We had a great time today in Marquette at our Maker Idea Swap!

Everybody kept their hands busy with some Toy Takeapart, one of our favorite activities while we talked about Maker programs everyone is running, thinking of running, or has heard of.

The notes for today’s session can be found here, and if you are interested in attending any of our future sessions, they can be found here!

Our second day in Marquette and our first day at the beautiful, enormous Peter White Public Library.

Check out the slides and folder of additional infomation here.

We started the day working through the design thinking process so the participants could have a good handle on both the individual steps and the entire overview of what it’s like to complete a design thinking cycle.

After sending the participants out to observe each other’s dashboards and prototype solutions (with Legos!) to the main problem, we had them discuss problems in their own community that could be solved with the same process.

We hope that this can be a useful way to balance open-endedness with bit of structure and direction, for classroom teachers and librarians alike — or for anyone in the community!

We hope to see you at some of our future events.

Welcome to the UP! Chris Standerford at the Digital Learning Lab Makerspace on NMU’s campus was very prepared to host our first of three days in lovely Marquette.

We started off with a short activity to introduce our approach to conducting workshops (hint: heavy on the activities and a healthy serving of agency, not to mention a good amount of principles to take home and apply!). We had some very creative notecard-pencil-yarn creations! (Here are our slides and files from the event!)

We continued with some background about our experiences and what we’ve learned — focusing strongly on the purpose behind the makerspace and what each person’s individual community needs.

In the afternoon we had more activities that the participants really enjoyed! We made flashlights and then used our (curated!) junk box to enhance and pitch some products. (“Worried about your neighbors or enemies knowing how much ice cream you eat at 2 in the morning? Use Secret Scoop™!”)

Participants finished the day by designing some board games, learning about assessment strategies, and looking through some tools and toys they could make use of, both ours and NMU’s! More pictures can be found at our Flickr album here.

Hope to see you later this week at some of other events, or at future events.

This Thursday we held a workshop on Fashion Hacking, using used clothes to create new and useful things!

We began by talking about the environmental, social, and financial benefits to fashion hacking, and then moved right into hands-on hacking! 

For this workshop, we focused on thinking about the anatomy of clothing – the different fabric pieces that make up clothes, and how those pieces can be adjusted and rearrange to create new items. People ended up making bags, shirts, skirts, backpacks, and even wigs!

Thanks to everyone who came out, and if you are interested in our slideshow, handouts, or further fashion hacking resources, they can be found here. If you are interested in attending any of our future events, including more fashion hacking later this summer, those events can be found here.

This week we went up to Houghton Lake for an afternoon of library making with their middle schoolers!

We brought up a sewing machine and a button maker for the kids to try out.

They got to make small suede wallets and learn how to use the sewing machine, some of them putting their own creative twist on the wallet!

Over at the button making station, the kids had to option of cutting out pictures from magazines to make buttons, or drawing their own pictures for the buttons!

Thanks to everyone who turned out for this program, and thanks to the Houghton Lake Public Library for having us! We had lots of fun and it was so great to see what the kids came up with!

On Tuesday, June 6, we held a workshop on using Google Cardboard for librarians and educators around Ann Arbor.

We discussed the possibilities of using 360 video and Google Expeditions (thanks to North Quad and U of M ITS for helping us out!) in libraries.

We also spent some time — since we are makers at heart — creating our own panoramas and Photospheres using free apps with Google Cardboard.

If you want to check out the slides from that event, find them here.

If you’d like to come to any of our future events, find them here — we’re just getting warmed up!

We had the pleasure this week of running a puppet making workshop right here in Ann Arbor! We focused on the Bunraku style of puppetry, which originated in Japan and is known for its naturalistic movements. The slides and resources for this workshop, including the instructions for puppet making, can be found here.

We started out making tabletop puppets, to get used to the process and to experiment with Bunraku-style movement – focusing on the breath, focus, and weight of the puppet.

These puppets were made from printer paper and invisible tape, with optional paper clips to help control the arms.

After that, we moved on to making near-life size puppets, this time using newsprint paper and masking tape.

Our participants made quick work of the large puppets and soon enough we were acting out skits with the Bunraku style of puppetry, which requires three people to control one puppet. From business men on the moon to nurses in a 1920s speakeasy, the puppets began to come to life!

Now these puppets can take a well-deserved break after their morning of hard work. Thanks for everybody who came out, we had blast working with you all! Again, the resources can be found here and if you are interested in attending our other workshops this summer, they can be found here.

This morning from 10am to noon we had 7 participants from southeastern Michigan attend our inaugural workshop on Creating Design Challenges. We had a good mix of both school and public librarians as well as experience levels.

A collection of documents (rubrics, methods, and slides + a shopping list of materials we used!) is located here!

We started the day off with a short (or “tiny”) Design Challenge based on our Making in Michigan Libraries-created Design Thinking Game. By chance, we were creating something to help a mermaid organize — but wait, we also had to make sure to not introduce new things as our particular mermaid’s constraint was that she didn’t like new things!

In small groups our participants used a material they were familiar with — Legos — to create organizational inventions for our hypothetical mermaid. As we debriefed and continued to think about the why and the how of design challenges, we also discussed best practices for implementing them and different lengths for different focuses.

We then introduced a second Design Challenge with a less familiar — but still inexpensive — material: Strawbees! We changed up our groups for variety’s sake and had participants consider the challenge, prototype, and finally pitch a commercial for the “something to help a fisherman relax”!

We had a great time pitching, even showing off a Strawbee umbrella! Look at our complete album of photos here.

If this sounds interesting (or just downright fun) check out our other events coming up this summer!

On May 8th, we had the pleasure of going to the Frankenmuth Wickson District Library to do a Maker Idea Swap. It was so great to hear about the great programs people are running in their libraries, and learn from their experiences! We accompanied the discussion with a Toy Takeapart activity, so with busy hands and active minds we got to work!

Our notes from the event can be found here. Thanks to all of the librarians and educators who came out to participate in a fantastic discussion!  Then, we spend the afternoon discussing ways to gather financial support for activities or programs that our participants would like to implement in their libraries! The materials for that session can be found here.

If you are interested in our other events this summer, you can register here!