with old t-shirts that you may recognize this from a summer past dragon dreams and daring days i don't remember what year that was but but we made t-shirt backpacks um and they've got a little and the strings themselves are made out of a strip of old t-shirt that was stretched um but they had great time with those you can also make other types of t-shirt bags this one just kind of gathered at the bottom and the armholes are cut out to become the handles of the bags so that's a cheap and easy program because everybody has old t-shirts and then the last thing i wanted to show is if you do apply at makercamp.com to become one of their affiliates for a summer camp here's an example of some of the t-shirts that were sent to us as well as pencils and stickers and little pins and lots of these little soldering kits um that you can solder together a little blinking flashing pin with the makey robot and so lots of cool things that they send you if you become a part of that and i know with our kit we actually got the stencil that you saw on that t-shirt there and that making their own t-shirts was certainly one of the better projects too because they all got to take something on that they could wear to future maker camp sessions yeah nice all right thank us that's it unless anybody has any questions wow let's see here all right i'm gonna get our camera back over here just this our emails are available on the presentation um if you have any questions afterwards too that you want to email us definitely i'm sure yeah if you want to go back to presentation get that up there you ahead um oh we do have a question while we're at it here um yeah go ahead and move that those there it is um what are some of the things you wish you had thought of before starting the maker camps um or is it different for each project is um is there some like before you even started this whole program things you wish you'd known or is it more like each day is a different experience i suppose i think for me it's probably just more project by project um super important to always test out your project ahead of time and time how much how long it takes like joseph said you know double the time um and and just try to think of things um that could potentially go wrong yeah um that that little um hand cuff thing with all the led lights i had tested mine ahead of time um and then when it came to program day i had this big box full of led lights kids were picking out boxes or picking out the led lights out of the box um in the box i had a mixture of different colors of leds when i had done my test i used all red leds the kids were picking out different colors we found that certain colors didn't work together and they broke the circuit oh interesting i hadn't expected that i hadn't tested that ahead of time and so just i think for me it's more project by project just trying to think of all the different possibilities yeah i know one of the things for me is location there are definitely some projects we try to do on our main floor so it's right there so people can see it and get interested in it but stuff like the egg drop or we made slime those things are going to want a tile floor or like a washing station of some sort nearby because they're going to be constantly having messy fingers yeah yeah um some projects we have done outside because that's just the most convenient way we ended up using a small inflatable pool for one of our projects this month and yeah that definitely we wanted outside so that we didn't run the risk of spilling water something if you do this year round figure out the ones that you need to do outside and schedule them during the nicer year time of the year and then all the inside ones during the winter time unless there's something winter themed i want to know yeah so that you need to be out in the cold or use the snow for that we have here right whichever word all right um any other questions from anybody last minute questions and we're a little over our 11 a time but that's okay we go as long as necessary for this until um we can get all your questions answered again everything taken care of no speaking of being a little overtime i always think it's better to try to plan when you are timing a little overtime you'd rather be overtime than under time at least for me i don't want to have children come in and then run out of 30 or 45 minutes of time and you can't finish what you've told them they're going to be able to do yeah well it doesn't look like anybody anybody urgent questions are coming in right now that's fine um there is uh Megan and Joseph's contact information you can reach out to them if you do have any um questions thoughts on this anything you've done or anything like you're saying you want to add to that google sheet now is that um obviously is that public for which people have to contact you to be able to have um editing access to that or how's that work right now i've got it open and we'll see if we have problems right um if it turns out that i get people you know weird things are getting posted to it then it might be where you have to contact one of us to add to it sure and that's not a problem yeah all right and i've added that to the links um for the show um then we'll see i gotta go back and grab some of the other ones um but this presentation will be up there too afterwards so yeah in one way or another you guys will have access to everything that um goes mentioned so yeah it doesn't look anybody's type anything desperate while we've been chatting here so i think that um since you guys have showed anything we'll wrap it up for today thank you so much this is really fun um i i don't work in an actual library and whereas you guys all know i'm here at the library commission but it makes me wish i did or trying to figure out is there a way that i can just i mean i'm sure i could do some of this just at home with like my nieces and nephews and stuff and just you know or you know contacting the city libraries and say what are you doing i want to bring them just learn some of the stuff so they would just go crazy for these kinds of or say office on adult programs with some of these that yeah absolutely because a lot of things like the wearable art and stuff i know it's that's something a lot of sometimes because some of the wearable things if it entails um sewing or things you need to have a little more dexterity and and ability to that be the older teens or adults wanting to i know i have friends who have made their own things that are um crafty cosplay type things and have some of this led type things and you know r2d to have that has a banking lights where he has his blinking yeah that's awesome so all right so we'll wrap it up for today then thank you very much guys for coming thanks for having me thank you for having us guys we're able to come here and show everything um come into linking for you guys from not that far it's it's still you know take it a little more and away from the library um and thank you everyone for attending um the show is being recorded and will be available um and i'll send you guys all the link when it's ready um i should have it up and ready to go by this afternoon um as long as youtube cooperates and everything goes quickly um so we'll have that we'll have a link to the presentation and um any of the websites and things that are mentioned will be in our delicious and also the right here in the presentation as well for you to use um and this will be on the website which i will go over here and we'll get to our encompass live site so i can show you where that's going to be and um what's great about our show if i typed it correctly let's get this one screen here is yes encompass live except where this thing is is pretty much the only thing called that out there so just google encompass live you will find our site um all of our archives are here and our right beneath our upcoming show list of upcoming shows archived encompass live sessions um and this is uh last week show you can see here we had the recording presentation links same thing will be up for this week's show um it'll be there and i'll send you a link to that and let you know when is it available so you can watch the recording um go through their slides and go to any of the websites um and that i hope you guys for next week where we have another um uh session techie related then coding corner at your library next week's topic is um this is um marvel merring at um the omaha south omaha um public library um will be with us on the show um but they've been doing coding programs for kids um kids teens um they started this i let's say 2014 was when they first started doing it and um they've been um being as an ongoing and they're also part of the new the girls who code club um this is a thing a national organization that can um how you can have local information and project programs with them um to get more girls into doing coding and computer um related things so um join us next week for that show um and any of our other shows that we do have coming up here um on our schedule i've got almost all september on there um and as new shows are added um they'll be added in here so always keep checking to see what's coming up um also end cover slide is on facebook so if you are a big facebook user do pop over there and give us a like um it slowly comes up uh we you facebook has this new thing trying to get in and log in um but we'll just ignore that for now um you see here i do a reminder this morning of when um to log in for day show when recordings are ready i post on here reminders of um joining us for the next show whatever the next topics are so if you are big on facebook like us there and get notifications of what's going on with the show other than that that wraps it up for this morning thank you very much for attending this week's encompass live and we'll hopefully we'll see you next time thanks bye