Welcome! I'm so delighted to be here with you today to moderate our first panel on learning
and making and tinkering. They're tinkering their chairs.
What a great topic to start today. I'm Joan from C N I, a joint program of the research
of libraries. I'm going to provide a brief introduction and turn things over to our panelists
to make remarks and then we'll open it up for discussion.
Participation learning, what's that about? For me, it emphasizes two important aspects
of the learning process which many educational researchers say leads to deeper learning.
They are first, active learning, doing, not just passively absorbing the content of a
subject and second, the notion that learning is a social process. It may be a group like
this one engaged in solving problems together or it may be a person in your community using
library facilities and technologies to hold a video conference with someone from the state
environmental agency. Some public libraries have benefits from IMLS
and McAuthor foundation funding to develop learning labs as Robin mentioned. You can
see the developing skills with new technologies is an integral part of these programs. These
students are engaging in active, social learning activities. This fits with the library ethos
to providing equipment to anyone in the community and helps level the playing field in terms
of barrier to access in technology due to economic factors.
Today some of our presenters will going to describe talking about 3 D printers and other
technologies. Some artists are using this to produce art like this visual presentation.
One of my favorite new examples. The profession will benefit from library in
schools like Syracuse that offers studio environments where students are encouraged to expect the
unexpected, collaborate, be inspired by adversity and color outside the lines.
Some libraries create active learning environments uniquely suited to their mission situation
the student start up exchange at Georgia Tech. Note the clear connection they make with library
resources, encouraging students to use it for market and patent research and multimedia
development. Recently, I absorbed this workship. It's an
open source intended for people building interactive projects and some of the things included in
maker spaces. When your user community consists of children,
teens, college students, adults of working age or seniors of all of these, we are all
creating our digital futures and libraries have a strong role to play.
Our panelist this morning are Bill Derry from the Westport library. Todd Colegrove, and
Laura Damon. They'll speak in this order and when all of them have furnished, we'll begin
some discussion and Q and A. Bill, over to you.
>> I'm Bill from the Westport library and I'm going to give a short presentation on
some of the highlights of transformative with our journey with the maker space of the Westport
library. It began in April 2012 with our first successful maker fair. And we opened
up a 20 foot by 16 foot symbol which is making in the library which is really a symbol because
it happens everywhere in the library and not just in the space. It's moving from a place
of consumption to a place of production. To a place where individuals are borrowing things
to a place where tingers and makers can come together and share and derive and connect.
We have started with the pipe structure. It started with one donated 3 D printers and
then it started with donated power tools and asking the community to come on in and build
two airplanes which are made out of wood and now hang from the wall in our library. It
was talking about the flight of aviation in the new environment.
Then over a year later, we received the IMLS award and expanded the maker space designed
thinking center. It was like a museum piece and going too be participatory. We talk about
failure. It didn't really work out that way. What happened is it had two high of a barrier
to achieve early engagement. That's what we learned. If it's too high of a barrier, who
wants to spend the time learning about it so we modified the center thinking and changed
name of our making space. We are now the learning and discovery center which encompasses the
maker space. The design thinking center is media production software, career software
and our previous manager of public services is now the titled the manager of changing
job titles can change expectations. Now recently we had our fourth mini-maker fair.
The first one we thought 800 would show up, 2 thousand showed up. We're up to 6500 people
and we co produce this with a sponsor who was on the board of education, came to us
one day and said, could I put I'd like to did a maker fair and use a room in your library
and we said no. We said we want to co produce it with you and you can use the whole library.
It's history now. He raises the money to make this happen. So
we get all of the support through our partner. It costs about $25,000 to put this maker fair
on at this point and it's one of our needs assessments and it's a mandate to provide
ongoing making and learning in the library. The beauty is in school systems now participate.
Our makers and residence program brought in so many new audiences. Each month we had a
different maker as part of the IMLS grant and it brought in teens and seniors and entrepreneurs
and more. Almost all of them have returned to do nor workshops. The last one of the list
is a refinery. Two people run an accelerator in which women come and they spend ten weeks,
half day workshops looking at social media, angel investing, fund raising, board development,
marketing skills, things they need and then they end with a shark tank event. Our library
staff attends all of these and provides resources including maker groups.
Expanding your audience to national and international levels increases local awareness and local
financial support. So when our director and I went to Russia to teach the makers movement
to 50 libraries, we ended up with a lot of visitations from other countries and we also
ended up with an intern from Malaysia who was an IT director.
One of the best outcomes an increase understanding of the value of intergenerational. Bradly
made a and John 88, made a trumpet and they worked together. In the middle, we had an
83 year old and his granddaughter being trained by a 12 year old Miles. It's more about experience
and knowledge than it is about degrees and awards. It's a flat world.
We presented a week long three credit maker and learning course at southern Connecticut
state University. I thought I had concrete around my brain and through the week, it was
crumbled and I could think again. Play causes the ability to think about, to think in new
ways. Our library has become an ink batter. Now, he's bringing back two principles and
four teaches for a group and a tour and a little bit of a workshop.
On Tuesday, we middle school and six teachers who are doing a three hour workshop. Every
week, we have one or two schools involved. We added robots. Oh my God! Robot! They have
created a flurry of activity. This runs on a proprietary software. We trained over 600
people on these robots. Our Ted X, we have done three in an IMLS series.
Within on change, economic development and imagination. I'm telling you they provide
opportunities for communities to come together like nothing else. It's an opportunity for
local people to craft that 18 minute story with a big idea worth sharing. It's an intense
learning experience produced by our own community. Partnerships can be created by your makers.
Last, this is my closing slides. This would be an unusual site in our library if you know
our demographics, a group of Muslims engaged in an activity. I was surprised when I walked
in. The lady behind the printer worked with the blind every week. She produces items in
books or math concepts for the blind. This group, the girl in red at the back is blind
and she was a former student, brought a group with her with Islamic material to try to convert
some of it into 3 D printed material. So wrapping up, next week with have our final
evaluation of the grant and we're doing, you know, the typical pre post survey looking
at our attitudes but I think it's the stories of transformation we have corrected that are
more important and that really, speak to the value of participation learning in the library.
Thank you! >> Wow! I mean, that's thrilling, actually,
if I could borrow the clicker? I wanted to just introduce myself quickly. Of course,
I'm Todd coal earlier in the keynote, it talked about broad national impact and it hadn't
occurred to me before but that is the business of libraries, isn't it?
We are all about broad national impact but on a very individualized local, one person
at a time level. I'm honored to be here working with you guys even if it seems like I may
be preaching to the choir. So what we have here, you may have seen this
info graphic or a piece of it from falcon. It's really their business is selling furniture
about active learning but this is part of the reality that we're dealing with, right?
Something we have all known and feared a bit. The long story short, and I can say this to
someone who has taught for many years in the class room, not a lot of learning goes on
in the class room. We have to get outside of it. It's reflected in this info graphic.
Ten percent of what we read, we might remember. 20 percent of what we hear. And then we
get into the passive learning into the active learning and we're talking about 70 percent
of what they do and write. And 90 percent of what they do, that becomes part of them.
What we need to be doing is actively supporting that and this is what it looks like in the
library or my library where you have some scary organic chemistry going on. Similar
sorts of higher order math. People are getting it out of their head and actively putting
it on the wall in a community way where they can talk to each other and learning and making
it real. This is something that your average class room professional or instructor doesn't
see. This is what actual learning looks like and it's kind of messy.
Another part of that where it crosses over into some of this new making equipment, 3
D printing is an example. This is a student who just graduated this last year in bio technology,
fascinated with a particular type of DNA. If you're following any of the stories where
they have been grafting in squid that flour green, sketchy stuff, right?
But it's something that fascinated this kid so much so that this biologist taught himself
using library resources how to crosswalk a protein data base into an STL file. It took
him two months and he owns that now. That's part of him in a way you can't take away.
This is the little snip it in the middle is the active bit. The part around the outside
that looks like a beer can is just designed to keep water from tearing it apart.
Now, I know something that I wanted to learn. Over included chemical models. This is some
of the first uses. I had a faculty member say, after three years of working with this
model on the two dimensional screen in a three dimensional modeling software, within 30
seconds of handling the physical print out and turning it over, he realized something
he would have never been able to do on the two dimensional computer screen. He realize
the path was not going to work. He also realized a better direction he could tinker with. In
his estimation, he shaved five years off of his research.
Student on the right, a national merit scholar who created we had hand held 3 D scanners
promptly checked it out and she's been working with the Smithsonian and they have been looking
at fossils in the dessert. Looking. Other parts you see on the table. My favorite
part may not be the milk duds and the monster sticks, they have this
coming together and going away in the next half hour. It's this sort of thing that happens.
In fact, I did say laser cutter. We have one in the middle of the library where we're actively
this has become, easily the most heavily used technology outside of the white boards in
the library where folks are taking that learning to another level.
Take in mind we're a science and engineering library. What happens is folks will learn
about something in class but they need to make it real so it can become part of themselves.
The same thing with the 3 D printer, they cross over the barrier where it's not just
a theoretical discussion in class but a pragmatic, I'm learning this on the white board but now
I need to look at it and see the eight it rations that get it right. That's exactly
the same thing we see happening. This is the fundamental part because when
these kids actually care about it, they are engaged in a way that you can't buy and when
they are engaged, they are not only learning but creating this. We have this wealth of
innovation that's just coming out of the space. There are connects and Lego parts strewn across
the academic library. This, we're not all clear but right out of the maker space play
book, this is what we're all about. The reason we got maker space in the library is to get
them to a deeper and more engaged level. When we do that, learning can happen that cannot
otherwise happen. Bill, you had mention sometimes there can
be too high of a threshold to get in. Let me tell you a quick story about a student
who was in that case. You'll all recognize maky maky
and the approaching play. They made the mistake of talking with one of the libraries in library
and before you now it, he had checked out a maky maky kit. He came back a week later,
unbeknownst to us and checked out the inventor kit and that came back 3 or 4 weeks later
and returned that and checked out the pie and the soldering quit kits and the next semester,
I heard about this guy in engineering about this amazing kid who had mad skills about
programming and soldering and he hired him in his lab.
And in fact, this is how he taught himself using library resources with just a mod come
of help from the library. We find out what you're interested many and feed that passion.
He's now about to graduate and you can see the robotics. One of his senior projects is
the arm he built and just as a reminder to all of us in the University, if you are in
the lab, this is our mission. There's three legs that form everything that we're doing.
It's about learning, discovery and the most important piece that sometimes we forget in
the library, is that out reach mission where you're working with a maker fairs, hack a
thons, start up weekend events and so on. We'll go to the last slide and I'll transition
to my colleague.
>> All right good morning everyone. My name is Laura and I'm here in my capacity. This
is mainly a web based project at this point. It's a story telling platform. We highlight
the ways that libraries can support the work of fine and creative artist through interviews
and future articles about art making that happens in libraries.
Okay, so I just wanted to highlight a couple of elements of learning that I think are particularly
applicable to library spaces. It provides an opportunity for creativity which you'll
see more of in a minute and opportunity for co learning so students and teachers are teaching
and learning together. There's motivation and engagement happening
through play. The things they're learning are relevant to their interests and identities
and we're providing a learning eco system where people make connections and think critically
about themselves and their community and their world.
All right, so the examples that I'm going to share today since the ink baiter project
is a story telling platform. These are stories we have learned about opportunities. These
examples are not site specific so they're not related to a permanent maker space or
learning lab necessarily. They promote lifelong learning.
Each of them highlights a trend that the project has seen, developing over the last couple
of years in library programming. They are the result of careful and thoughtful collaboration
and they're not necessarily tied to technology although they can be.
The first example I want to share is the flex-sis program. This is at walker center in Minneapolis.
It's a collaboration with the art centers librarian and an artist who is in the process
of developing a series of workshops to talk about flex sis work called art expanded. The
library opened the house to this group and this grew to a regular consistent partnership
where the library could provide important historical context and meaning to ground the
hands on workshops that the artists were leading. It's difficult to explain to people but the
historical documents from the library, the catalogs and publications plus the hands on
art making component provided attendees with a well rounded investigation of the exhibition
and of the flexes movement itself. The trend we're seeing here's is meaningful and sustainable
library and artist partnerships. Here we have a piece. It's a still from an
animation that was produced as part of the interactive art trail at the Eden bureau center
library in Scotland. Through this program students were invited into the library to
investigate different collections in the library and then to create new works of art based
on research in those collections. The new art works were then displayed around
the library to form an interactive art trail where creative and visual interpretations
of the library holdings were available for any library visitor to view. The term we're
seeing here is self directed research and learning on the part of the design students.
This is a really cool brand new program. It's not even, hasn't quite gotten off of the ground
yet in the UK. We're going to be futurist this on the site later in the summer but it's
called library take over. It's a different sort of program from making or hands on art
studio type of programs. The library take over groups teams of middle and high school
students with professional theatre artists and arts administrators. Working in these
teams students and mentors will brainstorm, plan, and facilitate large scale creative
programs such as concerts, performances, poetry slams, that will take place in library branches.
So it's a different sort of output but there's obviously lots of hands on learning happening
and a lot of real world application plus these students are able to network with professionals
in possible career fields for them in the future. So the trend that we're seeing here
is professional development for youth. Okay. So this program here, let's get lost
finding inspiration in the library stacks is a program that happens through the bubbler
public program. It's Madison's maker and arts programming suite. So many libraries of course,
host writers groups and even writing workshops but I'm familiarly drawn to this one which
is lead by poet Rita for bubbler. They tie it directly to the library where the workshop
is taking place. So attendees get training on how to use the library in a unique and
special way as inspiration to a new creative project and they arm themselves with a new
creative tool. So they have a new exciting lens through which to view any library they
visit in the future. And the trend we're seeing here is that this
is a program tied closely to library collections, not just the library as a hosting space. And
that is that. >> I know many of the panels today won't be
using power points but we thought you really needed to see examples of the kinds of programs
and projects that are out there. I hope you enjoy that. So now we're going to open it
up for discussion, questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand and someone
will bring you a mic. We need you to use the mic since this is a web cast.
Please state your name and your affiliation if you have one and ask your question. Who's
ready? If you're directing it toward a specific individual, please mention that, otherwise
any or all of our panel list rel respond. >> Impressive, wonderful stuff. It makes me
smile a lot. I am just notices this is focused on what can happen in a library. I'm wondering
if we can talking about how these kinds of participation activities, how the library
can support that in the place where it's occurring, in the class room, in the K 12, in the community
elsewhere, in the art around the street, et cetera.
>> Often we go out to schools and we are, as I said, we're kind of incubators for maker
spaces in schools so we bring some of our kits and we go out and look at what they're
doing in the school and suggest STEM activities and creative drama that go along with STEM
to me. So this group that's coming from New York, we already went to their space first.
Now they're coming back. We have gone to senior centers. We're going, part of our grant obligation
for our robots is to go to areas outside of Westport which may not be able to afford these
robots so we're going into bridge port to the boys and girls club to teach programming
and get them excited about the robots. We're hoping at our library, but it's too
far away for some of them to get there. The maker fair, we have a huge tent outside so
it's like, outside of our library, but we interact with so many people who through the
year, are not from our library. Like, for the national maker fair coming up,
we're part of the state maker we created our own collaborative so we have a Google hang
out we talk to everybody. The six other maker spaces in Connecticut. We are connected to
them. They are not library maker spaces. We see ourself as different but boy do we need
those maker spaces for teachers and they come in the library and they're not regular library
users but they are now. >> And I would have to jump in and say, you're
absolutely right! The learning happens where our customers are, where the people are engaged
with this stuff and that's why many of the examples that you saw were pictures of things
in the library where I caught them in the library caught them as if it's a bad thing
but the reality is, that's why we have lend able technologies. That's why you can check
it out or a $25,000 hand held scanner. That's because there's an explicit understanding
is you need to take it where you're working to make it real.
I want to mention, Laura, you mentioned a powerful word. One thing we see more of, this
co working, co learning space and in our communities, they often use the space of the library as
a place to co learn but that doesn't mean that's the only place where it happens. In
fact, I have the warped perception is the library is wherever our customers are. It
has very little to do with the physical building itself. It just happens to be that's where
we check things in and out. >> One thing we didn't really talk about is
digital resources and sort of meeting our customers where they are and often that's
online and I think that's another thing to consider as well.
>> I'm Mary, University of Denver and I'm interested in how, or what are some of the
challenges that you've seen or think are out there when it becomes to evaluating the effectiveness
of your work. >> That is a definite challenge. Especially
because this survey is going to do the typical counting and we're going to have a pre and
post. We have 15 videos on transformation we put up on the website. We think the stories,
they just take too long. How do you pass all of the stories along unless you record them
in some way. That's one way we have effective understanding of the change that's taking
place. >> And I would jump in and say from the academic
library standpoint, one of the biggest challenges we have right out of the gate is just defining
what the metrics are. We get so hung up in some of our traditional metrics, we ignore
the giant elephant but the reality is, higher Ed is not around the assumption that all learning
takes place in the class room. So it's, it's puzzling to our upper administrators
that were asked, wanting to explore learning in spaces outside of the class room and we
have to in fact, tap dance through a mine field to avoid irritating peoples. Right now,
we have anecdotal measures, that we see in the folks that are learning the stuff and
using our resources in the library, the larger problem is they get hired into jobs before
they even graduated because they are so head and shoulders above their peers. That's not
the kind of metric you want to be reported to your provost but it is something that points
us in the direction. >> I'd like to comment I think we need to
think very broadly about assessment here and it isn't just about the numbers although having
the striking number of people coming to a public library sponsored in broader maker
fairs is certainly of interest and it's of interest how many of them come back to the
library to use other resources as well as the maker space but I would say turn anecdotes
into case studies and do it more systemically. So think about a qualitative research and
do a, you know, a genuine study, capturing voices and interviews and get that data.
There's some things, for example, in a survey you'll ask various questions but there's some
things that we have heard you can't anticipate. You can't state that one of your goals for
your maker space is to have someone say five years on his research project. But yet, it's
extremely important to report a finding like that. So we need to think very broadly about
how we do assessment. >> If I may, I would jump in and say this
sounds like a job for any of the ARLs that happen to be in the room. University of Nevada
is not an ARL. We have a total of four libraries in my library and two more para professional
staff and about 18 student workers. We have all we can handle just keeping things rolling.
But what needs doing is the case studies to actually flush it out and tell the story in
a larger way. >> Susan, Benton with the urban libraries
council. Great presentations and I have two questions for you. One, how have you gone
about getting your staff transitioning to being very active in this activity? So just
wanted to hear about any good ideas that you have on that or how people inside the library
are coming into making that transition from being more passive to active? And the second
one is, boy, this is so exciting and I can't imagine any local leader both in the government
side as well as the business side that wouldn't be excited about the kind of innovation that's
occurring through the library and how are you connecting with your local leaders?
>> I'd like to jump on that one, actually. How do we get staff active? I was named as
the head of our library about five years ago. It was a very traditional library. The phrase
I used and my staff and student workers use is going under the bus. It's just a firm,
you're the sponsor and you want to see it happen so you need to firmly support it which
is not to back up and say, I'm going to enable you to give me all of the reasons why you
can't give me a 3 D printing job, and say, you know, it's hard and let's go under the
bus and figure it out. In my case, shame works really well. So what I have is, again, you
have 18 student workers and they know how to do this and they're kids, right? I'm sure
you can figure out how to do this. You're a very highly trained person, I say that tongue
and cheek, it doesn't have to be said but even unsaid, it's a powerful motivator.
The other part is just in holding that expectation, that our job in the library is not to keep
this service desk comfortable and warm. Our job is actively mixing around. You need too
be ejecting enthusiasm because to the extent we can connect the members of our community
to the library resources they need, we're doing the work we need to be doing. Again,
it's not rocket science. If you get a bunch of bright people in the
area and you bounce them off one another and tool them off of resources, they start innovating
and creating things. In fact, this past month, my library was named the most innovative space
of the of the western region in direct recognition they have been seeing more jobs, more start
ups, more intellectual property, more new ideas coming out of that space than anything
across the entire region. It's like, you know, I'm not going to get
in trouble for that, am I? This is our job. This is what we should be doing.
>> In terms of training staff, that is not easy. But we dug in right away, there was
interest in the idea of making and we had Westport reeds which was an Amelia book and
we talked about flying airplanes and looking at how good they look and nothing says things
are I think changing than having a group of librarians doing soldering so we pulled out
the soldering irons and got the LED lights. We discussed this is kind of a foundation
kind of an operation for making and they loved it!
Now, we're in our second year and through the makers in residence and through the workshops,
so many staff members have understood it better by watching things happen and change. We have
four who are totally immersed in this. Our team library is working so many maker programs
and our digital manager of digital experience, manages the robots. He's an interesting person.
He came from the world wrestle foundation. He's got a mixed bag but as people get added
to the staff and as people get changed by STEM activities, they start doing it. It's
a slow process. >> I would also say just see if there's a
way that you can promote participation learning for your staff not just for your patrons so
all of these things we have been talking about, creativity, co learning, motivation and engagement,
relevant to their interest and their identities, the more you can promote that to your staff,
the more they'll get excited and want to do the same for their patrons.
>> And I think, a fundamental fear I have seen, the more reluctant they are to change,
the more they're worried that high tech is making them irrelevant. To the extent you
can bridge that gap, just have a 3 D modeling workshop using tinker cat online. Once they
can do it, it's like, holy heck. What I find again and again, your most powerful
allies start as your harshist critics. >> Environmental play.
>> We played play to our monthly reports as a category we need to look at in our work.
What did we do that is playful and that was just a way for us to focus on the fact that
we do have it but we don't usually call it play and maybe we need to make room for it.
>> That's really interesting. Next? >> Katherine, I'm curious, sold that the thinks
that you're doing are absolutely fantastic and they match a lot of the other things I
have heard about, maker space and experiments, kind of the case study approach and what I
worry about is resources because resources are always scant and you know, grant resources
can only take so many so far. How do we start to incorporate this more systemically into
libraries and library partnerships and do you have any advice for groups that might
not have grant funding for this. How do you make this a case for finding money in the
budget? >> I know rotary clubs, they love making in
libraries and they have been very supportive in our library, they gave us our first 3 D
printer so community organizations like that could support, especially, like our 3 D printer
goes out. You mentioned David in the community, we go to all kinds of festivals so we were
at the blues, views and BBQ festival. It is partnerships and finding way to get
that one thing funded. We're also looking at lots of inexpensive ways. A lot of libraries
are doing $30 science activities and they're doing experiments and kids get white coats
and dress up as scientists during that program so I think there's less expensive ways to
get into the game and there are partners you can get that will help support some of the
more expensive things that you might want. >> And I couldn't agree more. The bulk of
all of the making stuff, making and STEM out reach can happen for little to no dollars,
period. One of the things we tend too over look is how much more effective and engaged
staff, an engaged community is. The dirty little secret in my library's case, we grew
the use of that facility space by over 1000 percent over the course of five years. We
didn't have this was at the time that we were when the governor we were actually cutting
entire programs and laying off tennier faculty and making national news but there wasn't
a budget. We got rid of the up to the automated retrieval system without any additional staff
and over the course of the last five years, we have gained one half of one staff position
but I would say, we're still far more engaged. I was looking at a story not a story but a
research study in the last week. It turns out, if you survey all of the traditional
organizational structures, one out of five employees is engaged. In terms of these new
activities, you have 80 percent of capacity going wasted. You say, we need more staff
and more bureaucracy to make it happen when really what you need is to incorporate play
in your monthly reports. Get them engaged in what we're doing. Beyond that, once we
have an engaged community in your staff, that community includes the members that come into
the libraries because they start helping one another too.
One other thing I want to mention is shared resources. So my library system is very small.
My day job is assistant districter for a very small rural library in Wisconsin. We have
seven libraries in our system. They applied for an LSTA grant to get a number of maker
tools that each library can reserve and borrow to facilitate programs there.
We use those things like crazy. You know, we just I have a bunch of I pad minis, where
we're doing stop motion, animation workshops with school groups. Once you can demonstrate
your community is passionate about something like that, I think it really helps lay the
foundation for being able to make the ask to other sponsors and partners.
>> I would also comment that in many programs that I'm aware of that work with new technologies,
they're sometimes seen by administrators or other library staff as being the extra things
or the non essential things and so I think part of it is a reorientation of whether this
is a core service that is a mainstream part of your program, which then leads to reallocation
of resources. So many of the programs, not specifically
maker space that I'm familiar with, do end up being reallocation of existing library
resources because so few places are getting new money these days.
>> I would chime in to say that's exactly what happened in our case. In fact, we have
just over the course of the last year, almost all of what we have added has been funded
directly by the vice president of the research and innovation office. Our library doesn't
have funds but we have been receiving large injections of capitol from a place that not
traditionally giving money to the libraries. >> One thing that happened to us too is number
one, to demonstrate sustainable. We wanted to include a line item in our budget, something
dealing with the maker space because for two years, there was nothing in there. We were
running on IMLS, running on donations so a huge amount, $40,000 was put into a line item
that now supports but it's now in the budget, the yearly budget. And when we brought it
to the board of finance, they were already so aware of the maker space and what it was
accomplishing in the community they didn't estate. So I think it builds on its own success,
if the communicants it. >> I'm going to take the prerogative of the
chair to ask one final question and that is, what do you recommend to IMLS for specific
funding priorities in participation learning so that projects will have broad impact and
not just have a beneficial affect on your own local situation. I welcome, Laura, we
can start with you. >> Oh (laughing). Sure, so I think, what I
would love to see and there might be a version of this already but a train the trainers sort
of program. Whether that's through library systems or associations but something and
it could be in person or online. But something that has an inter disciplinary component where
we're learning about participation learning that's happening not just in libraries but
also museums, schools, learning labs and maker spaces that are not tied to a library, technology
camps, art centers, things like that. Really getting that cross pollination happening.
I think that can also help with future partnerships and collaborations as well. And something
where we're able to see tangible examples whether that's tours or actually attending
programs or actually participating ourselves in workshops where we're not just hearing
about them but we're actually seeing them in person and participating ourselves. Possibly
with a liaison component so you train the trainers and then they work with their system
or association after that. >> Thanks Laura, Todd?
>> I would almost, well, number one, I want to applaud the support that the IMLS has done
over the last several years in terms of directing enabling more STEM learning and out reach.
As a scientist myself, we need more scientists and engineers. I would personally like to
see an explicit acknowledgment with the fact we're dealing with steam if what we want is
active learning. We want the engagement of art right in the middle of the scientists
and engineers. If you need an argument, do a quick Google of the you'll find a substantial
percentage. If we're really aspiring to support the higher learning we need to incorporate
that. The other thing I would encourage is the active
learning that is happening in our spaces whether academic library, public library, school library,
what is happening there when they're rapidly prototyping and it rating and creating a lot
of things, particularly when there's artist and scientists, is you're innovating. You
are now creating new ideas and things that never existed before. I would really suggest
to the extent we can encourage fostering programs that will support the innovation and the entrepreneurship
that's a natural outcome of this learning in those spaces, I think would be a real win
for the local and national economies. >> Well, I have too many so I'm going to mention
one. Having been a teacher for 35 years in drama, integration arts and library supervisor
and then moving to a public library, I realize there's two kinds of oxygen that are breathed
in each one. The schools are closed systems for so many
reasons and libraries are open systems. I think that maybe if there was an initiative
to allow schools to be the primary applicants and let them create the relationships with
the partners rather than the other way around, it might be a way, because I think they're
on the verge of change. I think things are happening that are both forcing it and I think
it could happen if schools were making these applications for partnerships that would involve
participation learning. >> Thank you so much for your thoughts. I
know all of our speakers will be here through lunch and through the afternoon so if you
have additional questions and I know you do, I hope you will feel free to approach them
and ask them individually. I hope you will join me in thanking our terrific
panelists for getting us off to a great start.