The $5 Temporary Green Screen

Annually, our library hosts Maker Days for several days during the holiday season where we promote craft and tech activities in our high school library. We always have a small upcycling/craft section available to students, and by holding maker events, students become more aware of the materials we have in the library. Additionally, students who typically do not come to the library for study hall find their way here and discover that we are more than just books!

Traditionally, I provide materials for upcycling books into beautiful ornaments and gift tags, and I set out card stock and stickers for students to make holiday cards. This year, in an effort to promote the use of technology in the library, I also set up a digital holiday card section that is easy to set up and tear down and most importantly is inexpensive!

For the green screen, I purchased two plastic tablecloths from a local dollar store. I layered them, as I had to hang the tablecloths over our book shelves because we do not have enough wall space. If you have a blank, light-colored wall, you most likely would only need one tablecloth. Note that these are not very durable, but they are inexpensive. If you wish to have a green screen that lasts for many years, I would recommend purchasing a more durable fabric for your screen.

For the app, I purchased Do Ink for just a couple dollars. I chose this app for ease of use - there are other apps for more complicated green screen work, but for simple digital holiday cards, Do Ink works great! Since I only have one screen set up, I really only needed to purchase the app to use on one device.

Do Ink has some great tutorials that you can use with students; however, I wanted some written instructions that I could hand to students as they walked through the door. Here are the instructions I made in Slides. I printed six to a page. I made the instructions fairly general so I would be able to use them anytime, even if it wasn't the holidays.

I created a few holiday card backgrounds and saved them to our iPad photos that students could choose from, or the app has pre-loaded backgrounds that students could use, as well. Most students chose to find their own backgrounds. I recommend using Creative Commons for free, copyright free photos.

At the holidays especially, high school kids are just big little kids - their eyes light up when I tell them that they can take green screen photos in the library and make crafts! And the best part is that when we are done, it will only take a few minutes to tear down our temporary green screen (unlike the craft projects I set out for students...those take quite a while to clean up...). Have a happy holiday break, and happy making!

Maker Week Completed!

Although Maker Week got off to a slow start, the concept was successful overall. The most popular maker items were book page ornaments and paper boxes filled with Hershey Kisses. Initially, the promise of chocolate seemed to bring a number of students to the library; however, once the students started to make the boxes, they seemed to genuinely enjoy creating something. Several students even came down the next day requesting to make more boxes (which was fabulous, of course!). Eventually, students started to get creative and made up their own projects - mostly small gifts for friends. This was certainly encouraging and seemed to be in the same spirit as maker spaces.

I think that if we do a something similar in the future we will have Maker Days, as opposed to Maker Week. I was glad to do the whole week my first go around, just because I wasn't sure which projects or materials would be most popular. Now that I have a better idea of what students want to make and what will bring them into the library, I am confident that I could condense the concept into just a couple of days.

I also had to experiment with promotion methods. I had display of maker items outside of the library, there were announcements broadcast over our student news program, I had a blurb added to our daily bulletin, and I sent emails to our study hall teachers. Emailing study hall teachers so that they could remind students of Maker Week and send them to the library seemed to be the most successful promotion. Ultimately, my goal was met: I got students into the library. Many of my maker kids were not our usual customers, so it was great to see some new faces. I also was excited to see some of our new patrons stop in again after their first visit - some students came down for multiple maker days, or they came to the library for study hall or to find books in-between classes. Library promotion might take some work, but it is totally worth it!

Completed paper boxes

Maker Week

We are trying something new in our high school library this year. The week before Winter Break, we will hold our first ever Maker Week. Each day, different materials will be available for students to upcycle into holiday gifts for friends or family members. Students will be able to use materials such as discarded books, magazines, card stock, laminate sheets, stickers and more. I am trying to purchase very little to support Maker Week; I would prefer that students use their creativity to make something interesting out of existing materials. They will be encouraged to create unique items; however, there will be samples available in case they need some inspiration. The examples I created ahead of time include a magazine tree, book page ornaments, a small paper box filled with candy, bookmarks and holiday cards. The library secretary created a lovely display outside of the library several weeks before the start of Maker Week in order to foster student interest ahead of time. I also requested an announcement to be read over the student news program, and I provided an ad to be included in the daily bulletin. I am excited about Maker Week, and I am anxious to see what the students create! I'm sure I will post during or after Maker Week to include what I learned throughout the process.