Creative Classes in the New Library

Our new library spaces have been constantly in demand and in use since we reopened at the beginning of the school year after last year's fourth quarter and summer under construction.  We have three spaces that we reserve for classes--the library proper, or Reading Room; the Danielson Room, which is a dedicated classroom with walls and projectors and whiteboards; and the Carlson Commons, which is the large staircase with stadium seating connecting the library on the second floor with the science wing on the first floor.

The social studies classes are our best customers when it comes to using the library, and the department's teachers have come up with some very creative ways to use the new spaces.

Every year, the Social Psychology class hosts a Baby Day.  Teachers and staff are invited to participate with their children (ages infant to four years) and the students conduct little experiments to test developmental abilities.  The new library is an open, comfortable space for this adorable activity.

The school gymnasium flooded this winter, so the Robotics Club, which normally practices in that space, took over the library on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons during their build season.  The light-weight furniture, a key feature of the new design, was easily wheeled out of the way so the Robotics team could set up a large wooden frame and practice having their robot toss a big red ball through it.  Robots in the library are fun.    

The Ancient Worlds class is a regular in the library, since the Danielson Room is larger and has more technology than their regular classroom.  One memorable day, however, they took to the Reading Room, the better to practice Greco-Roman battle techniques.  They (safely) used yardsticks as swords, coat hangers and rulers as bows and arrows, chairs as horses and chariots, and ottomans as bridges.  It was a more rambunctious class than we usually get in the library, but it was fun to watch the students demonstrate Spartan defenses and re-enact the Battle of Thermapylae. 

Two sections of sophomore U.S. history classes used the library Reading Room and Danielson Room for project presentations.  The sophomore history paper is a milestone at our school, and one particular teacher gave the quarter-long research assignment the attention and respect it deserves.  Parents of students in the class brought food (including a chocolate cake with the words "Congratulations on Finishing Research Papers!" written on it in pink frosting) and served as audience members, as did ninth grade history students.  Students sat at tables and gave brief overviews of their projects (which ranged from "The Virulent Manhood of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr." to "Flappers:  The New Feminists" to "Mental Institutions and Muckraking") to their attentive audiences.

On the last day of classes before Spring Break, we organized a relay race scavenger hunt for the ninth grade World Cultures/Wold History classes.  Students had to follow directions to find library materials using any available resource (including librarians!).  Students could work together in small groups, but only one student from each group could get up from their table at a time.  It was another rowdy activity with a fair amount of running and giggling and racing, but it was helpful to gage how proficient our students are in accessing the library catalog, understanding the Dewey Decimal system, and being able to find not just books about their topic but the relevant information within those books.  Finding books to read for fun over break was part of the challenge, too.

We also purchased a bound edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, complete with a magnifying glass so you can actually read the entries!  We're very proud of it and have been encouraging students to flip through it as much as possible.

Since the library also houses the tech center, we used the space to collect student laptops for repairs over Spring Break.  The collection worked well; we managed to set up the library space for laptop intake and still leave some room for classes as well.  With school out for two weeks for break, the library has become laptop central, tables covered with laptops and their matching new parts waiting to be repaired.

All in all, we're very pleased with how our new library is being used and enjoyed by our students and teachers.  

We have a lot of fun with it, too.  :)

Sean, Lizz, and students convert Mardi Gras beads into jump ropes after
the Parent Association-sponsored "Winter Doldrums Mardi Gras Day." 

 

Winter Break Library Gifts

We usually try to do a new order of fiction books before Winter Break, the better to promote recreational reading over the two weeks that the students (and teachers) have off from school.  This year was no exception, but, on a whim, we decided to do things a bit differently...

As Lizz and I were going through our new book order, pulling books out of the box and oohing and aahing over them, we found ourselves saying things like, "You know who would love this book?  So-and-so!" or "We should make sure so-and-so gets this book, because I know she really loved the prequel."

Our December fiction book order.

And so was born the idea to surprise students with a new book, already checked out and ready to go, to take home over Winter Break.

Then we realized we had a bunch of wrapping paper left over from an annual school-wide holiday giving project that we do, and we decided it would be much more fun to present students with a wrapped book, very much in the spirit of the holidays, and way more fun.

We emailed students (and a few teachers) to inform then that there was a surprise Winter Break gift waiting for them in the library, and stacked our wrapped books high so that others would inquire and ask for their own specially-selected Winter Break book.  Many students did so, and the kids who we emailed more often than not received their books with squeals of excitement and gratitude which, of course, made it all the more fun and rewarding.

Because everyone likes a surprise gift every now and then.  Happy holidays!

Books selected for specific students and teacher, all wrapped in pretty paper.

Banana Piano

We made a banana piano.  Just because.

Students are amazed and impressed.

Sean's got the banana piano blues.

We used a Makey Makey and, you know, some bananas.  :)

Here's a YouTube video that shows you how easy (and fun) this really is: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P91xcYScrMs

Banana piano!

3D Print Your Heart Out

We have a new library, and we have a new toy to go with it:  a 3D printer!

(A 3D printer, for those of you not in the know, prints objects in three dimensions.  It prints using a plastic filament that comes in spools; the plastic melts and is reformed into objects that you create using online software like Google Sketchup or Blender.)

Lizz attended a Maker's Space workshop last spring, and since then, a 3D printer has been high on our list of Things We Want.  When the new library opened, we did some online price comparisons and discussed the possibility of the purchase with our school director.  We were soon allowed to get a 3D printer--so long as the first thing we printed was a cat.

No problem.

We selected the Solidoodle 3D printer, 3rd generation, based in part on the recommendation of our summer student worker, who has one of his own and boasted of the ease with which he could make iPhone cases and keychains for his friends.  The Solidoodle is bare-bones and industrial-looking, but it's affordable and we liked how clearly you could see the way it was put together and the way it worked.  We ordered two 50-foot spools of plastic filament, one black and one white.

We were very excited when it arrived in the mail.

Solidoodle:  Made in Brooklyn, NYC

Isn't it beautiful?

Sean knows how to use instructions.

We tried it out immediately.  It took some tinkering, and some 3D printer fails, but eventually we got our first object (the director's requested cat) printing away.  Lizz did some research and realized hairspray could help the plastic stick to the base; eventually we raised the temperature of the bed for even more successful printing, sans hairspray.

The spool of plastic filament attaches to the back of the printer; the extruder pulls the filament, heats it to melting point, and squeezes it out again (kind of like a toothpaste tube) to build layers of plastic that eventually become the final product.  The 3D printers is connected to a laptop with software the directs the printer's movements.  The software shows the number of total layers, the number of layers currently built, and an estimation for how long the print job will take.  The heat bed is 8 inches by 8 inches; most of our 3D objects take between two and five hours to complete.

The base of the Upper School Director's plastic cat.

When we have the 3D printer going, students will stop and watch it for minutes on end.  It's been the showcase of library open houses, prospective student tours, conferences, and curriculum night.  We've mostly printed goofy objects using files found in free galleries online, but we've had a few students print original objects as well.  That's how we've promoted the 3D printer:  Anyone who designs an original object can print it.

Students minds are blown as Sean demos the 3D printer.

A student watches an original design take shape.

It's a t-rex head mounted like a wall trophy.

We have a few classes express interest for future lessons as well, with the Video Game Design and Development class planning to print the digital characters they're currently designing for their video games.  Curriculum connections are especially obvious with the science (3D models of molecules and body parts) and art (3D models of sculpture and ceramics) departments.

We have great plans for the 3D printer.

3D octopus fail; the base came unattached from the heat bed, causing the plastic
to spill all over the place before we finally noticed and killed the print job.

A successfully completed 3D octopus waves "hello."

    

Our First Library Author Visit

A few weeks ago, we got an email from Addendum Books in St. Paul.  They were looking for a school to host a visiting young adult fantasy author, and were we interested?

Yes.  Yes, we were very interested.

We were also immediately impressed with Addendum Books, which we hadn't heard of (they've been in business about a year) but which seemed to be attracting some very high-profile authors:  Holly Black, Jay Asher, Libba Bray, Patrick Ness, Lois Lowry, and many others.  What's unique about Addendum is that it is a young adult bookstore--not a bookstore with a young adult section, not a children's bookstore that carries some young adult titles, but a bookstore (albeit a small one) devoted entirely to young adult literature.  For this reason alone, we were instant fans.

Addendum's visiting author this time was Cinda Williams Chima, author of two young adult fantasy series (The Heir Chronicles and The Seven Realms series).  Cinda would give a presentation about her writing and Addendum would provide books for our students to purchase and for Cinda to sign.  After a couple weeks of emailing back and forth, we had thirty students (mostly ninth graders) ready to participate and Cinda scheduled to come over a Thursday mid-morning lunch break.

The big day arrived.  Lizz and Sean and I had made our first visit to Addendum the evening before, to purchase a couple copies of Cinda's books for the library (one of which would be raffled off to one lucky student during the event).  We spent the morning setting up tables and chairs for the event, and we were surprised to find that we were a little nervous!  Eleven o'clock arrived; Cinda was late!  The students were restless.  Lizz tried to keep them focused while I waited at the door for our author to arrive.  Then she did arrive!  And she plunged right into her presentation and everything was wonderful!  Several kids in the audience were genuine fans of Cinda's work; you could see the excitement on their faces.  The kids asked great questions at the conclusion of Cinda's talk (our favorite query was about killing off your characters, a la Game of Thrones).  And even though the lunch break was next (kids love lunch), several stayed after to talk to Cinda, buy books, and get them signed.

Author visit success!  And it looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship with Addendum Books. 

 

We're Back! With a Brand New Library!

Apologies for our long absence!  We've been renovation and rebuilding our space to create a brand new library, and it is beautiful.

The new library reading room; we are particularly fond of the big turquoise chairs.

In case you forgot, here's what the library has looked like for the last thirty years:

The old library:  lots of dark wood and undefined, poorly used space.

In redesigning the library, we wanted to take into account how we were using the space, and how we wanted to use the space.  The library has always been a popular spot, with classes meeting there and students working in the library all day.  But there was no separate space for quiet study.  Our reference desk was a glorified desk, with table shoved against it to make it big enough.  Our offices were separated from the library in another room, making it hard to observe what was going on in the library and hard to get work done without being interrupted by the many people who would wander through during the day.  When multiple classes wanted to use the space, they fought for enough room to work separately, and when they worked together there was little space for anyone else in the library.  Originally built in 1980, our thirty-year-old library was simply not able to fully function as the collaborative, common space that is today's school library.    

So we wanted a library that did reflect how our teachers and students use the library.  Last year, we attempted to create a "classroom" space off to one side by moving and rearranging shelving and tables.  In the new design, two actual classrooms were built into the library for that exact purpose. 

The Danielson Room features a glass wall for light and visibility.

Whiteboards line the walls  of the Danielson Room while our portrait of Abe Lincoln oversees all.

The Danielson Room (above) is a dedicated library classroom.  Two walls of whiteboards, two projectors, and tables and chairs for more than thirty mean we can teach two sections of classes in this space, which is set apart from the rest of the library by a wall of glass doors and windows.  During tutorial blocks, this rooms fills our need for quiet study space. 

The media classroom has whiteboards lining the walls, four projectors, and a large screen TV.

The Melamed Media Studio (above) is a classroom designed for our media arts classes:  computer science (new this year!), digital filmmaking, and music technology.  The classroom is chock-full of projectors, plus an interactive large-screen TV for presentations from teachers and students.

We also have two study rooms for about five students each.  We're not reserving these rooms; they're being used on a "first come first served" basis.  The highlight of these study rooms is the whiteboard paint, so students can literally draw on the walls. 

Our two new study rooms, with the giant projector for the Carlson Commons between.

Our new reference desk is a work of art.  Conceived by the architects who designed the new space, the reference desk is multi-tiered with lots of workspace.  There's a separate desk for the self-checkout station (complete with fancy book drop slot and cart, ooh la la) and our patrons are meant to walk between the two and interact with us anywhere, anytime. 

Helping students and teachers at the new reference desk.

Sean plays with the scanner at the reference desk.

Since we have a 1:1 laptop program for all our students and staff, the library is also home to tech support for those laptops as well as for projectors, smartboards, and other technology that teachers use in the classroom.  The new space has a workroom and a "genius bar" type of desk for our fantastic tech, Gary, to work at and be more present in the space.

Gary at the new tech bar, with the workroom behind him.

Gary repairs a record number of laptops at once.

Gary's son visits and shows us to write on the windows.

We also have a craft table which features, at the moment, our brand new 3D printer (more on that in later post!).  We kept the old library card catalogs and use them to store office supplies (one on each side of the craft table)--and to add just a touch of tradition to our new sleek modern library.

The craft table with the 3D printer; the workroom and our new office are behind.

And what of the books, you ask?  Despite appearances to the contrary, we have all our old books.  But the shelf space is considerably more compacted, on new white metal shelves, with room for the collection to grow.

The new stacks.

There's also a cozy little reading area tucked behind the shelves, with single desks at the end of each shelf for quiet individual study.

This little nook behind the stacks has already been adopted by our Library Club.

The library is on the second floor of this wing of the school; below us, the science wing also underwent a renovation and redesign.  The two physics classrooms moved up to join us in the library wing, and the floors are connected by a common space called the Carlson Commons which features an impressive staircase with stadium seating and a giant projector screen.

The Carlson Commons as seen from the science wing, downstairs below the library.

The staircase has become a popular place for students to work and hang out.

The grand thing about the new library is that our students have been using the space almost exactly as we designed.  The lightweight furniture can be moved and rearranged easily for group work and for after-school events.  Teachers are reserving the Danielson Room on a daily basis, and the study rooms are almost never empty.  The Carlson Commons staircase is the heart of the new space--we've held faculty meetings and grade meetings here, used the space to screen current events like the Nobel Conference, and it's become a popular space for students to work or just hang out.  

We really love our pretty new library.