Marisa Reichardt Author Visit

Marisa ReichardtThe library is delighted to be hosting author Marisa Reichardt on Wednesday, February 10. Ms. Reichardt, wife of Mira Costa Ceramics teacher and Water Polo coach Jon Reichardt, will be speaking about her first novel, Underwater, which was just published this month. Here is the publisher’s description of this YA realistic fiction book:

In the aftermath of a deadly high school shooting, seventeen-year-old Morgan is an agoraphobe trapped in the apartment she shares with her mother and brother. When surfer boy Evan moves in next door, she has to face the life she’s been missing.

Underwater

Ms. Reichardt will be speaking to students during both AM and PM Office Hours on February 10. Students can choose to attend either in the morning or the afternoon. Following each session, we will also have books for sale and she will be signing books.

Do purchase a copy of this engaging, thought-provoking book. We have arranged with {pages} bookstore, a local Manhattan Beach independent book vendor, to provide the books at the discounted price of $16. To order in advance online, go to bit.ly/orderunderwater and {pages} will deliver the book to our library for you. You will also be able to purchase books on the day of the visit at each of the presentation sessions and during lunch, but we encourage pre-orders to guarantee availability.

Here is a flyer about the visit.

Parents and members of the community are welcome. Be sure to sign in in the office.

January 4 – 15 at the Library – Lots of Making!

LittleBits & Robotics activities at the Maker Fair

While we have, of course, had a number of classes visit for research projects, lessons, and support, the theme for early January has definitely been on making with our 3D printer and other makerspace resources.

Maker Fair

On Thursday, January 14, we had a great maker fair after school, with activities from the Geeks Club, Library Club, Art Club, Robotics Club, and Girls Coding Club. Students got to experience a wide variety of activities, including:

  • designing in 3D using these “Sharpie Drawing to 3D Object” directions (bit.ly/2Dto3Dprint) and getting their projects printed with the help of the Geeks Club
  • experimenting with Google Cardboard virtual reality and littleBits electronics, also with the help of the Geeks Club
  • making pinwheels as a community service project in support of Syrian youth, organized by the Library Club (Get information on the community service project here.)
  • manipulating robots in a fun competition from the Robotics Club
  • making art from recycled books, organized by the Art Club
  • programming our Sphero and BB-8 robots with the help of the Girls Coding Club

Many thanks to all the clubs and students who participated.

Here’s a slideshow with photos of some of the activities and student creations:

Maker Fair - 1/14/16

Computer Science Class 3D Projects

Mr. Braskin and Mr. Brennen’s Computer Science classes visited the library to learn about 3D printing, then embarked on a project in which they:

  1. programmed a 2D geometric shape using Scratch, a programming language
  2. converted their file to .svg format, which is readable by 3D modeling software
  3. imported their files into Tinkecad.com, a 3D modeling app
  4. exported their files to .stl format for printing on the 3D printers

They all came up with amazing, unique designs. Here are just a few examples:

Computer class 2D geometric shapes to 3D printing

ComputerComputer class chess pieces class 2D geometric shapes to 3D printing

Computer class 2D geometric shapes to 3D printing

And, to follow up this first project, they are now working in teams to design chess pieces we will be printing.

Computer Class chess piece project

Stand by for some of these examples!

Malik’s iPhone Stand

In a recent posting, I wrote about how projects often require several design iterations and printer adjustments to make them work, representing an exercise in persistence. Here’s Malik’s Phone stand completed!

Malik's iPhone stand

More Photos

For more photos of our 3D printing activities, visit this Flickr album.

December 2015 at the Library

December was a challenging time at Mira Costa. We were closed on two different days and sheltered in place for an hour a third day, all due to bomb threats. I can’t pretend I wasn’t ready to have some time off for Winter Break. I believe we all were. Nevertheless, the library was busy with student and class visits our last three school weeks of 2015. Here are a few highlights.

Class Visits and Projects

Along with a number of other class visits, Mr. Zeoli’s Freshman English class spent several days in the library for a mythology project in which we helped the students learn about good sources, bibliography and note-taking with Easybib, and finding and crediting copyright-friendly images for their slideshows. They also learned about Twitter as a learning tool, as they set up accounts for their gods and heroes and tweeted in the role of each god or hero. Here’s a link to the site for their project, which was also used by Ms. Clarke’s students earlier in the fall. Students will be finishing the Twitter portion of their assignment after the break.

Mr. Brown’s English Language Learners class visited to “speed date” biographies. We planned three rounds of visiting tables with different categories of biographies to sample. Every student in the class selected a book by the end of the second round!

Speed dating biographies

3D Printing

The two 3D printers were busy all month printing cookie cutters inspired by our December challenge and other student projects. Ms. Arazi’s DHH class took up the challenge in their classroom as a group, and sent us a cookie cutter to be printed. While the design was lovely, it was too complex to print well on the printer. The class came to visit and we talked about how the printer works, then some of the students made new designs. Here’s a photo of the original design they drew and of the cookie cutter made from it:

DHH class 3D printing visit

Here’s a photo of us watching the printer in action and discussing how it works:

DHH class 3D printing visit

And, here is one of the students’ new designs:

3D cookie cutter design

3D cookie cutter

We are learning that mastering 3D design and printing is an iterative process. We often need to tweak both designs and printer settings a number of times to make things work. Perhaps perseverance will prove to be one of the most important skills learned by all of us making use of our printers. Malik, one of our students, has been working on a stand he designed for his iPhone. He has tweaked the design a number of times to get it small enough to print on our printers, to make the printing time more efficient, and to ensure adequate support for the portion that doesn’t lie flat at the bottom. The Thursday morning before the break, we loaded his design, which the Cura software told us would take  8 hours, and let it run all day:

malik design

It was going really well before we left at 3pm:

iPhone stand printing

Unfortunately, something went wrong after we left. This is what I found in the morning:

iPhone stand printing

Malik plans to keep working on the design, and I am confident we will get it to work. Here he is with a smile and the completed portion:

Malik's iPhone stand design in process

If you haven’t seen a 3D printer in action, you need to come by to watch it running. It’s fascinating to watch each layer being laid. This film will give you an idea, in – at 10x the actual speed – of the process:

Hour of Code

The library served as one of the sites for Mira Costa’s Hour of Code on December 9 during morning and afternoon office hours, coordinated by Mr. Braskin’s computer science class students. Ever computer was taken in both the morning and afternoon, and we were standing room only in the morning.

Hour of Code

Hour of Code

Office Hours

The library is also always standing room only during Office Hours!

standing room only during Office Hours

Standing room only during Office Hours

Alexander Street Video Streaming

We were very fortunate in December to add Alexander Street Publishing’s Academic Video Online Premium video streaming for both teacher and student use. It offers an amazing selection of over 48,000 titles from producers such as 60 Minutes, PBS, BBC, NBC, and many more, spanning every discipline. Here is an overview of the collection. Here is the login portal link. Check with me by email or at the library for login information.