TinkerCAD 3D Design & Printing SNOWFLAKES - Day 2 (MidKids)

We wrapped up our snowflakes today! Now we play the dreaded waiting game...

Everyone should hopefully have their prints before Christmas, but in the meantime, everyone can brag about their awesome CAD skills.

TinkerCAD 3D Design & Printing SNOWFLAKES - Day 2 (Teens)

We wrapped up our designs today and started to get the printing under way! We should all have our snowflakes ready in the coming days so be on the lookout

TinkerCAD 3D Design & Printing SNOWFLAKES - Day 1 (MidKids)

We were feeling the Christmas spirit today and stared some awesome snowflakes on TinkerCAD!

On Thursday, we'll wrap them up and have them ready  by Christmas

TinkerCAD 3D Design & Printing SNOWFLAKES - Day 1 (Teens)

PNG is getting into the holiday spirit! Internet issues didn't stop us from trying to design our snowflakes. We worked on our designs when the internet was up.When it wasn't, we were continuing the designing on good old paper!

Thursday we will (hopefully) have the internet up and running and continue!

Hour of Code

Hour of Code was a lonely one today, but the students made due without an instructor and picked up what they could straight the Code.org website!

Robot Club

The first rule of Robot Club is: tell everyone about Robot Club!  With our Vex kit grabber bot nearly complete we made the finishing touches and then started figuring out how to control our creation!

PNG Winter 2018

TEENS 6th & Up Tuesdays & Thursdays from 4pm - 5pm

December

TinkerCAD Snowflakes (2-part) 12/12 - 12/14

Learn to use the computer to create 3D models of snowflakes and then print them out on the Makerbot Replicator!  This 2-part class will teach you some basics of 3D design and how to use Tinkercad.com to create 3D objects that can be printed on any 3D printer.

January

Live Action Comic Book (4-part) 1/9 - 1/18

Convert digital photos of real people and objects into cartoons, add captions and create your own comic.

Ozobot Obstacle Course Challenge (2-part) 1/23 - 1/25

Use coding techniques you've picked up from our Hour of Code sessions to program our cute Ozobot robots to run an obstacle course (no previous coding experience necessary)!

February

Negative Space HeArt 2/6 - 2/8 (2 classes)

Combine art and technology in this fun program that utilizes vinyl cutting technology and natural artistry to create an awesome valentine!

Mixcraft (4-part) 2/13, 2/15, 2/20, 2/22

Learn how to use the digital audio creation software Mixcraft and make your own song!

Robot Club Thursdays from 4pm - 5pm

Interested in robotics?  Join our monthly robot club to learn how to use our Vex Robotics kit and form our very own Library Robotics Team!

December

Robot Club - 12/7

January

Robot Club - 1/4

February

Robot Club - 2/1

MIDKIDS 4th & Up Tuesdays & Thursdays from 6pm - 7pm

December

TinkerCAD Snowflakes 12/12 - 12/14 (2 classes)

Learn to use the computer to create 3D models of snowflakes and then print them out on the Makerbot Replicator!  This 2-part class will teach you some basics of 3D design and how to use Tinkercad.com to create 3D objects that can be printed on any 3D printer.

January

Drawn to Life (2-part) 1/9, 1/11

Learn Adobe Photoshop basics and combine cameras, tracing on paper, and Photoshop to produce a one-of-a-kind self portrait! 

Papercraft & Photography (4-part) 1/16, 1/18, 1/23, 1/25

Create a unique papercraft figure, print it, assemble it, photograph it and then Photoshop it!

February

Negative Space HeArt 2/6 - 2/8 (2 classes)

Combine art and technology in this fun program that utilizes vinyl cutting technology and natural artistry to create an awesome valentine!

Photoshop Poster Design (4-part) 2/13, 2/15, 2/20, 2/22

Learn how to use Adobe Photoshop to create and print and poster of your very own design.

Hour of Code Thursdays from 6pm - 7pm

Not only is coding massively important to the fabric of our digital world, but it can also be pretty fun!  Sign up for this quick introduction to activities on Code.org and play fun games while learning the fundamentals of basic coding then try your hand on some of our programmable robots!

December

Hour of Code - 12/7

January

Hour of Code - 1/4

February

Hour of Code - 2/1

Drawn to Life - Day 2

Had a quiet class today where our student got some 1 on 1 attention. After some technical difficulties, we used whatever was left of class to try and use Photoshop to make our art. Using a makeshift scanner (camera), we uploaded the picture to Photoshop and got creative with the paint bucket tool!

We might have not finished, but we did learn a few valuable life lessons.

This was what we ended up with

Negative Space Art - Day 2

Today is the day we get to color! After cutting out our vinyl designs, we placed them on canvas and peeled away what we wanted colored. From there, we use the vinyl as a stencil and color away. Once we finished coloring, we peeled away our vinyl and revealed our art!

Drawn to Life - Day 1

We are getting artsy today! We're picking pictures online to turn into Photoshopped masterpieces. After picking an image, we printed and drew them using our tracing pads and made a digital copy of them. On Thursday, we'll pull them up in Photoshop and using the paint bucket tool to color them in!

Negative Space Art - Day 1

We're back with another negative space art session! As always, we are looking for designs on the internet to turn into creative vinyl designs. From there, we will color over those designs on canvas, peel away the vinyl and reveal an awesome piece of art!

Thursday we will get to the art section of this project.
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Thanksgiving Table Place Cards (MidKids)

We're celebrating Thanksgiving the right way here at PNG. We're making our own table place cards! Using our vinyl cutter, we make a pop-up, fold-able design to take home. After all the troubleshooting, we ended with a really cool nameplate!

Thanksgiving Table Place Cards (Teens)

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, what better way to celebrate it than bringing home an awesome table place card to show off? We used Silhouette Studios to create a cool, pop-up design and made some awesome cards.

Video Game Development - Day 4

Today we wrapped up our video games! We put the finishing touches on the game play and got to play everyone else's games.

We all made well designed games and everyone had a blast!

Soldering - Day 4

Today was the last day! We went through the final steps of troubleshooting, replacing parts as necissary. We all got our spider robots to work! Some don't work like they're supposed to, but nevertheless, they work!

Our robots are now ready to take over the world!

Video Game Development - Day 3

We continued our games today, adding more complex elements, such as animations, and enemies. Our games are coming together nicely and Thursday we will wrap them up and play all the games we have made!

Soldering - Day 3

Today was troubleshooting day! We all finished up the soldering component of the class, the only thing that's left is take adjust our circuits to make sure they work we want them to! We double-checked our instructions and our robots turned out great!

Next class we will design an enclosure for our bots

Video Game Development - Day 2

Now that we know how to use our game development software, we can get to designing our game!
We learned how to make levels that will give use an endless world to let our visions come to life!

Next week will will continue our games.

Soldering - Day 2

Today, we kept attacking our light spider kits. We are moving very fast....maybe a little too fast...

We should finish up by Thursday next week and if we finish early, we can even 3D print a case for our robot!

Video Game Development - Day 1

Everybody loves video games so who wouldn't want to learn how to make them? Today, using our new software over at flowlab.io, we were able to do just that!

Everyone had the opportunity to bring their imaginations to life and create their own worlds! We will make our worlds more complex  over the next 3 days and have these games ready to play for the whole world to enjoy!

Soldering - Day 1

Today marks the return of our soldering class! This popular class lets kids get an intro into the magical world of soldering. We will be making our own light spiders which sense and follow light!

We started with a practice kit. Once we were comfortable with soldering, we started the spider kit.

Thursday we will continue with our project!

Hour of Code

Same old Hour of Code class as always. Everyone brushed up on their coding skills by playing games on Code.org.

Robot Club - 11/2/17

Lonely day today. Only two members showed up, but we were extremely productive and nearly finished the construction of the Clawbot!

Next month, we will figure out how to program this thing...

PNG Radio Scary Stories - Day 4

We are wrapping up today! We finished up adding the background audio and are ready to burn them on CDs! Be on the lookout for our stories to be on the library's website!

TinkerCAD - Last Day!

Today was the last day of TinkerCAD!  We had a bunch of awesome 3D models created in TinkerCAD finished and ready to submit to be printed!

PNG Radio Scary Stories - Day 3

We have all of our audio files today so we can finally clip and edit the sound! Using Audacity, we got rid of all our mistakes and dead air. We even got to add some sound effects.

Thursday we will wrap up and put our files on CDs.

TinkerCAD - Day 3

The designing grind continues today. Some people finished up designs they started new ones, while others continued with they original designs.

We should finish up and prep for printing on Tuesday...

PNG Radio Scary Stories - Day 2

Now that we picked our stories, we are ready to record! Using Audacity, we plugged in our microphone and recorded our narrations.

Now that we have the audio clips, we can edit them and burn them on CDs next week!

TinkerCAD - Day 2

Everyone continued their designs today. Most of us have the main base of our designs done. Now its just the little details that remain!

Next week we will wrap up and print!

PNG Radio Scary Stories - Day 1

Halloween is quickly approaching so why not get in the spirit by reading our own scary stories and turning them into a radio show!

We are going to pick out some scary short stories and record an audio file of us reading them using Mixcraft and a microphone. From there, we will compile them all together and have an entire album full of scary stories!

TinkerCAD - Day 1

We are starting up our 3D printing class again! 3D design experts or beginners can come in, learn the ropes, and then bring their creations to life!

Today, the beginners went through the TinkerCAD lessons to prepare them to make their own design and the experts got to brainstorming.

Ozobots - Day 2

Today was coding day! We wrapped up our obstacle course and opened up Ozoblockly, our coding software. From there, it was a race to see who could complete the course first!

Book Page Art

We're pushing our vinyl cutter to the max today! We're deciding to try our Harry Potter book page art class one more time because the results turned out so great before. Since we only had one day, we had to find images, prepare them in Silhouette Studios, cut them out on to a book page, and paste them to card stock. We got a lot done and the results turned out even better than last time!

Ozobots - Day 1

Today was the first day of our Ozobot obstacle course extravaganza! The goal for today was to design a obstacle course that we can code our bots to solve. We got very in depth and with our course, giving it bridges and walls.

Thursdays we will code the bots to tackle the course!

Hour of Code (MidKids)

This was another of our monthly freelance coding classes. People came in and tried coding an Ozobot, building their own Kano computer, and doing good ol' hour of code.

Robot Club - 10/5/17

We are slowly making progress on our claw bot. Four people showed up to this month's session so we split up into two teams to build different parts of the claw bot.

This blog will serve as a journal entry to help remind us what we did for the next session so students will answer the following questions in the comment section:

What was accomplished today?


What should be accomplished for next session?


Did anything go wrong?  


Next month we'll continue building our robot!

Negative Space Art - Day 2

We had a productive day today. We finished out Sillohette designs and put them to canvas!  The results came out great!

Our next Midkids class is an Ozobot one so be on the lookout!

Movie Making - Day 6

Today was the final day to complete the editing of our movies. Unfortunately, those who didn't finish yesterday tackled a project that was too ambitious and didn't finish. Not to worry, thought, as we have these projects saved and ready to be completed another time!

Negative Space Art - Day 1

The return of our vinyl cutter class is today! We are going to select our own silhouette images to cut out onto vinyl. From there, we will put the cut-out vinyls onto canvas, color over them, peel the vinyls off and reveal our masterpieces!

Today, we just concentrated on making our vinyl, and the turned out great.

Movie Making - Day 5

Today marked the official start of the editing process. We all imported the billion of pictures we took into Adobe Premiere. From there, we are free to add a Chroma Key in order to add backgrounds, audio files for background music, or anything else our heart desires!

One person finished, and there short movie came out fantastic. Check it out!








Everyone else should hopefully be done with everything on Thursday so stay tuned...

Live Action Comic Books - Day 4

That's a wrap for the comic books! Not everybody finished as we got too ambitious with our creations, but those that finished had awesome results!

Movie Making - Day 4

More of the same today as everyone continued to produce their movies. This marks the end of the second week now and we are slowly chipping away at our projects. Next week will hopefully mark the beginning of the editing process!

Live Action Comic Books - Day 3

We continued the artistic process today. Some of us are getting extremely detailed with our comics and they are finally starting to come together. As for the others, they got Photoshop fired up and used the paintbucket tool to bring our comic stripes to life.

We are in the home run stretch now!

Movie Making - Day 3

Some of us wrapped up our writing process and got going on the more tedious filming process. Most of us are doing a stop motion film so the filming process will involve taking hundreds of photos that will eventually get put together like a flip book.

We still have two weeks so there is plenty of time for everyone to take pictures!

Live Action Comic Books - Day 2

We're just about done with our comic strips. We wrapped up the drawing process and are ready for the next step.

 After getting them scanned and saved on our computers, we will open them up in Photoshop and give them life by adding color.

Movie Making - Day 2

The creative process is hard work. Today we added to our plots and continued the writing process. So far, we have a bunch of stop motion ideas that we will try to bring to life next we when we start filming!

Live Action Comic Books - Day 1

Our Paint Your Face class was always a hit so we figured, why not flip it around and make comic strips while we're at it! Today was all design as we started creating our strips on a piece of paper. From there, we'll throw it under our scanner and put it in Photoshop. Then we're free to do whatever we'd like

Movie Making - Day 1

Today was the first day of the session so it was spent just trying to get the creative juices flowing. This is a six part class so we have plenty of time to get going. We already have some great ideas going that include puppets, stop motion animation, and Spiderman so stay tuned to see how these go!

Hour of Code!

It's been a while since we've done an Hour of Code class, so why not start off the fall with one?
Today was another normal coding class. Everyone came in and kept adding to their repertoire of coding knowledge.

We used the usual Khan Academy script coding and Code.org's block coding

Robot Club - 9/7/17

We start the Fall session today with a brand new program. Introducing... VEX Robotics! This class will be run once a month in a club-like style in the hopes that we build and program a robot able to compete with others at local VEX competitions.

Today, we made progress on the Claw Robot and synced up the VEXnet controllers. We even got a claw working!

Tune in next month as we continue our progress...

PNG Fall 2017

TEENS 6th & Up Tuesdays & Thursdays from 4pm - 5pm

September

Movie Making (6-part) 9/12 - 9/28

Lights, Camera, Action!  Let's write a script, shoot some footage and edit it into a movie.

October

Harry Potter Book Page Art (2-part) 10/10 - 10/12

Create an awesome piece of art out of pages from an old discarded copy of Harry Potter using our Silhouette Cameo vinyl cutter and your own creativity.

TinkerCAD (4-part) 10/17 - 10/26

Learn to create 3D models and print them out on the Makerbot Replicator!  This class will teach you the basics of 3D design and how to use Tinkercad.com to create 3D objects that can be printed on any 3D printer.

November

Maker Skills: Soldering (4-part) 11/7 - 11/16

Learn how to solder!  We'll teach you how to handle a soldering iron and soldering safety, how to assemble components on a circuit board and everything else you need to know to bring electronics to life!

Thanksgiving Table Place Cards 11/21

Need decorations for your Thanksgiving table?  Don't go to the store, let's design them ourselves and make them real using our Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting machine!

Negative Space Art (2-part) 11/28 - 11/30

Combine creativity and technology in this fun program that utilizes vinyl cutting technology and natural artistry to create cool art!

Robot Club Thursdays from 4pm - 5pm

Interested in robotics?  Join our monthly robot club to learn how to use our Vex Robotics kit and form our very own Library Robotics Team!

September

Robot Club - 9/7

October

Robot Club - 10/5

November

Robot Club - 11/2

MIDKIDS 4th & Up Tuesdays & Thursdays from 6pm - 7pm

September

Live Action Comic Books (4-part) 9/12 - 9/21

Convert digital photos of real people and objects into cartoons, add captions and create your own comic.

Negative Space Art (2-part) 9/26 - 9/28

Combine creativity and technology in this fun program that utilizes vinyl cutting technology and natural artistry to create cool art!

October

Ozobot Obstacle Course Challenge (2-part) 10/10 - 10/12

Use coding techniques you've picked up from our Hour of Code sessions to program our cute Ozobot robots to run an obstacle course (no previous coding experience necessary)!

PNG Radio Scary Stories (4-part) 10/17 - 10/26

Read and record some scary stories and then edit them into a riveting radio hour!

November

Maker Skills: Video Game Development (4-part) 11/7 - 11/16

Try your hand at making a simple video game using Flowlab!

Thanksgiving Table Place Cards 11/21

Need decorations for your Thanksgiving table?  Don't go to the store, let's design them ourselves and make them real using our Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting machine!

Drawn to Life (2-part) 11/28, 11/30

Learn Adobe Photoshop basics and combine cameras, tracing on paper, and Photoshop to produce a one-of-a-kind self portrait!

Hour of Code Thursdays from 6pm - 7pm

Not only is coding massively important to the fabric of our digital world, but it can also be pretty fun!  Sign up for this quick introduction to activities on Code.org and play fun games while learning the fundamentals of basic coding then try your hand on some of our programmable robots!

September

Hour of Code - 9/7

October

Hour of Code - 10/5

November

Hour of Code - 11/2

Video Game Development Challenge - Day 4

We had a very chill final class and we added the finishing touches to our games. These games are now playable on this very blog so enjoy! http://www.flowlab.io/game/play/699879http://www.flowlab.io/game/play/641431

Paper Art - Day 2

Home stretch today... We wrapped up our designs and ran them through our vinyl cutter. After that, we got creative and gave them our own unique twist. The results turned out great!

Here are some of them:

Video Game Development Challenge - Day 3

Video game grind continued today as the two people that showed went straight to work on their games. They will hopefully have a finished product by Thursday that we can download to a mobile device to play!

Paper Art - Day 1

We got started with our paper designs by brainstorming for ideas of what to cut out. After we chose what we wanted to do, we went ahead and opened them in Silhouette Studio, our vinyl cutter design software, and got them ready to cut!

On Thursday, we'll run them through out vinyl cutter.

Video Game Development Challenge - Day 3

We spent most of the first class getting reacquainted with Flowlab.io and finding some inspiration from other games that people have created. Now it's time to get down to the task at hand and make some games!

Ozobot - Hour of Code Madhouse

Today was crazy we hosted an Hour of Code at the same time that we had an ozobots class. I don't think many students realized that the ozobots class was a 2-part class and you are supposed to attend both parts so we had a lot of new faces with people who had to get caught up on how to do everything very quickly. Thankfully some of our students from Tuesday were up to the challenge and helped Ahren teach class!

Video Game Development - Day 1 (Teens)

We had a pretty laid back class today. Only a couple people showed up, but that didn't stop them from starting to explore all that Flowlab can do to create games. Now we have until next Thursday to create our very game!

Ozobots - Day 1 (MidKids)

Nothing beats the feeling of the first PNG class of a new session. Today, we're going back to messing with the Ozobots! These popular, tiny robots are great for learning to code. We got started on building our very own obstacle course, and programmed our bots to go through it.

Thursday we will see which bots can make it through!

Soldering - Day 6

Today was everyone's most dreaded day...troubleshooting day. After completing the main build, we had a couple people who did not have working finished products. We tried to get to work. Some got their kits going, others, unfortunately, didn't. But that's how it can go in the world of soldering. We'll give give soldering another shot in the fall so be on the lookout!

Photoshop Poster Design - Day 4

We wrapped things up today and finished our prints today after a final review of our designs. They turned out great! Here are some of our finished products...

Soldering - Day 5

We are starting to wrap up our projects now. We had a couple people finish their projects that met some troubles and others that are on the verge of finishing. Thursday's class will be dedicated to troubleshooting!

Photoshop Poster Design - Day 3

Our posters are finally coming together! We are finished with the majority of our designs and hopefully will come in on Thursday to do some touch-ups and print.

Soldering - Day 4

Everybody was extremely focused today. We all found our zone and kept chipping away at our kits. Next week, we hope to wrap everything up. The end is in sight!

Photoshop Poster Design - Day 2

After we finished prepping our design, the hard part started. We got going on our editing today and got very familiar with Photoshop. We learned how to use the lasso tool, manipulate shapes, use layers, and a lot more.

Next we will will continue and wrap up our posters so stay tuned.

Soldering - Day 3

We are now into week 2 of our soldering project! We kept attacking our projects and are slowly getting closer to a finished product. We are looking to wrap up our soldering projects by next week.

Photoshop Poster Design - Day 1

We look at posters every single day. Movie posters, ads, and a million other types of posters. No one really stops and thinks of how these posters are made, but that's what this class is all about! We are going to get extremely familiar with Photoshop by designing our own unique posters on it.

Today mainly consisted of some heavy brainstorming and preparation. This is a two week class so we have plenty of time to get every detail of our posters just right.

Soldering - Day 2

The soldering continued today. Now that we're more comfortable with how to solder, we got right into the kits. Slowly, but surely, we are getting closer to having working FM radios and robot cars!

Next week we will continue to attack the kits  so stay tuned.

Book Page Art - Day 2

We wrapped up our designs today by adding the final touches and running it through our vinyl cutter one last time. After we had our book page cut with our design, we glued it to card stock to make it sturdier and customized it. Here are some of the results

Soldering - Day 1

We had a good mix of soldering experts and novices today. The students that have done our soldering program before had a choice of which kit they wanted to do. They all chose an old robot racing kit and got going pretty quickly. The newcomers got a lesson in the basics of soldering. Technique, safety, and much more.

This class will go on until the end of the month so we're looking forward to seeing how all the kits turn up!

Book Page Art - Day 1

  We're making some awesome art today! Using our vinyl cutter and an old Harry Potter book, we were able to cut any design we desired into the book pages. The results turned out great!

Hour of Code

Today was another normal coding class. Everyone came in and kept adding to their repertoire of coding knowledge.

 Aside for the usual Khan Academy script coding and Code.org's block coding, we tried out Google's Madewithcode.com too!

Tensegrity Structure Robots: Day 2 - Abstract Art

Today was the second day.  We built our structures last time so now it was time to add motion.  We hooked up some small motors run by coin batteries and then added pen and paper to create art!

Papercraft & Photoshop: Day 4 - The Final Countdown

Today was the last day of our Papercraft and Photography class. The kids made their own paper models, took pictures and then Photoshopped them.  Check them out, they look great!

Illinois Veterans' History Project

The Elmwood Park Public Library in association with Project Next Generation and the State Library of Illinois are proud to present an interview of United States Air Force veteran Dennis J. Wolfe, conducted by Magnus Shipinski.  This video was shot by Christian Caballero and edited by Magnus Shipinski.  Special thanks to Jay Shipinski for help with coordination and making things happen.

This interview has been sent to the State Library of Illinois for inclusion in the Illinois Digital Archive.

Thank you very much to Mr. Wolfe, Magnus, Jay and Christian for making this happen.

Click here for more information on the Illinois Veterans' History Project and to view more interviews with Illinois veterans be sure to check out the Illinois Veterans' History Project YouTube channel.

Tensegrity Structure Robots: Day 1 - They're not really robots, huh...

Tensegrity Structures?  Robots?  Icosahedrons?

Ok, let me break it down for you.  First of all, you're right.  They're not really robots.  That was just kind of my cheap attempt to get you in the door.

They ARE tensegrity structures.  Tensegrity structures?  Tensional integrity a.k.a. floating compression is an architectural term that describes a structure that stays together by having each piece push or pull on another piece.

Icosahedrons are a type of polyhedron that has 20 sides.

So today we made a tensegrity structure that has 20 sides.  Next time, we're going to try hooking up a motor and adding some motion in hopes of being able to call these robots... even though that's a bit of stretch, it'll still be cool.

Papercraft & Photography: Day 3 - She's Crafty

Today is Day 3 of Papercraft & Photography.  The kids are finally finishing up their papercraft models and taking pictures.  A select few have even started to work in Adobe Photoshop to remove the backgrounds of their pictures and place their subjects in some bizarre and crazy backgrounds!

Papercraft & Photography - Day 2

We slowly started finishing up our designs today. We had to be a lot more precise today, paying more attention to small folds and whatnot. We finished a couple designs and got started on the Photoshoping process.

No Cube Left Behind: Papercraft & Photography - Day 1

Who doesn't like an awesome craft? Everyone had the chance to to print out the character of their choice and make them come to life by turning the 2D paper into a 3D Cubecraft. On Thursday, we put these 3D crafts into Photoshop and add backgrounds or whatever else we want!

TinkerCAD - Day 4

Today is the day. Everyone added the finishing touches to their designs and got them ready to be printed. We have a very diverse set of objects this time around, aside from all the fidget spinners.

We're all excited to see how they turn out!

TinkerCAD - Day 3

We continued our designs today and even completed some! Stay tuned for our completed designs on Thursday

Father's Day Cards - Day 1

Father's Day is right around the corner! What better way to celebrate it that by giving our awesome dads than by making them a homemade Star Wars cards. This project consists of making a light saberout of LEDs and straws. The results turned out awesome!