Everyone loves Lego bricks, right? YES! So what better item to have in our Makerspace than an EPIC LEGO WALL?? I saw the amazing Lego wall that Diana Rendina built over at RenovatedLearning.com and I just KNEW that we had to have one like it in our Makerspace. Legos! Libraries! Epic indeed! So how to you build an Epic Lego Wall? Turns out it's not super hard, but there are some tips that I learned that will make your experience flow much smoother. Step 1: Secure Funding Lego base plates are expensive. Our wall required 64 plates that were 10"x10" each. Packs of 4 were $29.99 at the time I bought them from Amazon, making the total cost of the wall $480 plus shipping. Fortunately for me, I had bookfair money that I used to cover the cost. I'd also suggest DonorsChoose.org or asking your PTA... funding is out there! Step 2: Prep The Area Prepare your wall and decide how you are going to secure the plates to the wall. I used a piece of 80.5" by 80.5" plywood (more on the size later, see Step 3) screwed into the wall. The guys from WCPS Facilities supplied the plywood for me - they even cut it and painted the edges for me! They also supplied the adhesive - Liquid Nail. I used a whole gallon! I may have been a little overzealous with the glue.... Step 3: Apply Lego Plates to the Wall Wear clothes that can get ruined because the liquid nail does not wash out... I learned that the hard way! I used a trowel to slather each plate with Liquid Nail: Start at the bottom and work your way up to the top. The most important thing you can do is use Lego bricks as spacers. If you do not, the plates will be too close to one another and the Lego bricks will not span across from one plate to another correctly. There must be a 1 mm gap in between each plate: That 1 mm gap is why the wall is 80.5"x80.5" even though it is comprised of 8 plates across and 8 plates down that are 10" x 10" each. Without the extra half an inch, I would have had to cut the plates to make them fit correctly. Be sure to take this into consideration when you are calculating your wall size. Here are pictures of the wall in progress! Step 4: LET IT DRY This might be the hardest part... you need to let the liquid nail set completely, otherwise when the kids pull the bricks off of the wall, you might pull a plate off as well. I let mine dry for an entire week... it was TORTURE! I posted signs on it and told the kids that we would have a grand opening the following Friday. In the meantime, I had plenty of kids willing to sort all the donated Lego bricks that we received. How did I get them? I posted on the local Facebook yard sale pages that I was the new librarian at SPMS and that I wanted Lego bricks for a project. Before I knew it, I had two enormous tubs full with more legos than we could ever use, FREE! I bought plastic bins at Target to have the kids sort them. They sorted them by color, as well as pulling out the minifigures and wheels into their own bins. You could really sort any way that you wanted, but sorting by color worked for me. Step 5 : Open It to Building! We had a ribbon cutting ceremony - I even wore my Lego brick earrings that I bought at a craft festival. My awesome and amazing administration team attended! Shortly after, students started to put bricks on the wall... YAY! Incidentally, here is the font I used if you want to make your own Lego Wall sign! Right now I am allowing the students to free build as they see fit. Future design challenges will include art challenges (create a piece of Lego art from all one color), design challenges (move a ping pong ball from one place to another on the wall, like Plinko), and more! So now the Epic Lego Wall at SPMS is open, and EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!! Stop by and build, we would love to see what you create!
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So the last time we talked about Twitter, I gave you a brief overview of hashtags, as well as a few to be sure to follow. And if you are anything like me, you probably found the Twitter feed a little overwhelming. Today I am going to introduce you to a couple of tools to streamline your Twitter experience! The first tool is an website and app called Flipboard. Once you have your Twitter account, you can sign into it on Flipboard. Flipboard takes your news stream and makes it easier to read... more like a magazine. Here, look! This is the #tlchat stream on Twitter: This is the same #tlchat on Flipboard's website: Much easier to read, right? Flipboard has an app, too! Make sure you check it out for your iOS or Android devices: Flipboard on iTunes Flipboard on GooglePlay I love the app version of Flipboard the most - it is very intuitive on touch screen devices. Instead of a 140 character tweet, you can see a preview of the article. TweetDeckIf you are ready for something a little more advanced, you will want to check out TweetDeck! You can sign into it with your Twitter account information, no separate account needed. TweetDeck allows you to view several streams of Twitter data at one time. For example, I like to follow the hastags #tlchat #makered and #kidlit. I can see all the feeds at once with TweetDeck, without having to search or switch between them! Here, take a look: I know it seems a little overwhelming, but it really simplifies your twitter experience. TweetDeck is especially useful when you are participating in a Twitter Chat because you can follow the Tweets for the chat in one column while answering individual notifications in another. It is a multi-tasker's dream!
I like to use Flipboard when I just want to read articles that my Tweeps (Twitter Peeps, HAHA!) have published or shared, and I love TweetDeck when I am participating in a Twitter chat. So now that you have those two tools, go try them out and see if either (or both) work for you! Leave a comment below telling me about your experience with Flipboard or TweetDeck, or if you have another tool to share, tell us! I had the good fortune recently of having a DonorsChoose project for Ollies funded! They arrived at school and everyone LOVES them. What are Ollies? They are fun, fast, and fantastic! What a great addition to our SPMS Makerspace. We have 3 of them - their names are Ollie, Pollie, and Mollie. Here are some pictures of the kids using them: Some of the future ideas that I have are some design challenges to get the kids creating and engineering. For example:
Do you have ideas for Ollie? Leave them in the comments below! In a continuing effort to transform my library into a 21st Century Learning Commons, I decided to implement another one of the amazing Pam Harland's ideas. I asked my administrator if we could sell headphones in the library for students, and she granted permission! We are selling them for $.94 plus tax, making them an even dollar. A quick Amazon search later and I found these: TFD Supplies Wholesale Bulk Earbuds Headphones 100 Pack For Iphone, Android, MP3 Player $59.99 for 100 sets - not bad! They arrived quickly and were well packaged. I emailed the staff and let them know that students could come and purchase them during homeroom, lunch, and at dismissal.
I also put the word out with a few students and on Instagram. I did not directly advertise it (eg. on the morning announcements), and yet on the third day that they've been for sale, I have sold 11 sets so far. One staff member even purchased a pair as a stocking-stuffer gift!. Sounds like we are headed for success to me! I plan to announce that they are formally for sale next week - who knows, maybe I'll sell out by Friday! The holidays are rapidly approaching, and I wanted the media center to feel a little more festive. Last weekend we attended the Festival of Trees in Timonium (highly recommend, BTW! So many craft vendors and amazingly decorated trees - all proceeds benefit the Kennedy Kriegar Institute) and I was inspired... there was a tree called "A Novel Idea": I knew I couldn't pull that off as it was way too much for my missing spatial reasoning skills to try to balance all those books and make sure the spines were the right size. So I compromised by using some old Almanacs that no one has checked out yet this year. Some lights, a little tinsel from the dollar store, and a paper star taped to a ruler... TA DA! Yes, it's a tiny little short tree of books, looking a bit like what Charlie Brown would have created if he had made a book tree... but it's here and the kids love it.
Here's a giggle for you to get through the next few weeks. Happy Holidays! |
About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
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