 Sounds good. 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. We're a webinar, we're a webcast, we're an online show, whatever you want to call us. We're here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. But the shows are recorded and posted to our website every week, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. You can always go to our website and go to our archives page and see all of our recordings of all of our previous shows there. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live, presentations, mini training sessions, book reviews, interviews, basically anything library related, we are happy to put it on the show. We bring in, we have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations here about Nebraska related topics, but we also bring in guest speakers regularly and that's what we have today. On the line with us, all the way down from Florida is Chad Marin. Hello Chad. Hello, how are you? Good morning and he's at St. Petersburg's College in Florida. He's their Innovation Lab Manager and your Information Services Librarian, your professor, you do a whole bunch of things, don't you? Your list of titles was kind of... Yeah, too long. Yeah, not a problem. So, and I invite Chad on here because he does a lot of work with STEAM, which maybe used to be STEM, but now it's expanding and he'll get all into that, so I'm just going to hand it over to you Chad to take it away and tell us all about having more STEAM in our libraries. Great, well thanks Chris, I appreciate that. So I hope everybody's doing well and I hope everybody can hear me and see my screen and all that. I'm going to monitor the chat area too, so if you have questions, I'll try to answer them as I go through this, so I'll keep an eye on that. So again, thanks for inviting me, I appreciate it. So today I'm going to talk about STEAM in your library. So I do want to let you know that I do put my slides up on slideshare.net slash Chad Marin and I use Twitter extensively, you don't need to follow me, but if you go to twitter.com slash C Marin you can see some of the tweets and I usually do auto tweet before presentations, but I just haven't didn't get a chance to do that today, but you'll see all those tweets later on if you're interested. So what I want to do today is talk about what STEAM is, get into a little bit about how to create and manage a collaborative learning space, also called maker spaces and fab labs, all that kind of stuff, how we can organize learning events. Just talk a little bit about partnering with businesses and other organizations, it's not as difficult as you think and we should be definitely doing that. Talk a little bit about administering a robotics league and then really look at everything and to see if our programs are actually successful or not. So let's hop right in. So really the philosophy of STEAM revolves around the concept that science and technology are all interpreted through engineering and the arts, all based in mathematical elements, okay. So really STEAM does provide the framework that's used for connecting the growing network of educational disciplines, businesses and communities to create adaptable citizen involved in globally responsible blah blah blah, reality-based programs for developing lifelong functional literacy for all and I wanted to emphasize fun because if it's not fun, especially the younger kids, even adults are not going to be really that into it to be honest. So STEAM is really a way to teach how all things relate to each other in school and in life and I always emphasize life because you don't just do this stuff in school and in libraries, it's beyond that in life. How do we problem solve that kind of thing? So we kind of teach this stuff. It's more fun than traditional learning styles. It really does make more sense to all types of learners because it's based on the natural way that people learn and the way that people are actually interested in things. Hands-on type of work. So we have STEAM, which has been used for quite a while, a lot of big little buzzword in STEAM. So do the arts belong? That's a question. I don't know. If you feel like answering, by all means, throw that in the chat box. So do you think art and design should be included in the STEAM educational framework? So I do, right? I think we need to innovate, but a lot of times innovation is tightly connected to the science, technology, engineering, and math part, the STEM section. Art and design are usually valued but not as much as the other. And I just did a TEDx talk the other day and I was talking about STEAM and how we emphasize so much on STEAM and it's not all about that either. It's not about making things. It's about having a space to think and to create and to just kind of dream things up too. It's not all about making. So anyway, so giving STEM projects some STEAM. So really the objectives of the STEAM movement are to transform the art plus design and make that the center of STEM. Encourage integration of art and design through K through 20 education. So giving design. So we're adding decoration to products that were created during the course of a design challenge. I don't know if any of you have little bits and are part of the global chapters, but they do a lot of design challenges and it's very artistic and adds that art element to STEM. Performing arts. Communicating ideas. Creative planning. Encourage that playful, inventive, artistic approach to problem solving. I like this art is often touted as a method of adding creativity to STEM, but keep in mind that engineers are rarely lacking for creativity and ingenuity. Just look at the world around you for proof. The purpose of STEAM should not be so much to teach art, but to apply art in real situations. Applied knowledge leads to deeper learning and we all know that. When you actually do something, that's when you really learn something. And we'll talk a little bit about my maker boot camp in a little bit. And that's really given tons of hands on work for people to make things meaningful for them. Chad, we do have someone that had a comment about you want to know if art should be a part of this. One of our librarians here says art should definitely be a part to pick up kids who are afraid of science. Very good point. I know that would have been good for me too. I know I'm not good at math. I love science, but math just kind of doesn't work in my head. But having something like this that would have been more artsy would definitely grab my attention. Yeah. Oh, I totally agree. Yeah, very good point. So yeah, so I will go into something here. There's an article and I should have posted, but I forgot to post it. It's actually from that earlier screenshot, you know, STEM versus STEAM do the arts belong. And there is a section where they talk about like teamwork and communications are a major focus. And students have to think critically. They have to think creatively and innovatively. But they also have to have a safe environment where they feel comfortable failing. And I think that's key. I think if, you know, and what's nice about the lab or doing STEAM in the library is we're not really giving grades. So students don't need to worry about, oh, my God, I'm going to fail this, you know, it's failing proof that you're actually trying. So I think it's really important to give them that comfortable space to try things and fail. It's a playground, you know, that's the way I like to think of it. So I will say from that same article that the idea of adding art to STEM is really gaining momentum. But there are some push backs. Some people believe that STEM lessons do naturally involve art, like product design, language arts, that kind of thing. And that STEM projects do not deliberately exclude the arts or any other subject. My point is then why not keep that A in STEM, you know, it's not a big deal, but people go on and on about that acronym all day long. So yeah, and like the person mentioned before, you know, the arts are a great learning tool and can really serve as an on-ramp to STEM and to understand those other more technical areas. So I'm not going to read all these to you, but I did put a ton of STEAM resources and connections out there. So if you go to that slideshow website, you can see there's quite a bit out there if you want to kind of dive more into that. And I'll just let everyone know here while you're meant to talking about that. Anything that's on here that are websites, URLs, whatever, I grab and put into library commission's delicious account in a group. So you'll have a URL that's specific to this session that you can go to that'll have all of these links together as well. Oh, awesome. That's great. Thank you. So how can STEAM activities play a role at your library? There's a lot of ways you can do it. And later on, hopefully we'll have some time where you guys can let me know what you're actually doing in your library. I'd love to hear what you're up to. So all right, so maker spaces. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but if you're thinking about creating a maker space, do it. You don't have to have a lot of money. You don't have to have a big space. You don't need all that stuff. And my place is proof. I mean, if you have a little bit of time and some ideas, fill out grants, try to find people that can help you. But you don't need a huge space. But again, if you're interested in creating some kind of a space, a collaborative learning lab of maker space, whatever you want to call it, go to makerspace.com and request this free makerspace playbook. It will really help you get some ideas on how to start and what you should be doing and that kind of thing. I refer to my makerspace playbook a lot. So why create these makerspaces? It's really, they're learning space for people to create things and knowledge across multiple interests and disciplines. Brian Pickman, or Pinchman, I don't know if you guys know him or not, but him and I did a presentation on makerspaces. A while back when we talked about all these different themes, innovation, interaction is huge. That's going to allow users to learn and grow. It's necessary to keep interest in your library and your library programs and your collections. The idea of open play environment, I call it a playground. That discovery where people can discover new and exciting things on their own is huge. Very important. Collaboration allows people to get together, to discuss common interests, to gain new knowledge. All of this is centered around something fun. We'll talk a little bit more about this when we get in the maker boot camp part of the steam thing that we're doing in my library. And then invention, very important. Allow your users to build things. Let them have that safe environment like I mentioned earlier where they can fail. Innovation will happen. Another part of our lab that's important is build your stuff, do your thing, but also give them an opportunity to reflect on what worked and what didn't work. That's a huge part of education is the reflection part. Like jot down your notes, maybe create an instructables website where they can do a recipe for what they built, but reflect around things that worked. I have small kids and they watch this show called Androids. And one of the main characters says, we didn't fail, we just learned another way to do it wrong. And I just love that quote. So again, I talked about creating grants and I'm very lucky because I work at an institution that has a foundation and they have these innovation grants each year. So a couple of years ago, I got my first one in like 2011 and then I started thinking, wow, I'm going to do an innovation. I want to do like a maker space. And it was selfish because I wanted to learn, you know, I've had a Raspberry Pi and all these, you know, robotic things and stuff for a while. And I just never found the time to really learn it. So I figured, well, you know, if I have a lab or a maker space in my library, I'm going to be forced to kind of learn this stuff and teach to others. So it was really a selfish thing. So I was able to fill out the grant and I asked for the full amount, $3,500 and we got it. We were funded, which is very great. And we've gotten it two years in a row now, which is even better. So then I created this Amazon wish list and I started buying stuff for the lab. This is my office when it was filled with stuff and it still is. It's crazy. But I was able to start getting the list together. What's interesting is we then had a grant opening. Before the grant opening, it was very funny because I had the provost, the library director, and the college's interior decorator. And we all met in the lab. You can see it on the screen there. Very small space, but it's an excellent space. But I was like, hey, you know, here's what I want to do. Here's the furniture I like. I like this artwork to be on the walls. I need some electrical outlets here. I need some ethernet ports, all this stuff. Didn't realize that I already spent all my grant money on the stuff inside. But what was great, I got the bill, which was like $8,000 for all the stuff inside it, the furniture and everything. And I kind of just had this look of the deer and the headlights like, oh, well, I didn't budget any of that stuff. So I'm new at this kind of thing. I'm not a budget kind of a person. I just like the gadgets and I'm a techie and all this stuff. So I got very lucky because the provost said, you know what, I believe in this initiative and I'm going to find that $8,000 from another budget. I got really lucky. If not, I would have been in a little closet somewhere, which would have been fine. It would have still worked, but now we have this really kind of nice space for our lab. By the way, we did consider calling it a maker space. We ended up going with Innovation Lab because that's more of what it is. It's not just a place where we make things all the time. It's more for creating and thinking and designing. But what was interesting, we had the opening for the lab and I thought it was very, it was a huge opening. We did two of them, one in the morning and one in the afternoon and over 100 people showed up to each one. I found it interesting that they focused only on the 3D printer. For those of you that have a 3D printer, I don't know if you do or not, but I have a love-hate relationship with ours because if you have one, you know when it breaks that you have to fix it. Ours is open source, so we've got to fix it. It's built locally in my community, like the guy that built it lives just on the street from my house. But I find it interesting that they focus mostly on 3D printing. I'm like, well, we've got a lot of other stuff. 3D printing is a big buzzword, yes. It is. But I like the ones where it's not just about that and there's so many things that you can make that don't retail high-tech things like that and like a crazy expensive piece of equipment. Yes, exactly, exactly. So here's just a couple pictures of the opening. So we had the manufacture of the 3D printer show up. The one picture I love, and you can see it next to the gentleman, the provost who's signing his name on the wall, the little kid reading a book and the older gentleman working on Linux. I just found that a very interesting thing because a little, you think the kids would be the ones using the computer and the older people would be the ones using just the old-fashioned technology of the book. So I think that's a really great picture and that's the one they actually used in the newspaper, which I think is really kind of cool. So this is just a couple pictures from the opening. Really great day. So I won't go to this, but if you go to that link, you'll see what the Innovation Lab has. And that's my daughter. Before we got our Oculus Rift, we built a virtual reality headset out of cardboard. So if you ever want to do something like that, it was like less than $10, I think. And then you can actually put your phone in there and do virtual reality. So again, you don't need to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to have virtual reality. You can actually do it with cardboard and a lens and a phone, which most of us have now. I always think that our space is perpetual beta. It's always changing. It's never going to be finished. And so then we went in and submitted another grant application recently and got it. And you can kind of see down there at the bottom, I didn't highlight it, where I actually start using that buzzword, STEAM, Science, Technology, Engineering, Digital Arts, and Math. So we're starting to make it happen, which is great. We did create, I already mentioned this earlier, we are a little bit global chapter now. We do a lot of workshops where kids and adults can actually learn in this example how to build an analog synthesizer and how to learn what sound is and make a lot of interesting sounds. So they put us in, we actually have our own little plaque now, which is cool. But what's really nice is we get to work with an amazing group of people from all around the world each month. We go on these community calls and there's people from all over the world doing some amazing things. So we get to actually share what we're doing and we get to learn what they're doing and try to kind of mimic some of the stuff that they're doing up there, which is great. Let's see if this is going to even work. Yeah, hopefully this will play for you guys. You probably won't hear the music, but that's fine. So we've got students that come in and these two students are actually 3D printing a mask. This took seven hours to do. A lot of people don't realize that either, that it takes quite a bit of time. But what's nice is they actually came in and they soldered all these lights and they were taking it to some music concert and wearing it on their face and having all these lights shine around them and everything. So I thought that was really kind of an innovative thing that they built all by themselves just by using the lab. So that's just one example. Then we've got, we've done some drone workshops. My good friend Donnie came and did the drone workshop at our school and we actually shot this video that day. So really kind of cool and this is part of the arts too. I mean it's engineering, so you're learning about drones and how they work and everything and the mechanical part of drones and how we can build them ourselves and everything. But we're also doing more artistic kind of videos. I mean look how gorgeous that is. A lot of these drone videos are very pretty what you see. I mean you're supposed to be looking at something but you're like, wow, look at that view. You could never see that without drones. Yeah, this is my college and this is gorgeous. So my friend Donnie actually shot a video in Hawaii recently that went completely viral and I had a person from Inside Edition and some other media companies trying to get a hold of me so they could get a hold of him and I thought that was pretty fun. So yeah, so here's the Maker Bootcamp I was talking about. We just, I'm gonna fast forward to this real quick, we just got awarded a $7,500 grant to expand our Maker Bootcamp concept. I don't know if you guys heard about this or not but the library service for children division of the American Library Association got quite a bit of money from Disney to kind of create these grants to kind of enhance creativity. So I'm super stoked that we got this grant awarded to us. We found out with yesterday of the day before. So what we're doing is we're going to expand our Maker Bootcamp. So this past summer, my college has a College for Kids program. It's a summer program. So we started with them. We did two weeks. We taught them 3D printing and design and then we did robotics and the video game design, basic robotics, circuitry, electronics, all this different stuff. So for the first two weeks we worked with the College for Kids program and then we actually went in and started working with the public. Let me see if I have stuff on that. Yeah, so we started every Friday. So normally my summers are really laid back and mellow but this time it was a very busy summer. So we would work with the College for Kids and then Friday morning I would work with the Recreation Center. So they got on board. They were like, oh, we want to do this. So every Friday it was something different. And then after I would work with the Recreation Center kids, then I would get the public. So I was working from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Friday for six weeks on top of my other work duties of course. But it was so rewarding. I probably saw 200 kids in that time. So what our grant's going to do is we're going to take this a little bit further and what we're going to do is we're going to do the Maker Boot Camp. It's going to be 3D design, 3D printing, robotics, video game design, circuitry, you know, like the snap circuits, circuit scribe, all that stuff, little bits, Arduino stuff. I'm missing a few others, I can't remember. But what we're going to do, part of the grant was we're going to document the entire Maker Boot Camp. We're going to do it with video. So we have a videographer, a student volunteer. We're going to record everything via video. And then our last workshop is going to be with the kids, learning how, by the way, it's for third to sixth grade. That's the age group we want to work with. So we're going to videotape the whole thing. And our last workshop is going to be on editing the video. So they're going to learn that little artistic part of it. They're all going to be filmmakers, which is just great. So one of the student volunteers is actually a film student. So we'll be able to really get some slow down. And then our plan is, once our Maker Boot Camp is done, we're going to then have our own little Maker Fest, where we'll allow some of the students to, if they feel like it, they feel courageous enough to do a little presentation and to explain what they learned and maybe share what they built or whatever it is. And then we're going to premiere our video, our documentary film. And the kids are going to love it because they're going to be able to see their names scrolling up in the credits and all that. So I'm really excited. You can see we also do virtual reality with the Oculus Rift. Kids are blown away by that. We're not going to just be passive viewers of virtual reality though. We're actually having a class on actually building virtual reality environments. So they're going to actually learn all of what is included in actually creating virtual reality where then they can put their Oculus Rift headsets on and actually go in and experience the reality that they built. Pretty cool stuff. This has got Steam written all over it. We're also working with NASA, their Education and Public Outreach Initiative. So what's great is now that we've got this grant and part of the grant is going to be to fund student notebooks because I talked about this earlier. We want them to reflect on the entire process. So their notebooks are going to be just that. And then we're hoping that if we got some good ones, some good recipes basically, we're then going to go through the NASA's Public Outreach Initiative and put all our activities up there on their website. So it'll be a way for us to get more visibility through this major organization, NASA. Pretty cool stuff. We're also working with a lot of more academic stuff where I get all kinds of requests, not just elementary schools. I mean I get high schools, I get other colleges, universities that come in and want to partner with us, which is just so amazing. So we did a biomedical thing where they 3D printed some stuff. I'm working with an English professor and an ESL and English as a second language professor where they do the ENC 1101 students come in and they do podcasts. So they read some of their favorite English passages in literature and that sort of thing. And then the English as a second language students log into the site and then they listen back to a native English speaker doing it. So all that stuff's being done in our lab. And then I've got another English professor who does these multimodal assignments and they're integrating that into the complete curriculum, which is so cool. And they're doing that in our lab. That's pretty cool. It does very obviously show the connection between the arts and these more you consider science related things. It's absolutely really obvious that it makes sense. I will say this though. I do work in a joint use library. So I'm very, very lucky in that respect because I get to work with the public, I get to work with children, all this. But I also get to work with college faculty, I also get to work with students. And so if I ever need a very large lab or a large room with computers in it, I can do it. So a lot of public libraries do not have that luxury, unfortunately. But I'm extremely lucky. Nice to see that upper picture there that your main innovation lab space, it does not have to be that big to do all these different things in there necessarily. It doesn't. It doesn't. And if we do want something big, then we go into that larger classroom at the bottom where I can work with 150 students if I want. So it's great. So we do get the digital imaging classes that come in because they're in their 3D design section. So they're learning about 3D design. So they come in and I teach them how 3D design could then be printed. And so they get to learn that 3D printers do break down. And they also get to learn that 3D printing is not an instantaneous thing, that it takes sometimes hours to print something. So that's kind of neat. So we are doing a project with the same group where we're going to actually scan our heads with the Microsoft Connect. And because the teacher that does this class loves PES dispensers. So we're going to create not every student, but we're going to create replicas of some of the student heads so they can have their own PES dispenser. That's so cool. Yep. So we'll be doing that this semester sometime. So I've already talked about this. Mistakes are proof that you're trying. So in the upper part there you can see we get a group of homeschoolers that come in here often, which is excellent. And part of our grant, by the way, through the Curiosity Creates grants, we're actually going to be working with the public. It's also going to be open to the homeschooling community as well, which is great. So the lab is run by volunteers. And so we've got two up there, the guy in the green and red. They're just kind of tweaking one of our really old computers to see if they can make it into something else. My daughter is 3D printing her own design, which is kind of neat. And we also do a lot of Raspberry Pi work and stuff as well. But it's really about coloring outside the lines. And to go in and give people access to the stuff that they don't have access to otherwise. And letting them just kind of experiment with all these different things. So let's skip this. We do have the Oculus Rift that's got Elite Motion Controller attached to it. So you can actually be in virtual reality. Let me see if I can get it quickly. You can be in virtual reality and actually also interact with it with your hands. So we're working in this right now, which is very cool. So again, Steam is written all over this as well. I found this to be pretty interesting. This is a video and I'll just kind of narrate over it where Colton Jackson, I don't know if you guys know him or not, but he built this little Arduino thing and he put it on top or underneath a Frisbee. And so as he's throwing the Frisbee around, it's capturing data. And then so then he created this little program, which you'll see in a minute, which tracks all the global, whoops, there we go. Anyway, here's what he built. So yeah, so you can see where it's tracking all of the software, or not the software, the GPS coordinates. So I think that's really kind of neat. So just doing something fun, like throwing a Frisbee around, you also teach data analytics to children, which is really kind of cool. We do take our lab activities and projects on the road. So we get to mingle with other makers. So we bring our little booth with all the stuff, so we get to share what we're doing with other groups, which is also very nice. This is something I believe in big time. It is often been said that a person does not really understand something until he or she teaches it to someone else. Actually, a person does not really understand something until after teaching it to a computer express it as an algorithm. So we do coding classes too. And I get some students that are actually computer programming students who come in and teach people how to code, like the very basics. So we do the hour of code, and that's kind of neat. So they can get a taste for it. So we actually do all that stuff as well. So why learn to code? Why not? You do learn the importance of clarity and brevity of expression. You really do have a better understanding of how technology works behind the scene. So if you use software, you don't necessarily have to become a programmer to understand it, but you do understand it better if you actually understand a little bit how it works behind the scenes. So one of our deals is when we teach students how to do this, is to describe in natural language how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So they actually learn more about how to actually do that kind of thing, how programming works. I will not read all this to you, but as Christa mentioned earlier, they'll be a reference where you have all these links available. So now what's nice about this is you don't need a room, a big maker space to do this. Most of this stuff is free. You can learn how to do it, and then you can actually teach this kind of thing in your libraries, too. I'm sure a lot of you probably already are. You can also look into doing a coder dojo program, which is pretty neat. It's all volunteer-led and get somebody to come in and teach your patrons, your children, all this stuff how to code. It's really important these days. Robotics. So really robots, they're not going to take over the world, but they're everywhere. Even librarians sometimes don't realize that when we do a search in a database, that's basically a robot doing it for us. So anyway, the robot camps do stimulate young minds. There's a lot of problem-solving that goes in with robotics. A lot of the stuff that happens is especially if you create a robot league, or if you do some robot-type stuff, you're provided with some kind of a problem. Then as a group, we go through and try to figure out ways to solve that problem, and I think that's key. So these robot camps, they really do stimulate minds. A week after this little girl here, a week after this robotics lab, she was able to command or control a small robot that was able to react to objects. So that's really cool. That little girl was able to do that. So sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, and I'm going to actually work with younger kids, they're learning how to program robots to dodge obstacles, to follow lines, to react to colors. Again, these kids are not, they might not become robotic engineers, but when they get older and they start working workforce, there's going to be a lot of robots working next to them. And if they know how to interact with robots, if they know how to program them a little bit, they're going to be ahead of the game. And if they learn this at your library, then you're helping them succeed further down. And you're also supporting your mission, which is probably a lifelong learning mission. I know our library is. And that also hopefully will take away some of the fear of robots, or what you said they're not going to take over. No, they're not. Work with them, learn about them, yeah. Exactly. So if you're interested in creating a robot league, if you go to usfirst.org slash robotics programs, you'll see that there's quite a few options there. It doesn't really cost too much to get it to get it started. A lot of times you can write grants for it. I've got some friends that work in our region that have offered me millions of times to write a grant for us. And I just haven't had a chance to say, please do it, you know. But when we did our Maker Bootcamp, we asked the kids that came to our robot class, our workshop, and we asked them if they'd be interested in a robotic league. And it was unanimous. Everybody there, all 16 kids that day, wanted to be a part of the robot league. So it's usually up to about 10 people. But now that we got that grant, we'll be able to afford a little bit more robotic stuff to do it. But if you're considering doing something like this in your library, it's a perfect fit in libraries, I think. This is kind of an older slide, but you get an idea that you can register a team. It usually starts in May, but you can continue to register late. After you register, a regional partner will contact you. So we were lucky because we do have a Lego Mindstorm robot already. And they're actually using the EV3 robots now. But you can get one of those for a couple hundred bucks. So we didn't have to pay any extra. They do give you a field setup kit, where all the obstacles and stuff are, that does cost 75 bucks. And then they do start, usually the challenges start in August. And there's more that come up. But if it's something you're looking into, it's really fun. And they do say they're no more than 10 kids per team. So is this stuff working? You know, it is working. I look at it more anecdotally because I just get... I see it. I can see it. I ask questions. I usually do lectures first, even for the young kids, kind of give them a brief overview of what all this technology is and what it means and what you can do with it. And then the rest of our workshop is spent with them on the floor and just kind of interacting with all this stuff, where they actually get the hands-on work. But I do... I am sending out short surveys now to kind of get better feedback. But I look at it more anecdotally. I can see it. I see it working. And I see kids coming in and actually building stuff and then I get to watch it work. It's just amazing. This is one thing that I like to share, is we did... We have a pretty famous animation company that's in St. Petersburg called Echo Bridge Pictures, and they do some amazing animation work. And they actually reached out to me a while back and said, hey, can we do a workshop? I said, absolutely. So we had a lecture where the main animator came out and talked about animation and how hard it is to succeed in that industry. And so students... It was open to the public. They were able to really get an idea of how hard it is, but how rewarding it is. We also then did a character design contest, where we had quite a few, about 15 or so, people submit their own characters that they designed themselves. And then the people that worked at Echo Bridge Pictures were the judges, and they picked a first, second, third place winner. So this is Jayisha, and she won first place. But the great thing is that she's now working there, because she's so good. And I thought, wow, and she was so thankful to me. She kept going, oh, thank you so much for getting me this. I said, you know what? I didn't get you anything. You did all the work yourself. She drew the very innovative and very creative, unique character, and they loved it. And she's still working there. This is about a year later. She's still working there. And I think it's great that we're able to provide that little connection or that spark that gets people to where they want to be in life. And so she's off to a great career. She's only 20-something. So this kind of thing really makes me proud and happy that I get to do this kind of thing on a daily basis. Some other highlights. One of my students came in and has built his own little robot, and they put a Raspberry Pi on it. And then he's able to control this robot via a web interface that he built himself. And he then added a little iFrame in there, because there's a camera added to this robot. So he can actually control the robot all over the place. Technically, he could be in a different state if he wanted to. And then he can kind of get video images, a stream back on what the robot's actually seeing. So that's really kind of neat. Another one of my students, a faculty member, donated a 3D pen. I'm not a big fan of 3D pens, but it was broken. One of my lab volunteers went in and soldered it and fixed it, and she just donated it to us. So you guys can have it now. Thanks for fixing it. We did make the second page of the Tampa Tribune, which is a pretty big deal for us. So that was kind of neat. We get all kinds of good word of mouth promotion, too. One of the professors and her students came in, and they do video presentations. This student, I don't think she won the annual business plan and elevator pitch, but I think she was a runner-up, which is pretty neat, and that they wanted to come in the lab to shoot the video. And then we have another volunteer that came in and did a nice hands-on workshop for Arduino. So that was fun. So I always invite our kids. I've had kids come in and do little presentations on things, and it really helps them be able to stand up in front of a group of people and explain what they did. It's really good for them to do this. And then playtime is really important. This is my son who is building his own little bit circuit. And you can see how I let them play with the robot, too. And so it's fun for them. And then there's a lot of art programs, too, that they get to play with and mingle with all that. It's definitely fun. So here's some ways to get ahold of the lab, if you're interested. We do have a Facebook group. We do have a medium page where we call it like a research or a resource bundle where we try to put stuff in there. It might need some updating, but it's there. Our Tumblr page is fairly up to date. We're still working on Instructables. I've got a few videos that are very raw that I'm trying to edit so we can throw some stuff up on Instructables. So we'll have our own site there, but it is there. And then the iLab generic email is there, as well. I will give you my contact. So I already showed you the slideshare.net slash Chadmaren. You can go there and get the slides. Plus I have all my other presentations up there, too. If there's anything that you see up there that you're interested in and you want to learn more about, feel free to get ahold of me. This is actually a bad slide. I apologize for this. Let me find... I can send you guys my newer contact, the college contact. Sure, not a problem. Which is... Yeah, this is an old slide, I apologize for that. But feel free to get ahold of me any time. I know I covered a lot, but if there's anything that you'd like to share, if there's anything that you want me to go over in more detail, I'd be happy to do it. Yeah, well, thanks so much. Yeah, well, thanks so much, Chad. That was very cool. Makes me want to go out and do a lot of those things. Find some place here that has some of those things like that. Yeah, I did save a lot of the links for the college's pages, the medium and tumblr, and I'll grab any of the other ones I did before. So they'll all be included in the links afterwards for everybody. Does anybody have any questions? Anything you want to ask or anything you want to share about what you're doing in your libraries? We just have some comments. Very interesting and innovative of you, and congratulations on the grants that you've gotten. Oh, thank you. I think that definitely helps. Yeah, a lot of people do... They think about how do we do this with we don't have any money? We don't know. Like you said, too. And I think it's good that you talked about how you didn't know what you were doing when it came to budgeting and figured out what you need. No, I still don't know what I'm doing. You don't have to. You do the grant, figure it out, see how it works. Someone will tell you, well, you need to know... Like the people who are in charge of the room, what are you going to do about this, this, and this? Oh, well, let's figure it out. Yeah, exactly. And that's part of the do-it-yourself ethos of the whole makerspace movement anyway. It's first off, it's about people. It's not about the technology and the gadgets and all that. It's about the people. And it is. I mean, a lot of times I'll walk in and I'll see a group of my volunteers and I'm like, hey, guys, we got money to spend. What do you want? Like, I don't sit there and make a list of things. I've got so many toys to play with right now. It's not even funny. Yeah. I mean, really, I mean, we're still... There's so many new things coming out, too. I mean, we've had shows, things on here about the little bits and Brian has been on. Brian Pitchman that you mentioned earlier, he's been on talking about going to conferences about it and everything. So, yeah, there's just too many new things coming out. There's always going to be something to find that you could figure out or afford or use, yeah. Definitely, definitely. But the key is to ask the people you're working with mostly, you know, kids in whatever way. What do you guys want to play with? Especially if you get a grant. You know, and definitely take the time to get a grant. You know, I mean, I hear it a lot. Well, you're so lucky and you get to... I'm like, yeah, I am very lucky, but I work really hard to get this stuff for these people. And I really do enjoy watching them kind of, you know, innovate with this stuff. And that's the whole thing. And part of my dream is to just have, you know, I can just picture a little kid coming in and inventing something that changes the world down the road and going, hey, you know, I never would have this opportunity unless it was from my local library. Right. That's something I really want to hear one of these days. I think the way you had mentioned the lifelong learning, that is, I think, one of the huge things about everything that libraries do. Having the books to read, the computers to go on, just to do research on, the story times for the kids. It all leads up to that, everything, I think. It does. Yeah. We do have a couple of questions that came in. Sure. Since we're talking about the grants, this person just wants to know really what order you should do it. If you do not have any of these types of programs as of yet, should we write a grant to get started? Or do we start a program and then write grants to fund it? Well, that's a good question. I mean, I would kind of figure out if your community is interested in it first, and more than likely they will be. So I've always just kind of walked around and said, hey, if we had this, would you guys come? And they're like, yes. And then you know, OK, well, there's an interest. And more than likely, you're going to have that interest. And then start dreaming a little bit. You know, like, what is, I mean, do you want to get into robotics? Do you want to get into 3D printing? I mean, what is it that you're most interested in? Because if it's something that you're interested in, writing the grant and doing the research and all that behind it, it's not going to be very painful. So find something that you're interested in. Like, that's what I said earlier, that it was very selfish on my part, that I had an interest in quite a bit. But it was like, I'm very interested in this stuff. And I just don't have the time to do it. And so I wrote that grant because I'm interested. A lot of that, and a lot of that grant writing is convincing the grant organizations that you are passionate about this. Yes. That, so there's a lot of, it's not just, here's what you want, here's what you need, please give, you know, whatever. It's, you know, make it creative and interesting, an interesting presentation to them. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing you can do, and this is what I've done at my library, is I was able to go in to our actual book budget. OK, and think about it. So like, we buy DVDs that cost 100 bucks sometimes. I mean, or some kind of kit that's for like, you know, a fifth grade group or whatever. So that stuff costs a lot of money. So I asked my director, I'm like, hey, is it OK if I buy some Arduinos and some Raspberry Pi kits? And we're checking those out now. So we're circulating our Raspberry Pis and we're circulating our Arduinos. But I was able to buy those through our book budget. So what you might want to do is say, you know what, I'm very interested in this little bit concept. And go out and buy a little bit kit. They're less than $200, right? You can buy one for less than 200 bucks, probably, I think. And then have little workshops, like find a table in the library and invite, you know, five, 10 people. Take a bunch of pictures and have pictures of you and your staff or whatever, you know, working with these kids or adults or whatever. And say, look, look at the interest. Look at the people having such a good time learning about circuitry and all this stuff. And then put that in your grant and say, look, you know, there's an interest and we need your help to make this a little bit bigger. Maybe we can have more components for more hands on work. So that's that's how I would do it. Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. So then to answer the question, do something small first and then use that in your grant show. Look, we need to do more of this. Look, how many people were here and how interested they were and how they wanted it. Yeah. And some did actually come that both Little Bits and SparkFun both offer educator discounts, 15 to 20% off that they will let you apply for as a library. They do. A lot of places will. So, yeah. Lego, Lego did that. Little Bits and I'll link to them to Little Bits and SparkFun on the delicious here. But yeah, so you can get stuff for even cheaper. Yeah. Oh yeah. And you know what? Another thing, ask a company, say, hey, you know what? I really want to start something like this, but I don't, we don't have any money. You know, and just try it. They can, they can say no. And what happens if they say no? Big deal, right? I mean, but they could also say yes. And they can say, oh, here, here, take this. You know, I just asked, we're doing a big comic. We're doing Pinellas Comic and Maker Con, which is huge. Last year, 3,500 people showed up. This year, we're gonna have probably triple that. But I went out. I asked Legoland, hey, can we have free tickets? They're $100 a piece. I'm holding four tickets in my hand right now. They just said $400 worth of tickets. I'm like, all I did was ask. So if you don't ask, you're not gonna, you're not gonna get any. Yeah, and a lot of them are willing to help out because it's for kids. It's, it's sometimes for adults too. I mean, this isn't, you know, adults want to learn these things as well. I know I do. It's for education and to even be more business about it. It's them being able to promote themselves. They want to. They'll give you the free tickets and then people, other people will come and then they'll, you know, they'll make their money. They'll work out everybody, you know. Oh, it does. That's everyone in the end, yeah. Yep, yep. Let's see what we have here. Here's the question that came in. Do you have any gender specific programming? This person says, we have a group in New Orleans that specifically works with elementary high school girls to help create a supportive environment. So if you did anything like that specifically for any groups? No, you know, we have not. But it's on the back of my mind. It's something I'd like to do. But no, I usually keep our programs open. Now, I will say though, we did the Maker Bootcamp. The first one that we did in the summertime was geared to 10 to 14 year olds. So there was an age limit. Age, not gender. Yeah. No, we have not done gender. Yeah, but it's something. Yeah, there's a group out there. I think it's a coding group for girls. But no, it's something that I'd like to do. I just have not done yet. I know it is something that some libraries and schools are concerned about that sometimes. And we had someone on here from local Nebraska talking about wearable electronics. So using the computer, the wires and threads that are putting lights on things and all of those kind of things, wearable technologies, and that they did a robots league and the girls didn't come to it. Which is, they just didn't open it wasn't. So then they started doing these wearables and they got more girls. Which is, you know, it's the stereotypical thing. But and they also did not make that say, this is just for girls. They said, we're going to try this other one too. Yeah, yeah, I had last week, I had two different girls come into the lab and they were using the 3D printer to print out some things that they designed for their costume. So they're doing like a Halloween costume. And so, yeah, so we obviously work with all genders, but we don't do specific programs geared towards them. And I do get the comment here, they say, to help create a supportive environment that potentially if it's all girls, they'll work better together. But have you noticed any issues with the fact that you have them mixed up in there and do the kids really seem to care? Kids don't care at all. I mean, from what I've seen in my personal experience, you know, I haven't seen any problems. It might be different when they get older. And after siblings, siblings obviously fight. I've seen that. I've seen siblings because they just live with each other and they get kind of annoyed very easily. But when they're not siblings, I don't I've never seen any problems. Cool. All right, thanks. Anybody have any other questions? Type them in. I just have other comments here. Someone just says, thank you for the resources and the inspiration to try it. And someone said, thanks, our library just received a printer bot and Ultimaker 2 and some little bits modules. Now we just have to learn how to use it all. Should be a fun challenge. You have used my mind about the learning process. So they've got the stuff and now she's got to know. Yeah, another thing to do with it too is maybe invite some other staff members that might have an interest. I know some libraries myself, mine included, sometimes they just, oh, well, that's a circulation person. They don't they don't need to come out behind the desk and do it. It's like, you know what, let them come out. They might teach you something. Find somebody like is it interested in it? And just yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be the like reference library and doing it. You know, it can be it could be a teen volunteer. You know, like if they know how to use it, have them teach you how to do it. They'll do it. They'll they'll teach you how to use it. I'll give you one quick example. I when we got the leap motion controller where you actually, you can actually reach inside virtual reality. When I first tried it, I was really horrible at it like because I was thinking too much. I was like, oh, if I move my arm at this angle, it'll, I gave it to my four year old son who's now five, but I he started interacting with it like it was nothing. Like he just started doing it because he wasn't thinking about it. And so I looked at him like, okay, I'm learning from this little kid. Uh huh. So definitely find somebody that's, that already knows how to do it, get past our egos. We all have, you know, sometimes our egos get in the way. And just if a 10 year old kid knows how to do it, let that 10 year old kid show you how to do it. Absolutely. You know. All right, sounds good. Doesn't look like any other questions have come in. We're a little after 11 o'clock, but that's okay because we started a little late too to let people get in. Anybody have any last minute desperate urgent questions you want to ask right now? You can get them typed in and we can do it. Otherwise, we're going to have all sorts of contact info for Chad and you can contact him later. Definitely. Please don't hesitate to get a hold of me guys. I really enjoy talking with everybody. Okay. Doesn't look like anything desperate urgent is coming in now. This is a really long question. So I think since it's a little after, we'll wrap it up for this morning. Thank you so much, Chad. This was great. Like I said, I think it was very good overview of all the different kinds of things we can do. We've had other related types of topics on the show and there's also so many different ways to come at this, but I like the information definitely about the get the grants, get other groups to work with you, bring someone else into the lab, other organizations get them to go in there. And you don't need a big space. You don't need to set aside a lot for this. Just get started with something small and see where it goes. Yeah. And I think there's so many things like you're saying. There's so many different things out there. So many new products and services, new techie things you can use. Figure out what works in your area. You know, just because some other library has a 3D printer, your people might not be into it. They might say, oh, that's nice. And we've made some goofy stuff, but it's not really something I'm grasping onto. And that's fine. Yeah. Oh, another thing I will say about 3D printing and then I'll leave you guys to go. We do get quite a few inventors that come in and actually print out prototypes. So that's really kind of neat. So they know now, oh, the library is a place where we can go and test our ideas. And I've got at least five or six different examples of different inventors that come in and print. Yeah. And so, yeah, you got to kind of think of it as in a different way, maybe. Not necessarily that you might not end up having programs or classes that you teach. It might just be a service you offer in the end, who knows. And that works too. Yeah. All right, great. Thank you so much, Chad. Thank you, everyone, for attending. I'm going to pull back presenter control to my computer now to show you our website and what we got going here. Move this out of the way. There we go. So as I said, the show has been recorded. And over here, this is our delicious links. I've started. I've got a lot more I'll put in here. But I will be linking to all of this on the delicious library commissions account when the recording is available from over on our website. This is our main end-campus-live web page. There we go with our upcoming shows. Right here, all of our archive shows go. This is where today's will be, maybe later today, depends on how quickly it processes and goes up for me. As I said, we post it onto YouTube. And then we have links to the slides that you have on your site there, Chad, and our delicious links. So it'll be all on here similar to this session here. This is the previous one. Link to our recording. Link to your slides. Link to all the links. As soon as that's available, I will email out to all of you who are attendees here today, letting you know that it is ready for you to watch. But our show and our recordings are free and open to anyone. So if you know someone who would be interested in this topic or any of our other ones on here, please do let them know and send them to our page. We do have a Facebook page as well, our Encompass Live page over here, where I do post announcements of when the recording is available as well. I do a reminder here, as I did this morning, for people to log in on the fly to the show if they didn't pre-register. So they'll be on there as well. So if you're a big Facebook user, go pop over there and like us on Facebook. And other than that, that wraps up for today's show. I hope you join us. Our next show is actually in two weeks. Next week is our State Conference, Nebraska Library Association, Nebraska School Librarians Association. It's the one week of the year that we do not have an Encompass Live show, because everybody's at the conference. So next week we're off, but the week after that, I hope you join us to sign up for our next show. Introducing two new library guides here, the Library Commission. We have created a library board handbook and a public library director's guidebook, both in process. So we're going to show, share about that and get some more input from librarians about what could be in those. And then you'll see all of our upcoming shows as well. They're always got some new ones coming on. So go ahead there and register. Other than that, thank you very much for attending and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye-bye.