A few weeks ago, I wrote about attending a seminar in San Diego put on by the Special Libraries Association. The theme was connecting the dots of creativity and innovation and since we’re on the topic of maker spaces this week, I found my mind repeatedly flashing back to one speaker in particular. Her name was Kathlin L. Ray and she’s the Dean at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center at the University of Nevada and she represented a really cool space. Mentioned by the American Libraries Magazine in an article earlier in the year to be one of the top 3 makerspace models […]
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Oops! I broke the 3D printer! And you know what? It’s OK. One night on The 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library I attempted to make 3 Stretchlet bracelets on our 3D printer at one time. We’re taking our 3D printer to the local children’s museum later this month and wanted to built up our arsenal of 3D printed giveaways. My idea was to attempt to speed up that process and boy oh boy did it not work. I came back to see the mess you see below. Something went wrong and our whole extruder was covered in plastic. […]
Note from Michael: I posted about Megan’s work here: https://tametheweb.com/2013/09/26/if-you-like-it-put-a-badge-on-it/I remember my exact reaction the first time I heard about Digital Badges. “Hey, these could replace performance reviews!” I exclaimed. Maybe it was due to upcoming performance reviews I didn’t want to complete, maybe it was my deep love for quest based learning, or maybe it was just one of the many things I exclaim in excitement during any given day, but for some reason it stuck. I couldn’t get badges out of my head. This was several years ago and my excitement over badges has only continued to grow. I’ve […]
Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois 60062. Although we only saw it for that one day, one of the greatest collaborations took place in a library.A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal each assigned to write an essay of no less than a thousand words describing who they thought they were. One of the things that always struck me when watching the John Hughes classic The Breakfast Club, even long before I started the MLIS program, was how advanced the Shermer High School library was. Hopefully adding to what Jenkins (2006) calls the “Collective Intelligence” of media […]
Warren: Hi Justin! I found this weird avant garde art video online that you’re featured in! I didn’t realize you were into that – tell me more! Justin: No, not an art video…I was actually testing out On Air Google+ Hangouts with my co-worker James McNutt. We’re using the On Air Hangouts to record the guest speakers we have for our DEV DEV:<summer of code/> camp at the Chattanooga Public Library. W: So it was just a test? Why put it online? J: Yah, just a test. We put it online because that’s the whole point of the on air hangout…to record […]
Note from Michael: Carlie will be a Participatory Learning Guide for the #hyperlibMOOC this fall. She was a WISE student in my classes at SJSU SLIS. Her ideas below resonate with my teaching and views. Enjoy… As a recent LIS graduate I really don’t feel different, but looking back I think I had an exponential increase in library and life knowledge throughout the second half of my graduate degree. It’s been almost a year since I shared the promises of a then future librarian, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to share those of a new one. As a […]
During the month of July 2013, my colleagues, community partners, fifty teens, and I were stationed on The 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library for DEV DEV: Summer of Code. It was, to be completely honest with you, the greatest single experience I have ever had in a public library. Let me tell you why. Partners Since the program happened on The 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library it would be easy for everyone to think that this all happened at the library and it was all the library and that was that. But that’s not the case […]
“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t” – Robert Benchley When I walk in to a library I can usually tell what type it is fairly quickly. I don’t mean public, special, academic, school, etc. but a library for stuff or a library for experiences. When I walk in to the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, IL it is obviously centered on experiences. When I go in to a museum library it is obviously about stuff. This isn’t to say that AHML doesn’t also have an […]
Make sure you check out Library’s 3-D printer spits out all kinds of fun and learning over at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I’ve been talking with Saxonburg Area Library Director Erin Wincek about 3D printing over the past few months and I am in love with the things she’s doing for her community. I also love the support that her community and her board has for her passion: “We’re going to grab up these fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders and show them their future,” said Ms. Wincek, who thinks the printer could influence some of their career choices. Library board president […]
Yesterday morning (Tues 17th June 2013) I found myself at the Urbana Free Library, which is the focus of a lot of attention in library land at the moment. I count it as a professional privilege to have spent two hours with some of the most inspirational public library staff I have ever met. Here I offer a few observations and opinions based on my visit to the library. I’m travelling through the USA for the next two weeks on a VALA Travel Scholarship, investigating existing and planned projects where fibre-broadband rollouts affect libraries. The twin cities of Champaign and Urbana in Illinois […]