American Library Association Midwinter Meeting
SparkFun heads to Chicago this week to attend the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter meeting.
Twice a year ALA throws down big events to help librarians of all backgrounds to build better libraries and serve patrons in the most effective ways. SparkFun has been in attendance for the last few years as a vendor and presenter. This year is no exception!
We’ll be on the vendor floor at the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits, running a teaching space in collaboration with the staff of the Denver Public Library. This year we’re joined by Nate Stone and Cody Yantis, staffers from Denver Public library’s IdeaLab.
Cody and Nate have cooked up some great programming and we’ll be running hands-on teaching seminars throughout the meeting. Among the offerings, Nate will be running a SketchUp/Unity workshop.
Cody will be building Arduino powered Therimin, not the typical project you’d think of with a library, but super fun!
Angela Sheehan will be running Ardublock programming workshops and building eOrigami projects on the floor.
In addition we’ll be doing Intro to Scratch and 3D printing workshops. We’re really streching out this year because of the great response we’ve had at past events.
If you’re in attendance, our schedule is a s follows;
Saturday
9:30 a.m. - Makey Makey and Unity
11 a.m. - Scratch Literacy
1 p.m. Arduino Light Theremin
3 p.m. - How to use a 3D printer
Sunday
9:30 a.m. - How to use a 3D printer
11 a.m. - Intro to Arduino
1 p.m. - Makey Makey and Unity
3 p.m. - Programming with Ardublock
We have a great lineup and we hope to see some of you in Chicago.
Awesome! I've been very impressed by SparkFun's educational outreach. Perhaps you (and readers) would be interested in the new open forum (google group) on education in makerspaces: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/maker-educational-forum
Getting the hardware and software is easy part. Getting a program running, whether at a public makerspace, school, library, museum etc requires a lot more effort. There are lots of folks out there learning how to do it. The forum exists to share resources and experiences (positive and negative) and to build the collaborative educational community.