Sphero Team
Woman sitting on floor in library working on laptop.

Librarians are taking a prominent role in bringing STEAM to students in school districts and colleges all over the world. In fact, more than half of school libraries in the U.S. and Canada offer maker programing for youth. This gives students more opportunities to engage in maker-based learning.

Here are some of the most unique ways that the libraries we work with are incorporating STEAM into their programs:

  • Building or designating “maker spaces” to call attention to maker programming
  • Partnering with classroom subject teachers to tie new technologies and project-based learning into required curriculum
  • Using STEAM activities to support reading and literacy, such as having students use electronics to build interactive scenes or themes from the books they read

Curious about how your library could best start and scale a maker program? Check out our new whitepaper detailing some of the best practices to ensure an effective and engaging implementation for all students.

Librarian Emily Rimland receiving an award

With all of the work that’s being done, we were so excited to see that our friend Emily Rimland was recently recognized with the American Library Association Library Instruction Round Table’s Librarian Recognition Award, as well as Penn State’s University Libraries Teaching Award.

Emily is the information literacy librarian and learning technologies coordinator at Penn State University Libraries. We at littleBits have been proud to help Emily bring littleBits into her libraries to help advance the information technologies. Her work — using littleBits to help students visualize their search processes — is innovative and demonstrates the out-of-the box thinking that we value so much at littleBits.

Thank you Emily for choosing littleBits as a tool in your library; you’re providing an amazing example to other librarians looking to bring STEAM into their space!