The New Makerspace: Unboxing and the Learning Curve

For those of you following my current journey, the new Makerspace stuff at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County has arrived!

New to my journey: I’m at a new library and I re-evaluated my previous MakerSpace, doing some comparison of tech components and putting together a Lego based MakerSpace that incorporates Little Bits in this first round. In addition, we’re getting some iPads to learn how to make pictures, GIFs and stop motion movies.

Most of the stuff arrived and it was glorious:

Because space is still a premium, I once again opted for mobile. This means I can take my MakerSpace components wherever I need them to be.

At Betty Warmack Branch Library in Grand Prairie, my teens loved – and I mean LOVED – making mini movies so I thought we would start there. Because of this year’s superhero themed SRC, I scoured the Internet for the best deal on Lego Superheroes. I got a pack of 24 for around $24.00 off of Ebay. It was the best deal out there.

Today I spent some time with fellow staff and some passing by teens to try our hands on using Little Bits. Little Bits are entirely new to me so I thought we would give it a try.

The instructions on how to make the various components work were pretty straight forward and easy to use.

We did manage to make our Lego Hulk spin using Little Bits – which I think will totally up our movie making game!

Although we did not use the LittleBits, we did our first project and I outlined how we did it here.

In order to help me get some great idea for the Little Bits, I started a Pinterest board which you can follow here if you would like. And don’t forget to check out the Robot Test Kitchen for more information on Little Bits.

Filed under: Tech Talk