Maker Culture at Your Library
In case you haven't heard, maker culture is here, it is awesome, and it is an integral part of the future of libraries. Toronto Public Library is on board, with the opening of the Digital Innovation Hubs and a variety of maker programs.
Over the past 6 months or so we have introduced a maker program for kids at Cedarbrae called Make + Create (and keep an eye out for adult programs later in the year). We choose science, technology, and art activities that are self-directed, allowing participants to use their imagination and inventive skills. We've done everything from making musical stairs and game controllers out of MaKey MaKey, to making boats out of recycled material and then having a contest to see which boat can float the most potatoes, to creating stamps for making prints, to making and launching foam rockets.
This past Wednesday we experimented with squishy circuits. Squishy Circuits is a project that came out of the Thomas Lab at St. Thomas University's School of Engineering (watch the TED Talk here) with the goal of exposing children to electricity, physics, and engineering in a fun and interactive way – with LEDs, toy motors and buzzers, and dough!
Here are some of the cool things the kids made:
A Creeper from Minecraft with a glowing heart (LED covered in conductive dough).
A snail with a glowing mouth and moving tail.
A snowman with a glowing nose.
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