Makerboxes: no space required

Thursday, March 13 10:45 - noon

(Presenters were from a variety of Illinois libraries)

Ridgeway Burns

Amber Creger

Ann Marie Scandura

Karen Wickman

I wanted to see this program because we are going to start on a program in a box project and I was curious to see what you could do with these Makerboxes. The boxes circulated within several libraries in Illinois and were ideal for libraries who did not have space for a makerspace or were interested in makerspaces but wished to test them out.

One of the presenters said that the boxes were about $800 each - I’m going to give a brief overview of what was in the boxes:

3D box - cardboard construction kit

Electronics Box - Little Bits starter kits (5 per box), 15 Snap Circuits by Elenco (this company gave them 50% off - maybe a resource for Wess?) SparkFun (donated $3000 worth of supplies), Arduino inventors kit, lilypad Arduino kit - cool fabric circuits. For a teen program they created little jawa dolls with light up eyes! Very cool!  www.highlowtech.org for project ideas.

Music Box - mini Korg keyboard, egg shaker set, Korg synthesizer, Otamatone (weird Japanese instrument - showed Youtube of some kid doing the Game of Thrones theme song - look it up) Dolphin ukelele. Presenter said in retrospect she would also add speakers.

Craft Box - sewing machine, zzizix (?) machine - makes die cuts easier than Ellison, color pencils, glue, colored paper

STEM box - Crazy Contraptions, Ping pong ball launcher

Some projects created with the boxes -

Frankenzombies - recycled stuffed animals, led lights, low wattage glue guns

Marble Mazes - pegboard, paper tubes, levers

Overall, not very helpful for our Program in a Kit project, but gave me some ideas for possible maker program opportunities.