Mountain lakes public library Makerspace

Digital Short Stories - A Girl Scout Gold Award Project

Girl Scout & High School senior Monalisa Hait developed the Digital Stories program to introduce students in grades 2 - 6 the joys of writing. Writing can connect science, art, family, pets, sports, and any activity that interests a child.

Younger students work with high school mentors to develop their stories. The ideas are the students. High school mentors help guide the editing process and make sure that every detail that a child would like to convey to the reader is in their story.

Every story is celebrated as a part of a compilation book that is published!

A Mountain Lakes Public Library librarian assists a young author.

Creativity

The Mountain Lakes Public Library Makerspace was founded in December 2016. The Makerspace develops and leads activities, workshops, and long term projects for students in grades Pre K through 12th grade. We provide opportunities for students to learn about, practice, and develop their creativity: learning to connect new technologies with sports, math, science, art, literature, and more!

All of our activities are inclusive. While we may enter challenges, our primary focus is on developing a lifelong love of learning and not specific skill based competitions.

The ML Makerspace's unique projects include programming, circuitry, robotics, physical computing, green screen animation, digital design skills, 3d design, 3d printing, and a focus on universal design. Our project work extends throughout the Mountain Lakes community, however our goal is to reach well beyond: The Mountain Lakes Public Library is small in scale and large in reach.

Design Projects

Over the past three years the Makerspace has developed its high school universal design program, which provides opportunities for high school students to both be part of or develop unique empathy building projects.

What is universal design?

Universal design is a creative process that involves multiple perspectives. We focus on designing with and not for. Universal design is an iterative process which focuses on improvements and a long term goal of developing functional and engaging projects that can be replicated. It is wonderful to reach 10 students. It is fantastic to reach 100 students!

The Mountain Lakes Public Library believes in sharing resources and ideas. Our theme is "small in scale, large in reach". We have been developing our universal design / open source portfolio of projects with partners such as St. Joseph's School for the Blind, Build a Better Book, Sound Start Babies, Clovernook Braille Printing House, and the local schools.

We would like to thank all of the students that have put in tremendous work and effort to develop projects over the past three years. Additionally, we would like to thank all of our wonderful partners who provided invaluable feedback. Thank you!