Five or so links from around the web about new and interesting applications of technology. Today’s links are about QR codes, those 2-dimension barcodes that you see pasted around the place. Though they may not be new or emerging, they are a tenacious technology and one of the few cross-platform ways to provide lightweight, contextual […]
Artefacto Autumn News Roundup
Ever since we announced Artefacto and the Makercart joining forces in June this year, we’ve been busy helping Libraries build the Maker Education community by training and onboarding staff, running and attending events. Here we’ll like to share some of those stories. Most of our work has been focused on helping Redbridge Central Library establish […]
Makercart outreach: Helping libraries connect with local schools
On Sept. 14th 2017 we deliver our first Artefacto/Makercart School workshop at Redbridge Central Library Lab Central. We’ve been working with Redbridge Library for over a year now, first delivering a Creative Coding workshop during London Tech Week 2016 where we made some interactive Scratch games using Makey Makey. Over the last few months […]
User voices in the library – listening to users to create better services
One of the most heartening parts of the recent Libraries Global Excellence Tour was hearing each and every speaker emphasise the importance of putting users front and centre of everything we do in libraries. This includes reimagining existing services and creating brand new ones. In the crushing pressure to collect evidence of impact, to show […]
My Make Education Journey Part II – The Middle Bit
After developing the Makercart and taking it to the CITYLIS event for the first time, I decided to immerse myself fully into the world of Maker Education. I left my full-time job, applied for funding for the Makercart and co-founded an education start-up, which was accepted into an accelerator program. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the start-up […]
My Maker Education Journey: Part I The beginning
My maker education journey started long time but without realising it, I’ve been involved in education for well over a decade delivering hands on and project based learning but had never come across Maker Education until 2014… On a sleepless night towards the end of the 2014 Winter I was watching the late tech news […]
Game Library Camp 2017 – games and gamification in libraries
Game Library Camp, held on Saturday at the British Library, was a library camp event all about games in libraries. It was organised by a crack team comprising Stella Wisdom (British Library Digital Scholarship team) Darren Edwards (Bournemouth Libraries) and Gary Green (Surrey Libraries). Like other kinds of Library Camps, Game Library Camp was an […]
Professional development for makers – onboarding staff
After running maker workshops in libraries and other community spaces over the last 12 months, we’ve found our approach to how we provide staff training inevitably influenced by constructionist approaches. This has helped us make staff training and other professional development opportunities more approachable and engaging (and, dare we say, fun) for staff, even the […]
Makercarts for Libraries and Museums – an update
We’ve been busy doing lots of interesting maker stuff lately and we’ve recently joined forces with Carlos Izsak to offer Makercarts for Libraries and Museums. We’ve been collaborating on various projects over the last 12 months but this means that Carlos has now joined Artefacto to lead on various maker education projects and help us […]
Creative coding for learners: tools and resources for inspiring beginner coders
Introduction – Code can be (but isn’t always) poetry We’ve talked previously about some of the different tools out there for learning to code, but a lot of these exist to teach programming as part of a Computer Science curriculum. But learning to code can also open up whole new worlds of creative opportunities. And […]