Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Last Day Sad Face

Today was the last day of PNG Fall 2013!

We had some really good times.  We had some rough moments.  We barely scratched the surface on all of the stuff that we had planned, but time has run out!

Hope to see you in February!



Thursday, December 12, 2013

Down to the wire

With one class remaining after today the stakes are high.  Whoever finishes first gets to do nothing for the last class!


Tuesday, December 10, 2013

So close

We've got two students who are super close to finishing.  The race is on.  Will they finish or won't they?!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Darkest before Dawn

This soldering project is getting tough.  There are doubts as to whether we will finish.  We've got some mis-matched parts from our Mammoth Fuzz Pedal kits and they neglected to send us the wires we need to wire everything together.

Ahren picked up some wire at RadioShack, but unfortunately they didn't have the correct gauge.

We're trying to make it work but things are difficult, the instructions aren't very helpful and today only 3 students showed up.

Here's hoping that the night is darkest just before the dawn.







Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Good Solders don't die, they just fade away

Today we continued soldering again.

This is turning into a pretty intensive project, but we're ... soldering on.

Hopefully we'll have some real results by next week.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Solder On

Today we started the next step in our soldering lessons.

Now, we're making a guitar pedal for each student.  If this works each student will have a working guitar pedal that they will each have a unique sound when they record their songs later on this session.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

We're sorry.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to the parents of our PNG students.  Today we finished soldering together our electric pianos and the results are intensely annoying.

We're sorry.

On the plus side, your child has successfully learned to solder!


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

STOP! Solder Time!

Today the students learned how to solder!

Seriously!

We took them very slowly through the basics of soldering and then let the kids begin assembling an "electric piano".

Once hooked up to a battery, you can press the buttons to make tones that play from the speaker.  Every aspect of the device has to be soldered together.

The guys did great and we had zero burns and no accidents!


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Cubify Web Apps

Today the kids tried their hand at creating some 3D shapes.  Everybody loves the 3D printer, but when it comes to actually creating a 3D object these guys couldn't be paid to care.


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Drawn Together

We did one more round of drawings today and the results started to get pretty weird.  Awesome!



Thursday, November 7, 2013

Color Yourself!

Today we took the scans of our traces and colored them in on the computer using either MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop Elements. The results exist!




Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Face Paint

Brian combined some simple concepts into a pretty complex, pretty rad project.

Step 1: Take a self-pic
Step 2: Print your pic
Step 3: Trace your pic
Step 4: Scan your pic
Step 5: re-color your pic

We ended up with some pretty amazing pictures and we'll continue on into next class.








Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Bristlebots!

Today we made Bristlebots!  Our adult reference librarian Garrett first introduced Bristlebots to the library and now we're giving it a go in PNG!

It was a lot of fun teaching the kids about batteries and how to complete an electronic circuit!


If you want to give it a go yourself, check out the source!

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Re-introduction to Photoshop

Today we got the students reacquainted with Photoshop and down below you'll see a sneak preview of one of our first big projects.  It's going to be a lot more involved but it involves printing photos, tracing them, scanning them and then using the computer to re-colorize them.  The end result should be pretty sweet.

We're getting PNG Fall started right!





Thursday, October 3, 2013

Fall in to PNG!

The wait is almost over!  Elmwood Park Public Library is proud to announce another session of Project Next Generation!



This time around we're going to teach you how to solder!  Using a soldering iron you're going to learn the first steps to making your own electronic devices.

We've also got new activities in Music, Video-editing, and Photoshop lined up!

As always, classes will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm.  Class starts Thursday October 24th and continues until December 17th.

6th, 7th & 8th graders only.  Only 10 spots available, so sign up online now!

Remember, PNG is totally free!  For more information about the program and what we're all about, go here.

More questions?  Email us at png.eppl@gmail.com or give the Youth Services department a call at 708.395.1237.

Monday, August 12, 2013

Candy Anarchy

Today was the last day of PNG.  Usually, on the last day we'll order some pizzas, hang out and play video games and just have a good time.

Unfortunately, the last day of class was originally scheduled for August 14th, which would be the day after school starts!  The kids are going to be a little busy on Wednesday so we had the last day of class today.

But that means no pizza!  And work!  They had videos to finish editing.  To make up for it, I turned a huge bag of candy upside down on the table and watched these sugared up film splicers go nuts.

Judge the results for yourself:



Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Monday, August 5, 2013

Books. Check 'em out.

The PNG students have become completely infatuated with this video:


I'm not here to judge.  We thought re-enacting the video with a "library theme" would be a good way to get it out of their system.

We wrote and shot scenes today.  On Wednesday we will edit them together.  I think it will be pretty funny stuff.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Summer Doldrums

Today was a rainy, slow, boring day.  Only Chris and Christian showed up for class, so we let them do whatever they wanted and here's what came about.

We also posted some of our awesome remixes from the other day.



Matias - NIN Remix

Monday, July 29, 2013

Music Remixes

Today the students tried their hand at a new music remix.  This time around the song is 'Me I'm Not' by Nine Inch Nails.

We'll have some finished tracks by the end of next class, but rest assured the songs are shaping up very nicely.



Wednesday, July 24, 2013

ReNews... get it because we're a library.

The News only took a couple weeks to be reported, but I'm sure it's still totally relevant and important.  Completely.  I'm serious.