During the last few days eighth grade classes watched To Kill a Mockingbird as the conclusion of a unit about the text. I asked the students if they feel like watching movies based on books, after reading the book, is somewhat of a let down because:  1)  you spend a lot of time comparing the book to the movie rather than enjoying the movie and 2) it ruins the images which you've created in your head. What do you think? 

How to scan and create a 3D model from a scan.

Last Saturday I attended the Greater Newark Mini Maker Faire at the Newark Museum in Newark, NJ. Maker Faires are family friendly festivals which celebrate innovation, creativity and all basically all things which involve Making.  As hubs of collaborative learning in their communities, libraries and museums have quickly adopted the Maker Movement by providing the tools and spaces for design and innovation. The Newark Museum has effectively integrated maker programming both within the museum and with its partners in the community, thereby creating an environment which promotes participation, innovation and empowerment.  

As the school librarian, I started a small Maker Space, "the Creation Station" in the school's library in Vernon and would like to do the same here at MJS.  In my efforts to follow best practices, I've read Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager's Invent to Learn, AnnMarie Thomas' Making Makers, Jackie Gerstein's The Educator as a  Maker Educator, The Makerspace Playbook, Laura Fleming's Worlds of Making, the articles curated here, and attended numerous webinars, in addition to following #makered on Twitter and continually reading shared posts etc. A summary of my thoughts and initial purchase considerations, prepared for district administration can be found here.  This being said, Maker Education revolves around the concepts of embodied cognition, "learning by doing" and collaborating with other makers, and so, there's no better way to truly get it, than participating in it! With this in mind,  I happily attended my first Maker Faire.

On Tuesday afternoon during spring break, I spent a couple hours at the Museum of Modern Art In NYC. One of the exhibits I enjoyed was entitled This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good. A purpose of this exhibit was for viewers to consider and question the synthesis of form and function in design. See the 3D Printed Dress above. Other designs shared were common symbols: Google Map's Red Pin, the Recycling symbol and the symbol for Creative Commons. 

There was also a section entitled Design Interaction, which highlighted video games...yes, video games! The games exhibited were chosen based on their "visual quality, the architecture of the digital space, the types of behavior that the game elicits, and even the elegance of the code that makes it work". I'm fairly certain most of you are familiar with the chosen game shared below and many of you may also know the chosen game pictured below that. (If not, ask your parents; I think they may know about that one!)

My next post will tell you about my day today spent at the Newark Museum's Mini Maker Fair!

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