I attended two different STEAM related sessions today and learned a ton!
First I went to the Ignite Sessions. 6 different speakers each spoke for 5 minutes a piece with timed slides to keep them on schedule. I am so amazed people can make such strong points in 5 minutes, incredible!
Angiah Davis, a librarian with the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, spoke on “Engaging Youth With Steam”. My biggest takeaway from this talk was simple, but powerful. When working on STEAM programming Angiah advised reaching out to community partners. She has partnered with Home Depot to offer a kids building event, a harpist to offer harp lessons (every kid got a harp and learned a song) and had an African dance group teach dance. She recommended both Bill Nye and Science Bob’s websites for a plethora of other ideas too.
Author/Illustrator Brian Yanish also spoke during the Ignite Sessions about his work with ScrapKins, a company that works with kids to turn trash into art. Yanish has traveled the world providing kids with opportunities to create and has written two books full of project ideas. My favorite quote from him was, “As long as kids can connect to the project, it doesn’t matter how complex it is”. He demonstrated how a cardboard tube, string and a plastic bag can become a parachuting character as an example of this philosophy. So simple. So brilliant.
I also went to the STEM in Libraries Member Initiative Group meeting this afternoon. This is a relatively new group in ALA and it was really great to hear about their beginnings. Heather Thompson (Cook Memorial Public Library) and Soraya Silverman (Las Vegas Clark County Library) very kindly demonstrated a multitude of amazing STEM projects and products. Soraya showed us technology products such as Makey Makey, Ozobots and littleBits. She gave us great ideas, like giving groups of kids challenges with Makey Makey such as making life size Operation or using water cups as piano keys. She provides 4 weeks of workshops per quarter at her library, each focused on a specific tool. The workshops begin with introductions to the tool, then move into challenges to solve and end with free experimentation.
Heather showed us a bunch of non-tech projects including tin foil boats, balancing the weight in cups dangling from a hanger, and coding your friend. The “code your friend” idea was particularly intriguing to me. Basically a team of two kids works together to build a specific structure from cups. The catch is that one kid has to direct the other using very specific directions like you’d use when coding with a computer. Heather recommended Tinkersmith and the STEM in Libraries Facebook page for more ideas.
STEAM is really big in my library right now. It was so incredibly helpful to gain so many new ideas, as well as contacts willing to help me with our STEAM lab! Thank you to all of the presenters for your insight and kind resource sharing too.