We know there are a lot of crafters who work in libraries. And of course, crafting is a great type of program to do in any type of library! Each week we are sharing links to a craft that you might want to try in your library – or work on it yourself.

This week’s project was inspired by my passionate love of Easter candy! I have to admit – I have a massive weakness for marshmallow Easter eggs, and black jelly beans make me very happy.

We give you an excerpt of the craft project below, so you can get some ideas on how fun (and easy!) this will be; then you can click to get all the details on the craft blog.

If you make some of these jars at home, or as a patron project, send us photos!! (And if I have any left, I’ll even send over some jelly beans to store in a jar!)

Supplies Needed:

• Small jars (any size or kind will do-mine are from the craft store)
• Decoupage
• Paint Brush
• Fine Glitter
• Craft foam or construction paper in pink, white and orange
• Candy
• Pom Poms
• Googley Eyes
• Hot Glue

This is a guest post from Paul Olsen, Media Specialist at Oak Hill Community School. Read more mini grant reports on our page.

Virtual Reality always felt a bit out of reach for me. Perhaps this is because my first exposure to something similar to VR was through science fiction movies when I was growing up, but more than likely it was more of a financial barrier. However, as technology has become more streamlined, some less expensive options have presented themselves.

For an entry-level VR experience I found that a relatively cheap cell phone and Google cardboard was going to be the route for my school. A grant from CMLE has allowed me to purchase twice as many devices as my original budget would have previously allowed. The early implementation of lesson plans has taken advantage of a free application called Google Expeditions.

Through Expeditions, a guide (teacher) is able to bring their students on virtual field trips. It feels pretty amazing to take students to parts of the world that are unreachable for the vast majority of people in general, let alone a young student.

However, the barriers that would prevent people from traveling to these locations are not always the first that comes to mind. I am especially interested in exploring the possibilities of helping some of our students that may have special needs to explore new areas that may otherwise be overwhelming or create high anxiety. A recent blog post on CMLE highlighted working with students with severe autism.

 I have highlighted a couple of the experiences that my students have had in the last couple of weeks below:

We like books; we like parks – and Minnesota is lucky to have both of them! Join our Goodreads book challenge: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks.

We give you a link to each state park, a short fact, and a prompt for you to find a book. You find it, and read a book, and then tell us all about it.

You can find all of our show notes here, and links to the books we share this week

In this podcast, we give you a few suggestions for books to fit a prompt for each park. Try one of these books, or find one of your own to enjoy!

Bear Head Lake was established in 1961. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_par…

There are all kinds of wildlife at this secluded park, and visitors can come admire their homes. Find a book with a head or a skull on the cover.

We have all kinds of educational images in the VR kits we have to loan out to our members. And to help everyone keep looking informed about the assorted uses of VR and AR in all sorts of areas, we keep sharing information with you!

This week we found a very cool article about a strategy to help people shopping for pianos to make the best decisions. Pianos are really expensive, and this app – AR Pianist – will let you see someone playing the instrument you are looking at, to let you see what would be possible for it to sound like. “What’s cool about our Core ML model is that it works with any piano model or brand under any lighting condition, without the need to use special image targets or markers or the need to scan the piano model ahead of time.”

Video Of An AR Pianist Playing
A Real Piano Is Going Viral

“In case you haven’t seen it, a new tweet from a medical doctor, software entrepreneur, and 3D artist, Fayez Salka shows him using AR technology to bring a virtual piano player to life on a real-world piano.

The video, which has already garnered almost 200K views on Twitter and continues to climb, shows Salka walking through a piano store aiming his phone’s camera at various pianos. Instantly, an AR pianist appears and begins playing different songs from a handful of award-winning pianists while sheet music of the corresponding notes scrolls across the bottom in real-time.

The app uses machine learning to detect the piano, and then figures out the exact 3D position and orientation of your piano in a 3D space down to 1 cm accuracy. It does this just by looking at a single frame and without the use of 3D depth cameras. “

Check out the entire article here, and watch the video!